Something is wrong with them. I can use mine repeatedly over several days before finally needing to plug them in again. You should reach out to support.
The left earbud dying is a frequent problem. Sometimes I sometimes hear about the right, but usually the left. Even more rarely, both die frequently, which isn’t the real issue…they drain the case, right? (if not ignore the rest of this)
Want me to blow your mind? The REASON for this is the case. Everyone always suggests cleaning, but that won’t help for the long term. I know because I have tried.
I took a pair of tweezers and bent the metal contacts in the case outward. That was a year ago. I have not had a single issue since. Not one. I am willing to bet Apple brushed a manufacturing defect under the rug. YMMV and if your airpods are under warranty, consider that first, but after having the issue with first gen and second gen, I wasn’t about to deal with nonsense.
The butterfly keyboard was a _design_ defect, and these are very different things. Apple went to great lengths (because telling Jony Ive 'no' was not an option) to try and tweak the design to function correctly in the real world, and failed.
But they came out of the box functioning perfectly, and stayed that way until tiny specks of dust inevitably entered the picture. The entire saga was extremely boneheaded and after I took mine in for a replacement (which, I must say, was out of warranty and only cost me time) I vowed to never buy another MacBook which had that absurd keyboard. Fortunately I didn't have to, they went back to the proven design which is a true beast and just keeps chugging along for years without a single missed or repeated keystroke.
But this is very different from shipping products with known _manufacturing_ defects, and then 'brushing it under the rug', presumably by not issuing a recall. I can't recall even the former happening with post-iPod era Apple products, let alone the latter.
In this particular case, the most likely culprit is pushing the AirPod into the charging slot with enough force to bend down the contact. There isn't a way to manufacture a spring contact which isn't vulnerable to this, and the fix is easy if you have thin enough tweezers. If Apple shipped an edition of AirPods cases with bad contacts, which didn't charge out of the box, it's a safe bet that there would be press about it. Maybe there was, but if so, I missed the 635 comment HN thread about it.
Have you actually talked to Apple? They might just replace them. Is this the only pair that’s demonstrated this behavior, or has it been multiple units?
