I think my 12 volt battery needs replacing

A $180 battery is fine as long as it is an AGM with a vent port. This battery is a 7 year long life battery specifically designed to be in the interior with your daughter. Some have used a flooded lead acid battery that could gas to the interior, could be mistakenly hooked up wrong and does not respond to deep discharges as well as an AGM. Call your local auto supply.

 

Yeah once-a-month start is nowhere near enough. How old is it? Assuming it’s getting on in years, and the car will continue to be mothballed for significantly further time:

1. Disconnect and isolate neg cable. This is shutting the barn door after the horses have bolted, but hey.
2. Window shop new batteries, just be ready.
3. Research smart chargers (3~4 amp range) and electronic load testers. The former run through a multi-stage charge session and then can be left on indefinitely, as maintainers, if that’s practical. The latter ask for some info about your battery, then test it’s actual Cold Cranking Amps, and give a verdict.

 

if it is original, don't bother trying anything, just replace it. if it is not going to be driven regularly, hook it up to a maintainer.
as for batteries, if you got 10 years out of the first, why change?

 

On my gen3 I have not had to reprogram the windows or the presets, although it will change channel to a default fm station after a battery disconnect.

 

Sorry, I have been telling everyone a 2011 is a gen3. Now I know.

Edit:

I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken.

 

Welcome, @asalligo. I hope the new battery is working OK for you. I'm curious. Why did you decide to buy a battery that will probably only last about 1/3 to 1/2 as long as the one that powered the car for over 10 years and only died from sitting in storage? The Florida heat is murder on batteries.

 

You need to be positively sure that your new battery is fully charged before or soon after installation.
You can't trust the car OR a shop to do that.

Anything else that needs to be done should be obvious.......like radio pre-sets.

 

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. I have that spiritual gift myself, so I tend to spot it more easily in others. I often have to restrain myself.

 

The context is missing but I took the high road of sorts. A member had crucified me for bringing up a gen3 function in a gen2 forum. Even though the OP had specified the car was 2011. I did not quote the member on purpose and he ran for cover by editing the comment to a "."

Then the mod apparently moved this thread to gen3 and deleted the post with the "." erasing all context.