The cold weather seems to be showing that the battery is on its way out (longer to crank, labouring to start, warning message if in car with engine off but electrics on after only a minute or so etc.)

Bit annoying as the car is only two years old, but 🤷🏻‍♂️

Anyway, can this be changed by myself without any coding equipment, or do I need to get a garage to do it?

2 years isn't a great lifespan. Worth popping a multimeter on the terminals when the engine is running to rule out alternator / charging issues.

Coding the battery isn't vital but worth doing to let the BCM know the battery has changed. There is probably someone near you who will do it for some beer tokens. Check the map.

Thanks for that. I’ll keep my eye on it, it fired up immediately this morning without any problems, a series of short journeys recently might not have helped.

I bought the car two years ago (almost to the day), but it was a car that was ‘in stock’, so may have been sat around for several months etc. and the battery may be over two years old I suppose.

Is it under warranty?

Many years ago I had the battery fail on an 18-month-old Passat. Got it to the dealer by jump-starting it, and they replaced the battery for free. So they can fail early if there was some manufacturing fault.

Your short trips might be part of the problem, but I've seen quite a few posts regarding insufficient charging for the Mk4 12 volt battery on the forum.

Edited 31 October, 202531 Oct by Warrior193
added information

Few months back my 12V battery went totally empty and got stuck in a car park with no power at all. As inspectorman said, it's a good idea to connect a voltmeter under the hood.

These days I have a spare booster battery pack (10000ma) in my trunk for bad surprizes.

If you are driving only short distances, I'd advise you to switch on the recurperation.

Our VW Golf Alltrack's battery failed after 20 months and the dealer replaced it under warranty. After that we always disabled Auto Stop on every trip. I have retained this policy on the Skoda which is now at 4.5 years and still on its first battery.

I decided to make a habit of disabling start/stop a while back for the same reason. I alternate between 3 cars, which means the Skoda isn't used every week. I have 2 smart chargers permanently set up in the garage and always connect the cars not in use to keep the batteries up to spec.

14 hours ago, Octawia said:

These days I have a spare booster battery pack (10000ma) in my trunk for bad surprizes.

Which booster do you have, and has it proven to be effective?

I ask because a friend has intermittent battery charging issues and something like this might help put his mind at rest (and he lives in a rural area). Not a Skoda BTW.