Dead Battery

[ORRadtech]

Hello; My first car was a 1957 Chevy with a straight six & a manual trans. I can recall having to jump or roll start that car when the battery was so low the starter would only click. Then driving for maybe twenty minutes and the battery being charged enough to start later on. Same sort of thing for other people's cars over the decades.
Jump the car off and sometimes never have a problem with the battery again. I put a CB radio in my 2004 Chevy Silverado and mistakenly used a hot all the time 12 volt wire to power the radio. I forgot to turn the radio off and a few days later the battery would not spin the starter. I jumped it off and did not have a problem with the battery for many years.
I did power the radio from a wire which is only hot with the engine running.

Fair enough. I think that we can all agree that older cars were better in a lot of ways.
That '57s electrical system probably consisted of a starter, a coil pack a few lights and maybe a radio.
And '04 was just ahead of electronics taking over. So, yeah, you could sometimes get lucky. But it still wouldn't have been fully charging the battery. The system just had more reserve capacity.
I think that a lot of the misconception that a running car will charge a battery is left over from the past when there was less to run and more reserve to run it.
Today's cars, though, are power hungry vampires with dozens of computer control modules. And the power accessories are all encompassing. Seats, windows, mirrors, heated everything, infotainment systems, screens, screens and more screens. The power demands are endless.
Fun fact, the computer in our cars is 100 times faster than the Apollo space craft and your key fob has more built in memory than the lunar lander

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[sk47]

That '57s electrical system probably consisted of a starter, a coil pack a few lights and maybe a radio.

Hello; Yes! The windshield wipers ran off manifold vacuum.