Disconnect Your Car Battery Before Long Trips

ByRay Proper

Cars and Driving, Driver's Licence, Driving, Lease Cars, Lease Japan, Transportation

Nov 08, 2015

Disconnect Your Car Battery Before Long Trips

The expat lifestyle in Japan often means long durations of time spent abroad, and away from your vehicle. Before you go we wanted to remind you of a few things to keep in mind before leaving your vehicle parked for any length of time.

Keeping in mind that navigation and other electronics systems available in modern cars can drain batteries dead after as little as 1 week  left idle, so the most important of these is to disconnect your car’s battery in order to prevent it from going dead and stranding you at the airport, or at home before your morning commute back to work.

This is especially important as battery damage is most often the responsibility of the person driving the car, rather than the leasing company or dealer’s responsibility, which makes returning to a dead battery not only inconvenient, but potentially very expensive.

Besides disconnecting your battery, here are some other things to keep in mind before leaving your car for an extended period:

• Do not to leave any items in the cabin that are visible to a passerby if your car is parked outside, for either short or long periods of time parked.
• Help reduce extreme cabin temperatures by purchasing a sunshade for your windshield.

If you need some help disconnecting your battery you can take a look at Lease Japan’s handy guide.  It has some simple instructions that could save you from the headache of a dead battery later!

LJ Disconnect Battery Guide (pdf)