FAQs:

Lithium Iron-Phosphate batteries have a useful lifetime of decades, instead of 2-10 years for Lead-Acid, and 10+ years for Lithium-Ion. All things being equal, you will have about 3-times the lifespan of the typical flooded Lead-Acid batteries, at which time they can still be used for other purposes, such as energy-storage.

A typical Lithium battery will be at 70-80% of its original capacity after about 3,000 charge-cycles (just don’t buy a cheap one). So, IF you fully charged and discharged yours EVERY DAY, for the ENTIRE YEAR, after 8.2 years it will still be at 70-80%, but unlike Lead-Acid, they age gracefully (slowly). So that is why, practically-speaking, we say they will last 10, 15, even 20 years.

We have just constructed a 48V battery from Lithium Iron Phosphate cells which were installed in a Porsche EV-conversion in 2011, with no BMS (shocker). After ten years of daily-driving (including some serious abuse), all of the cells were tested, and almost all of them STILL had greater than 80% of their capacity remaining. Lithium batteries offer value in three ways: convenience, performance and longevity.

1. High Current: As one can imagine, perhaps the most harmful thing you can do to a battery is short-out the terminals - something is going to blow! But why?? Heat. Luckily, there will be plenty of heat, light and melting of metal outside of the battery as well, so we know to avoid this. But you might not have even thought about the heat generated inside the battery. Even if you don't short them out, drawing too much power out of a battery for long periods of time is also very bad because they will heat-up, and unwanted chemical reactions occur which shorten the life and reduce the capacity of your battery. But how much is too much??

   Although we are talking about power, think current, as follows: the rating of your battery (in Amp-Hours) is called one "C." It is the current required to drain (or charge) a battery in one hour. Any current over 2C for more than a minute or so (3C for CANLiFe) is going to start to heat it up. So, 3C (4C) is not good, althought its' okay occasionally, like going up a steep hill. Drawing high currents won’t change much right-away, but your battery performance and life will be reduced by quite a bit (years). For a 56Ah battery (C=56 Amps in this case), this would mean routinely drawing more than roughly 200 Amps, which is pretty-much hot-dogging in a souped-up cart, roaring up a hill on a mountain golf course, operating a multi-passenger cart, or hauling a water-tank. In that case, you would purchase a 105Ah battery, which is quite happy at those current levels. A normal golf cart won’t go above 200A often, if ever. As long as you are happy with the range of your battery, normal use will not damage it, and it will last worry-free at least 3x as long as your Lead-Acid.

   In case you are wondering about a worst-case scenario, the battery management system has three settings, and will disconnect if the current exceeds the safe threshold 1) for more than one second, 2) 10 seconds and 3) 30 seconds. lf there is a dead-short, it will disconnect in a fraction of a second, give you a chance to think about it, and if you push the ON button again, hopefully the situation has changed.... If the electronics fails inside your battery, there is a physical fuse which will blow permanently, to prevent what is known as “rapid-unscheduled-disassembly.”

2. Improper Storage: Lithium batteries can be left at virtually any temperature we are likely to encounter here, but prefer to stay cool, so keep that in mind. Also, you will reduce the life of your batteries by perhaps 10% if you leave them fully-charged all the time, especially for long periods. Charge your battery if you need to and if you don’t use it for a couple of days, no-problem, but if you are going away for a week, try not to leave it full. 40-60% charge is ideal. Don’t sweat-it (these are tough batteries), but just don’t make a habit of leaving your cart plugged-in, like you would with Lead-Acid.

   Yes, this is different than for Lead-Acid batteries, which are only happy when fully-charged (or start they “sulfating” – building-up Lead-Sulfide deposits). Lead-Acid will self-discharge if left for a couple of months, suffer damage, and also freeze in the winter, which effectively kills them. Lead-Acid batteries will self-discharge at around 15%/month (it varies a lot with temperature), whereas, LiFePO4 goes down by about 3% per month, and LESS in cold-weather. Over the winter, leave your Lithium at 40-60%, not more (and the colder it is, the better). We just received some batteries which were manufactured in August, 2020. They are charged to 50% in the factory, and a year later, are still at 20-30%

   Lithium batteries are similar to Lead-Acid in that they also don’t like to be left fully-discharged. This is REALLY bad for Lead-Acid batteries, but a lot less-so for Lithium batteries. As-above, don’t worry about it too much, but be aware, and don’t make a habit of it. LiFePO4 in particular (vs Lithium-Ion) is tough. Also, for ECO Lithium (but not for cheaper Lithium batteries), when the capacity meter says it is at 0%, the Battery Management System will stop supplying current to protect the cells from damage. The battery actually still has 10% or so capacity. This is also different from Lead-Acid, where there is no protection, and your battery will drain down to the point where it cannot even run your lights, and never be the same. So, because of the built-in protection, as long as you charge your batteries up again fairly soon, you would have to do that many times before degrading the batteries more than 1%.

No, not likely. If these batteries suit your needs, anything new which comes along will be very expensive and the bugs won’t be worked-out (early versions of Lithium Iron Phosphate and Lithium-Ion batteries were also not the best). The LiFePO4 and Lithium-Ion have been around for over 10-years and are proven, relatively inexpensive, and although in very-high demand, they are available. The world loves them. They are so far superior to Flooded Lead-Acid that there is no reason to wait.

As mentioned elsewhere BA is building batteries using a relative-newcomer Lithium chemistry proven for extreme cold-weather applications, however at 2-3x the price of our current offerings, more suited for critical-applications such as remote, critical infrastructure, and emergency power.

Like a lot of products coming out of China, there are bad batteries too – these are Grade-B cells, or even C-Grade. What does this mean? When the cells are manufactured, they are tested, sorted, and graded accordingly. The most important flaw which will affect your battery is the internal resistance. If you want to know if the batteries you are buying are any good, ask what Grade the cells are, and for the “AC internal resistance per cell.” It should be 0.6 or 0.7 (milli-ohms per cell). If they can’t convincingly tell you either of these, run. Grades B and C can have any of eight random flaws which could contribute to premature failure, and will not be matched for internal resistance. This will affect the life of your battery, and is why they are so cheap.

A Lithium battery much cheaper than the ECO Batteries is NOT made from Grade-A cells (a tell-tale sign is a 2- or 3-year warranty), and will not likely last much more than 5 years. You also need to have a multi-level built-in Battery Management System, a State of Charge display (because the old one will no longer work), and a button to turn the battery OFF (see Battery Storage). We are seeing a lot of cheaper batteries advertised and we recommend you stay away from them.

If you need batteries, want to save money (and the environment), go-easy, go Lithium. And whether you buy them from us or not, it is pretty-much impossible to purchase a LiFePO4 battery for which the cells did not come from China. They got-in early, and went big; just be cautious. The bad cells are not good value.