Lifeline Obsolete?

[Davydd]

I will soon be walking on water…as soon as the lakes freeze over.

You pontificate too much themexicandoctor. You probably should listen more as you have said you would.

BTW, no type of batteries in a small suitcase will meet my desired electrical performance in a Class B.

I take it Lifeline is importing batteries from China like everyone else. I guess there is magic in the label on the battery case.

The difference between AGM Lithium Ion batteries are cost, number of cycles, weight and how much amp hours desired which relates to how much space you have for batteries and carrying capacity in weight you are allowed or want to sacrifice in other needs. You just have to factor all those in. Lithium ion will have a higher first cost at this time but I think life cycle cost can be debated. It’s a null factor on cost for me because I could not get the amount of AGMs in my Class B design with desired amp hour capacity.

I solved the issue of too cold. I bought a four season Class B and I’ve boondocked down to overnight temperatures of minus 15 degrees F.

[themexicandoctor]

Somehow I left out the fact that I too, will use the same Ice Phenomena to walk on water.

Yes they too, after a lot of careful deliberation, are importing two units, the size 24 & 27 from China.

I may have posted earlier a statement from an employee that due to restrictions, no-one makes Lithium Batteries in the USA anymore.

Here is an employee's reply verbatim;

[[B][B][I]B]Every lithium battery is manufactured in China. For environmental reasons no one is permitted to manufacture Lithium batteries in the US. There are companies who import lithium cells and other needed materials from China and then assemble them in the US. Even Tesla is merely an assembler of Lithium batteries.

Your highly sophisticated application can only work with Lithium Technology & I agree, the benefits of less Weight & the rapid Charging Profile* of any quality Lithium over any quality AGM makes them a smarter, long term investment for some.

I did speak with Battleborn in person & gave then beforehand a half page series of questions as I was open to going Lithium. Their answers didn't pan out for my application.

But everytime I get a new Motorcycle, the first thing I do is pull the AGM Batteries & replace them with Lithium except for my older Italians that have very specific Voltage Regulator parameters.

[MobileCabin]

"For environmental reasons no one is permitted to manufacture Lithium batteries in the US."

What are the environmental reasons and the regulation that actually prohibits domestic production? I did a simple search but was not able to find anything.

[eric1514]

Originally Posted by MobileCabin

"For environmental reasons no one is permitted to manufacture Lithium batteries in the US."

What are the environmental reasons and the regulation that actually prohibits domestic production? I did a simple search but was not able to find anything.

The folks at Tesla's Giga factory in Nevada would be very surprised by this regulation.

[themexicandoctor]

Originally Posted by eric1514

The folks at Tesla's Giga factory in Nevada would be very surprised by this regulation.

I am just repeating what the Lifeline Employee shared with me.

Maybe the Giga/Tesla operation is different.

I do know that no RV Case Lithiums are made in the USA as I checked with my contact at Battleborn after an earlier post by to verify the statement which I am repeatng here;

[B]Every lithium battery is manufactured in China. For environmental reasons no one is permitted to manufacture Lithium batteries in the US. There are companies who import lithium cells and other needed materials from China and then assemble them in the US. Even Tesla is merely an assembler of Lithium batteries.[/B]

[avanti]

Originally Posted by themexicandoctor

Even Tesla is merely an assembler of Lithium batteries.

Tesla has been manufacturing (NOT assembling) lithium cells at the Gigafactory since 2017.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/battery-c...ns-gigafactory

[themexicandoctor]

Originally Posted by avanti

Tesla has been manufacturing (NOT assembling) lithium cells at the Gigafactory since 2017.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/battery-c...ns-gigafactory

I stand corrected as to Tesla's operation of Vehicle Specific batteries. Will point the "splitting hairs" fact out to the Lifeline & Battleborn contacts.

Didn't realize they were manufacturing RV Application Batteries domestically. I still do not.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by themexicandoctor

Didn't realize they were manufacturing RV Application Batteries domestically. I still do not.

I am a little confused.

Aren't all lithium batteries built out of industry-standard cylindrical or prismatic cells? Lifeline's are made of the same 26650 cells as Battleborn and many other manufacturers:

https://321166-984045-raikfcquaxqnco...Spec-Sheet.pdf

Given this, what does it mean to be an "RV Application" battery? If there is any such thing, I would think that it would have to do with the BMS, not the cells themselves. No?

I am pretty sure that all the manufacturers are getting their cells from the same universe of suppliers, although it may be true that each cell type may be available in a range of qualities.

[themexicandoctor]

Originally Posted by avanti

I am a little confused.

Aren't all lithium batteries built out of industry-standard cylindrical or prismatic cells? Lifeline's are made of the same 26650 cells as Battleborn and many other manufacturers:

https://321166-984045-raikfcquaxqnco...Spec-Sheet.pdf

Given this, what does it mean to be an "RV Application" battery? If there is any such thing, I would think that it would have to do with the BMS, not the cells themselves. No?

I am pretty sure that all the manufacturers are getting their cells from the same universe of suppliers, although it may be true that each cell type may be available in a range of qualities.

Tesla are manufacturing a Specific Battery, for their Lithium powered vehicles.

I submit to your far superior technical knowledge of Battery Technology & many other technical aspects of RV Engineering.

As it was I simply repeated verbatim what was shared with me by a Lifeline Employee & then corroborated earlier today by my Contact at Battleborn - the batteries that we, as end users, purchase for our RV Specific Applications, are not manufactured in the USA.

But the "splitting hairs comment" was your exit stage left opportunity.

Even if some of our Forum Members were interested in powering their RV's with the very same Tesla Lithium Batteries, its readily apparent that this Thread has ZERO to do with that unique application.

That would be a separate thread perhaps named "Using Tesla Batteries as an Alternative to traditional Lithium & AGM technology in Class B's".

And I would read it with more Vigor than understanding.

This thread was started because Bud found a YouTuber* who introduced a Lithium Battery Manufacturer, selling what initially* appears to be a quality battery, with features found in far more expensive batteries, at a 50-70% discount.

Whether or not that would cause a named AGM Manufacturer to become Obsolete is misleading as there are many Guru's on here who would not buy the Lithium option just because they are at a price point equivalent of quality AGMs.

However I could see an existing Lithium owner who just fried his, decide to go with a far cheaper product

*an individual who makes money promoting multiple videos that talk about such technologies on YouTube while not presenting all the arguments & for those far more savvy than I, makes some contentious statements

*initially, just like Longitudinal Studies in Medicine, the quality has yet to proven long term.

[Bud]

"Lithium-ion batteries, those marvels of lightweight power that have made possible today's age of handheld electronics and electric vehicles, have plunged in cost since their introduction three decades ago at a rate similar to the drop in solar panel prices, as documented by a study published last March. But what brought about such an astonishing cost decline, of about 97 percent?
Some of the researchers behind that earlier study have now analyzed what accounted for the extraordinary savings. They found that by far the biggest factor was work on research and development, particularly in chemistry and materials science. This outweighed the gains achieved through economies of scale, though that turned out to be the second-largest category of reductions.

The new findings are being published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, in a paper by MIT postdoc Micah Ziegler, recent graduate student Juhyun Song Ph.D. '19, and Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT's Institute for Data, Systems and Society..........."

This is extensive and somewhat detailed, but if I were lifeline I'd be wondering as it is sure not over:

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-11-...d-decline.html

[booster]

Originally Posted by Bud

"Lithium-ion batteries, those marvels of lightweight power that have made possible today's age of handheld electronics and electric vehicles, have plunged in cost since their introduction three decades ago at a rate similar to the drop in solar panel prices, as documented by a study published last March. But what brought about such an astonishing cost decline, of about 97 percent?
Some of the researchers behind that earlier study have now analyzed what accounted for the extraordinary savings. They found that by far the biggest factor was work on research and development, particularly in chemistry and materials science. This outweighed the gains achieved through economies of scale, though that turned out to be the second-largest category of reductions.

The new findings are being published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, in a paper by MIT postdoc Micah Ziegler, recent graduate student Juhyun Song Ph.D. '19, and Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT's Institute for Data, Systems and Society..........."

This is extensive and somewhat detailed, but if I were lifeline I'd be wondering as it is sure not over:

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-11-...d-decline.html

That is a very interesting article, Bud, and although the cost improvement is much larger than is normally seen in products I have been around, the process they describe is pretty typical I think.


They didn't go into detail about some of the stuff, but I am quite sure they did look at it and work it into the mix for the research. The article is probably an even further simplification of the "Executive Summary" they usually have in technical research papers.


The R&D to improve products after release is a big deal in many cases, especially when going into a market with existing competition like in the battery business. A big factor in costing the products once in production, and thus justifying manufacturing improvement costs, is how the R&D cost is handled at any given company. The selling price can be heavily influenced by if the R&D is built into the general profit margin for all products produced or charged and payed back by only the product it applied to. Both ways have merit, IMO. There is also usually a 3 way push, often against each other, between the product R&D/production people, the Marketing people, and Executive/Accounting groups. You can imagine which group will want the different costs


The good is that it doesn't matter to us why the costs go down, just that they do. To the companies, it is life and death, and with them getting closer to opening up a bigger market by being closer to high end AGM batteries costs, I think we are already starting to see aggressive price cutting strictly because of competition between lithium manufacturers to "thin the heard". How much of those decreases stay permanent is probably not known because of the intangibles of if they are willing to sell at less than cost to get market share or not, and if they are getting price support from the government to do that cutting which is common in some places to drive out all foreign competitors.

[themexicandoctor]

Well stated Booster.

This very misleading thread TITLE had little to do with Lifeline & more to do with what appears* to be, a good quality Lithium Battery being sold for 50-70% less by established Lithium Manufacturers.