Every once and a while I see a fragmented, bread crumb conversation on batteries. Often it is on brands, then we reconcile branding down to the few actual manufacturers, AGM discussion, size alternatives, battery maintenance/conditioning, pricing, warranty, etc. Deka (East Penn Manufacturing), Delphi, Exide, Johnson Controls (Optima is a subsidiary btw). At least in the USA.
It would be nice to see an organized document that actually cataloged some choices, and framed basic stuff, like who is manufacture of the brand, capacity, fitment (and mods).
My last go around, after the usual 2 hours of research - I figured out who made the Advanced Auto Parts AGM battery (their high end offering), then I scraped a bunch of coupon code deals together, along with a special they were running on their batteries, considered the warranty (which seem pretty good). In my case it was an Autocraft Platinum AGM H6 760CCA for the wife's diesel MB, 3 year replacement warranty, and came to $140 which is dirt cheap. The Autocraft Platinum AGM is made by Johnson Controls (JCI).
Generally the AGM batteries seem to last longer by my anecdotal experience. The Z4 sees infrequent use so I keep that on the battery conditioner.
As for $500-2,000 batteries, to save a bit of ass-end weight, that's pretty much a poor trade-off by any set of metrics I can imagine.
Filippo