How much driving is needed to keep the battery in great/optimal condition during these times?
With everything getting fairly horrible again around here, I usually take 1-2 drives a week. One is close errands, the other is maybe 30-40 minutes round trip.
How many starts/drives a week are needed? How long of a drive? Any certain distance or time?
I do enjoy driving and jamming music, especially now that I can put windows down (cooler weather), but don’t want to waste gas etc.
Any recommendations just to keep the car battery in good shape? Usually a few errands on Saturday and maybe a longer drive on Thursday (20-30 minutes).
If you want to be 100% safe, then you connect it to a trickle charger/battery tender when you are not using the car. However, if you taking a few drives every week with a longer drive (30+ minutes) you will be fine. Edit: I would also recommend asking on a forum specific to your car (i.e. bimmerpost or audizine).
trickle charger if you want to avoid gas and keep the same battery. Easy and nothing too much to do.
Leave it be, when it looses charge jump start it. Battery health is going to suffer if doing this frequently.
Drive on the highway with little traffic for say an hour every week and you should be in good shape.
If you want to maintain the battery and know what your doing and the inherent risk involved, disconnect your battery (some new cars dont like this at all since you loose settings and could junk your infotainment or other ecus) and top it off with DI water if its a traditional lead acid battery with plugs on top. Again risk involved
While we can talk in generalities, this is great advice for your specific needs/model, since some may drain the batteries in some scenarios faster than others (e.g. if you have a convertible, and frequently raise/lower the top on frequent short trips, it can slowly drain the battery but a good drive can store it). For some cars, they use less power standing by with the doors locked than with them unlocked. Hard to cover every case.
For leases in general, the battery should be new/strong enough not to drain during the lease under normal use. As long as you don’t leave lights on, doors open, something plugged into 12v outlet that draws out all the power.
In warm and cold climates, leasing for the past 16 years, I’ve (knock wood) never had a dead battery, never had one replaced under warranty. They get checked every service and the voltage is always green.
I realize your scenario is about less driving, but as long as there aren’t any volt vampires (e.g. hard-wired dash cams), it shouldn’t drain.
As mentioned, if you’re worried, you can get a shutoff that attaches between the terminal and the battery, so you can manually disconnect when you get out the car. If this was a classic car, I might go that route, but probably not for something so new.
You probably don’t need it with a 20-30 minute drive once a week, but its already been mentioned here and I can second a trickle charger. I’ve been using a 1.25A Battery Tender for quite a few years on my S2k. It even came with a ring terminal hardwire kit in the box, for about $45 all in, from that online bookstore.
I’d also suggest (if its a long term keeper car) that if you sit for more than say 3-4 weeks at a time, you pull the fuel pump relay and crank the car for 30 seconds or so to move oil around and up to the valvetrain before startup. I do this on the S at the start of every driving season.
