BLE is insanely battery-efficient. And in most scenarios with a lost device, it's either stationary or will be stationary for a sufficient period of time to be discovered, so a ping only once every hour is probably more than enough to locate it. Or a ping with exponential backoff as battery depletes.
Sending the locations from these pings likewise also uses negligible battery, as Apple already coalesces timers and network traffic like push notifications.
I don't understand the mentality where people think Apple would have announced this without doing any testing on its battery life impact.
Yep. I have a BLE speed sensor on my bike which runs off a CR2032 coin cell. It's been two years of daily commuting and I've yet to change the battery.
Sending the locations from these pings likewise also uses negligible battery, as Apple already coalesces timers and network traffic like push notifications.
I don't understand the mentality where people think Apple would have announced this without doing any testing on its battery life impact.