Do you know what’s under your hood? If your answer is the most recycled consumer product in the world, you’d be correct. Lead car batteries have the highest collection and recycling rate of any type of battery. According to Essential Energy Everyday, lead car batteries have a recycling rate of nearly 100%. Even better? With a circular economy, the lead in car batteries is infinitely recyclable, meaning it can be used over and over with no loss of performance.
Vehicles with internal combustion engines aren’t the only ones equipped with a lead battery: virtually every hybrid and fully electric vehicle requires a lead battery to power critical onboard functions. That’s a lot of lead!
Earth-Friendly
You can feel good about where your car battery goes when it reaches the end of its lifespan. More than 130 million lead batteries are recycled and kept from landfills every year, according to Essential Energy Everyday. And a new lead battery typically consists of 80% recycled material.
Your Guide to Buying a New Car
Tips and tricks to get you through every step of buying a new car, whatever “new” means to you.
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AAA takes great pride in its deep-rooted reputation for environmental protection. When you use AAA for car battery replacement, we do the work for you. No hidden fees or hoops to jump through: Responsible car battery recycling is automatically built into your service.
Using an Environmental Protection Agency-approved recycling center, we recycle every lead battery we replace. Our primary battery manufacturer, East Penn Manufacturing, is a private, family-owned company operating the largest single-site lead battery manufacturing facility in the world. Based in Pennsylvania, the EPA-permitted facility calls itself a model for the lead car battery recycling industry. It uses advanced technology to reduce lead emissions into the air, wastewater and stormwater.
The AAA Mobile Battery Service Program
AAA is dedicated to protecting our environment and ensuring great road trips for generations to come. A lead car battery usually lasts for three to six years, depending on a variety of factors. Factors like extreme heat or cold; harsh wear and tear; short, infrequent drives; and age all affect the lifespan of your battery. When the time comes to replace it, a AAA battery service technician comes to you – at work, at home, almost anywhere – to deliver and install it. Plus, in keeping with our commitment to greater sustainability for the planet, AAA technicians will also safely recycle your old battery.
Visit AAA.com to have a AAA technician check the condition of your battery – and replace and recycle it, if necessary.
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No….I would still rather have a key to start my car than a key fob.
For me a key is a lot easier in my pocket than a bulky fob. It’s just one more electronic gadget to go bad. What happens when the battery goes bad and you’re in the middle of nowhere ?? And a key is much less expensive to replace than a fob. No thank you please !
It’s nothing more than change for the sake of change.
I agree. My key, which doesn’t start the car but has all the unlock functions. It costs a lot to replace, you can’t get a copy if one gets lost without going to a dealer, etc. I’d be happy with a separate unlock device, which is a good safety option in parking lots and garages, and is fast and convenient. If you lose it you can function without it, so no problem if the battery dies far from home. We have a hotshot device, which is an inconvenient alternative to start a car.
FOBs come with a key you can take out of it in case your battery goes dead or the FOB gets broken. There’s a plastic piece over the key hole on the door you pull off to expose it. The FOB on one of my cars is about the same size as the car alarm remote for my other car. To start the car, the FOB is passive like anything else you scan to read. It gets scanned when you start the car. Electronics can go bad so you may lose use of the buttons but same as a remote.
So, if you have a car alarm, not much different than that for bulkiness and pretty much the same when FOB or alarm remote fails or battery goes dead. But, if you are just a key and no alarm person, yeah bulkier.
The bad part like you mention is the ridiculous price to replace a FOB. They have to “program” and “pair” it with the car so even if you pick one up from somewhere else besides the dealer, they still get you. Some places are supposed to be ale to program and pair the keys but car companies constantly change stuff so it isn’t a one size fits all thing.
What I like about my FOB, I never have to take the key out of my pocket. Mine is all proximity. I can leave the car running and still go back and forth in and out of my home with groceries or go check the mail. If someone tries to steel it, I still have the key in my pocket and car will stop once out of range. Also good in a car jacking situation. They drive away and car stops. I can press a button on the FOB if I don’t want to wait for them to go a couple hundred feet.