My 2023 bike has been sitting in the garage for about 2 weeks and the battery is completely dead now. I checked and there's no obvious short or lights left on. Is this normal or should I be worried about something?
Get a battery tender or smart charger plugged in whenever the bike sits for more than a week or two - that's your main solution here. Modern motorcycles drain their batteries even when off because of parasitic draws from the ECU, security systems, and other electronics that stay powered 24/7. Your 2023 bike definitely has this, and it's completely normal. Most modern bikes lose maybe 1% of charge per day just sitting there, so two weeks will easily kill a battery if it wasn't fully charged to start.
The thing is, even "turned off" bikes are kind of still on in a low-power state. The immobilizer, fuel pump controller, instrument cluster - they're all drawing tiny amounts of current continuously. Add in any aftermarket electronics you might have and it gets worse. If you had the bike at like 80% charge when you parked it, yeah, two weeks is enough to drain it completely depending on the battery capacity and exact parasitic draw on your specific model.
To figure out if something's actually wrong, you could measure the parasitic draw with a multimeter set to amps, but honestly most people just grab a battery tender and call it solved. They're cheap (like $30 - 60) and save you from dead batteries constantly. Just unplug the tender before you ride. If it's draining way faster than normal even after ruling out obvious stuff like heated grips left on or a faulty relay, then you might have a real short, but in 2023 bikes it's almost always just the normal parasitic draw being worse than people expect.
Two weeks is pushing it for most modern bikes. Even when they're supposedly off, there's stuff constantly drawing power - your ECU, security system, clock, maybe a GPS module if you've got one. It's not like old mechanical bikes that would just sit there inert. That parasitic drain adds up quick, especially in a newer 2023 model with all the electronics.
The good news is this is totally normal and fixable. What you really need is a trickle charger or battery maintainer that stays plugged in while the bike sits. I learned this the hard way after my bike died during a garage winter - now I just leave a charger hooked up whenever I know it'll be parked longer than a week or two. They're cheap, like thirty bucks for a decent one, and they automatically keep the battery topped off without overcharging it. Just make sure you disconnect the negative terminal first if the bike's been sitting that long, then plug in the charger to those terminals. That way you're not fighting against an actively draining system.
If you want to find the culprit, you could test the parasitic draw by disconnecting the negative battery cable and putting a multimeter in series to see what's actually pulling juice when everything's off. Most newer bikes will show anywhere from 50 to 200 milliamps at rest, which sounds small but drains a battery dead in a couple weeks. But honestly, unless you've got a specific problem like a faulty charging system, the charger solution just makes everything easier. Keep one plugged in during storage and you won't have to think about it again.
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