I can guarantee you that if you gather up enough "hippies from the sixties" that eventually you'll find a former vee dub owner that's experienced an "unhandy" battery fail in a bug....under the rear seat.
That might happen when a heavy passenger compresses the seat springs onto the + battery post. I have seen the welding on a few seats.
I built an electric in the early 80's. I used Johnson Controls deep discharge batteries. They were hot for about 6 to 9 months, then performance dropped. I found I could take the weak ones, and use in a normal car without problems, for years.