Dat batt thread.

[Manaz]

My father recently changed the battery (Varta) on his B6 Passat. It lasted exactly 15 years

Wow. Varta definitely had a good reputation back in the day, but that is amazing.

Not sure you'd buy a battery these days that would last that long.

[Hillbilly]

My father recently changed the battery (Varta) on his B6 Passat. It lasted exactly 15 years

Sounds like an Irish folktale . I would approach the Guinness book of records for that one. We got 7 years out of the Polo one and thought that was good.

[Micky 32]

Wow. Varta definitely had a good reputation back in the day, but that is amazing.

Not sure you'd buy a battery these days that would last that long.

My partner has a Toyota Auris. That came fitted with Varta. That one lasted 11 years. I think she would have gotten a bit longer but she has a habit of leaving the lights on. The battery eventually failled when she left her headlights on all day. It never recovered after that. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did lol

[Micky 32]

My 5 year old Passat with stop start came with a Varta AGM. It now reads about 40/50% SOH on a conductance tester. It still starts fine but in cold weather the starter can sound a bit groggy and sometimes i get errors flashing on the dash for a split second. It has been like that for the last 2 years. It never got any worse. The start stop system works perfectly fine too.
The funny thing is it has lots of reserve capacity left. If you left lights on for a longtime it won’t fail to start. It just seems to suffer from voltage drop when cranking in cold weather. Seems to be a characteristic of AGM’s when they age. I found that with normal lead acid batteries that have aged it’s the opposite. Good cranking power but no reserve capacity, for example if you left your lights on for 10 minutes or radio for half an hour the car won’t start.

[amunra]

My father recently changed the battery (Varta) on his B6 Passat. It lasted exactly 15 years

Luck of the irish