I am curious as to what causes you to say that. I have yet to see or hear where optima actually lasts in someone's vehicle that is into car audio. Also, I believe the charging requirements for optima is stricter than xs so if he ever got a high output alt that charged closed to 15v, that could be another problem. I have a buddy who bought 4 Group 34 yellow tops used 3 years ago, and they are still holding up strong. And he used them for car audio the whole time, and as did the guy before him. And they have had a HO alternator charging at 14.9ish the whole time also. Still no problem. Seems you heard of a few insists of Optimas failing and now thinking they all must be the same way. Sound kind of ignorant to me. A good percent of the time when something fails, its user error. And usually on the internet, people rarely tell the whole truth when talking about a problem they had with a product, so they can blame the company instead of theirself. Now, if you have had countless amount of Opti's and have countless problems, I could understand. But going direct on hear say isn't always truthful. Not trying to single you out, but people read a few bad things and automatically think the product sucks. And sometimes the own company.