Am I crazy, or is 3 years too soon for a battery to die?

I'm loving the road-side service that MB provides. We called at 7:15 am, and by 9:30 am, my wife's ML had a new battery in it with no expense to us.

3 years is a bit short as most seem to last around 5 years but since the new one is free to you, who cares......

Yeah, the wife uses it almost daily. It's really been a good vehicle so far.

My mother in-law told me that my (used to be hers) 1985 380SE must have a problem, as its battery would not last even a year. The car has 114k miles on it now. That's 6,300 miles per year. No wonder the battery never lasted.

Absolutely! She's one of those mommy-things. The oddest thing is that you would think the battery would have given an indication on one of those short trips, but it died after a non-stop 3 hour trip and then a 3 hour rest with nothing left on. I tried to jump it with a good set of cables and my monster battery from my running 380SE. I've never had a car not start immediately when jumped from my 380. Even after 2 minutes, there was not even a single rotation of the engine. It energized the starter, but there was not enough current for the starter to turn the engine over. I honestly feel that one of the cells must have gone bad in the battery to have caused this scenerio.

On a side note, I have had a battery explode upon starting in a 1987 Acura Integra. The water was low (bad me, bad, bad) and when I engaged the starter, the side blew off of the battery. Sounded like a backfire. I've watched them a little closer since then.

It's a texas car. Mufflers dry out pretty easily here.

we have ML for 33 month now, with 33k miles on it, original battery, so far no problems...

Mine only lasted 3 years as well. That is not totally unusual!

The original battery lasted almost a year, must have been from a bad batch, because I'm still on the second one so far. The roadside assistance guy had a stack of batteries in his truck, so he was prepared for it. It was late at night and was glad to see him pull up.

The one thing I don't like about all the electronics on the cars these days is you never get any warning about the battery, like dim lights or a weak radio. You either have enough juice or you don't...there is no in between.

__________________
previously: 04 E55, 01 CLK55, 99 ML320