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Ohm (YC S15) is a smarter, lighter car battery that works with your existing car

• blueintegral 11y ago
  Hey everyone! I'm Hunter, one of the cofounders of Ohm. Let me know if I can answer any questions.
  • cperciva 11y ago
    Have you calculated how much money a typical driver would save in fuel due to losing 34 lbs of weight? I have no idea if this ends up being a significant number, but I think the average driver spends somewhere around $10k in fuel over the expected lifetime of this battery; if cutting down the weight by 1-2% reduces fuel consumption by a comparable amount then Ohm would pay for itself.
    • to3m 11y ago
      Wouldn't it be cheaper for them just to eat less?
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      It depends on a lot of things of course, but yes, over the lifetime of the battery, it will pay for at least a large percentage of itself. We estimate about $10 a year gas savings.
  • eggoa 11y ago
    Will this work when its -30F?
    • jngreenlee 11y ago
      http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithiumS.htm http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithiumS.htm Stricter regulations on shipping methods than for other cell chemistries. Degrades at high temperatures. However, for Lithium Iron Phosphate LiFePO4: "Lithium phosphate cells are incombustible in the event of mishandling during charge or discharge, they are more stable under overcharge or short circuit conditions and they can withstand high temperatures without decomposing."
    • disposition2 11y ago
      I would be interested in this and high temperatures as well, few things perform as expected here in AZ when it gets above 110F
    • fn42 11y ago
      Not exactly -30 but I know this guy had some success with off the shelf caps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUXM1XuLUIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUXM1XuLUIs There's a few other vids on this topic if you search through the channel
    • daniel-levin 11y ago
      >> Rated for -30°C to +50°C [1] -22F ~ -30C [1] http://www.getohm.com/ http://www.getohm.com/
      • chrisBob 11y ago
        Is that expected to be sufficient? Typical automotive electrical components are rated over -40C to 85 or 105C. I think the engine compartment is typically hotter than 50C when a car is running. This might be more suitable to a car that mounts the battery remotely: I have seen BMWs with the battery in the trunk.
        • blueintegral 11y ago
          We're being conservative with the temperature rating for now. The components are rated better than that, but we're still running cycle tests in our temp chamber and waiting to get the system tested by an outside lab.
        • beloch 11y ago
          It's not sufficient in Canada. We regularly see temperatures below 30 C. Hopefully they can push it lower, because a battery that quits when it's cold out is pretty much worthless up here.
    • conjecTech 11y ago
      The capacitors are fairly immune to temperature variation since they don't store energy using a chemical reaction, and we can also dynamically adjust the standing voltage of the caps to increase power in cold conditions. We believe so, but don't want to say it until we can verify for sure. Our temp chamber unfortunately has trouble pushing anything south of -20F and it's a bit hard to find weather that cold in August.
  • daniel-levin 11y ago
    Hi Hunter How much safety testing have you done on your battery? Specifically, if an Ohm battery is involved in a collision, how will it fare? I know you are not content with shipping anything you aren't comfortable with your own family members driving with [1]. But, how do you know this? What makes you so sure? I don't mean to come across as interrogative - I am just curious. [1] http://www.getohm.com/ http://www.getohm.com/ edit: grammar
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      Yeah, safety is obviously the most important thing. Right now we're basing the safety claims on the those of the component manufacturers. But it's also going to be a function of the enclosure and component locations, etc. Once all of that is finalized, we'll have a 3rd party lab do abuse testing, crush testing, etc to make sure there aren't any bad failure modes. There's lots of good processes and test procedures already out there for doing that kind of testing on batteries.
  • NateLawson 11y ago
    I don't know how much you can talk about the tech, but I'm interested in how it fits with existing batteries & applications. Is it possibly an add-on to lead acid? A better jump starter? What about industrial like large motor plants where you need a jolt to get a lot of weight moving?
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      Actually, our very first prototype was a thing that sat on top your existing car battery. After talking to some people, it seemed like they preferred it integrated into the battery itself. It makes the price easier too, since you're not spending money on a battery AND a thing you put on top of it, just a better battery. Industrial motors aren't something I've looked into a lot yet, but it could be interesting. I was just talking with someone the other day about using supercaps in robotics applications. Apparently some people are already putting small supercaps in the joints near the motors to help provide surge current during high accelerations or loads.
      • drblast 11y ago
        FWIW, I'd be interested in the thing that sat on top. Seems like that wouldn't wear out and would be cheaper than the combination. I have an older car with occasional electrical gremlins. My battery is fine, but an ounce of prevention...
    • maxerickson 11y ago
      You can buy Lithium ion jump starters on Amazon today: http://www.cnet.com/news/pocket-sized-jump-starters/ http://www.cnet.com/news/pocket-sized-jump-starters/ (linking the review because I don't know which brands are reasonable...)
  • mkarr 11y ago
    Hi Hunter. Do you all plan to offer the battery in a minimal form factor (without the group 35 adapter)? I currently am running one of the Shorai LiFePo4 batteries in my track car. I really love the small size and weight, and would be willing to work around the smaller form factor.
    • conjecTech 11y ago
      Yes, it will be available in a smaller form factor. The core of the device will be a single modular design that will be inserted in the shell shown to give it the Group 35 size. Thanks for the kind words!
      • spathi_fwiffo 11y ago
        Would the output of the capacitors have to change for different applications, requiring different base models; for use in motorcycles, for example?
        • conjecTech 11y ago
          Nope! It could be the exact same internals. We'd just need to repackage it. The voltage on the capacitors is determined by the systems charging them. As long as its below the absolute rating for the caps, it will work. I believe most motorcycles actually operate at the same voltages as cars, though I could be mistaken.
  • devicenull 11y ago
    > if it’s ever about to reach the point that it’ll no longer be able to start your car, it’ll just turn itself off. Your lights will fade out and the radio will go quiet — but once you turn the key, everything will spring right back to life, no jump start required. How does that work? If the battery stops providing current to prevent itself from being fully drained, you're not going to have power to the car's computers to actually start anything.
    • chrisBob 11y ago
      And will I have to reset all of my radio stations every time I leave the dome light on? With a manual I would almost rather run the battery until it is nearly dead.
    • shabble 11y ago
      One possibility: It will know when the internal batteries are running low (the internal charge/discharge monitor IC doing battery "gas gauge" measuring). It'll maintain a reserve of a few crank's worth of energy, and trigger shutdown before that's exhausted. It can also tell if the engine is running, because the alternator will be, and charging it. It can also monitor the active discharge current. If the battery is low and there's a small but fairly constant discharge, it's probably lights/radio, and a timeout of an hour might be reasonable. It could then either cut power completely, or regulate discharge current to a couple of milliamps or something, just enough to sense teh spike when the starter motor is switched in. At that point, it switches in the supercap or goes back to full power 12v mode, and the starter gets cranked. The only downside I can see is that fully isolating the battery may have side effects that upset the ECU, radio or immobiliser system (I recall our radio would go into 'presumed stolen' mode if fully disconnected and require a PIN to work properly, I have no idea if/how that happens in modern cars though) A "dead" lead-acid battery often isn't dead enough for that to happen, just htat it can't supply the ~200A that the starter requires to crank.
      • blueintegral 11y ago
        Bingo.
      • 11y ago
  • ebbv 11y ago
    How many times in a row is the battery able to start the car without needing time to recover?
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      It varies based on the specific car you have, but the short answer is "several". We've been measuring the current needed to start a bunch of different cars, and the results are pretty varied (based on temperature, engine compression, size, etc). One of our testers often needs a couple of starting attempts on his car and it sometimes takes him 3-4 tries before it starts with Ohm.
  • tomkinstinch 11y ago
    Great product idea! One possible side market: have you looked at adapting the capacitor+battery combo for electric bicycles? It could be a great application: batteries for energy density, a capacitor as a buffer that can be filled quickly in a pinch (for charging while out and about, or from regenerative braking) and the capacitor could be discharged quickly for high-power acceleration. For short trips the capacitor would bear much of the load, saving battery cycles. The total capacity may need to be somewhat higher than 10Ah, but probably not much higher.
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      Interesting! I had not thought of that, but it makes a lot of sense. What's the average electric bike battery capacity?
      • tomkinstinch 11y ago
        Around the same order of magnitude. Some are less than ten, some are more. It seems like most are aiming for about 10-15Ah these days, at 36V, 48V, or higher. Since capacity translates into range, the greater the better.
  • mason240 11y ago
    Will you be making a version for amateur/semi pro race car drivers? They are always looking to shave off weight so it can be redistributed in the way they want. Being able to cut 30lbs would be a big deal.
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      Ohm can be used for racing, assuming the rules of the race don't require using a stock battery. A lot of our early users and testers actually come from the racing community.
      • bagels 11y ago
        This is exactly what I was thinking is the best use case. The full lithium batteries are too expensive, and or don't provide enough starting amps.
  • new2 11y ago
    Hi Hunter, is there any regulation or certification process to make and sell car batteries ?
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      The DOT regulates your ability to physically ship batteries through the mail, but there's actually no formal stamp of approval that the DOT gives car batteries. They do have approval processes for other car parts, including electric car batteries though. We've been doing our own temperature and lifecycle testing so far, but we're still having 3rd party labs repeat all of that and also do destructive safety tests.
      • new2 11y ago
        Thanks for the reply. Can you give us a sense for the costs of tests by you and 3rd party labs ? I'm trying to understand what the barriers are.
  • ars 11y ago
    I don't understand how you can charge $200 for this (plus shipping??). A battery at Costco costs $83 for 4.5 years full warranty.
  • sliverstorm 11y ago
    I was writing a reply yesterday but didn't finish it- I was going to say, for the first iteration of the product you could consider using classic lead-acid instead of LiPo. It's cheap, so it would help keep you price-competitive. It's absolutely proven as an automotive battery chemistry. The difference vs. a classic battery would be, your smart circuitry to shut off the battery, and the cap stage would allow for a tiny battery even on big engines. Your LiPo model already sacrifices capacity, and the only other reason for a big battery is CCA, which the caps solve. Thus you could put an itty-bitty 10Ah lead-acid in an F-550. Bigger & heavier than a 10Ah LiPo? Sure, but still way smaller and lighter than modern F-550 batteries. You could then move to LiPo for later versions as you get the truly novel parts of the product dialed in and costs starts to come down.
• jasonlaramburu 11y ago
  Great idea in a very stagnant market. How do the LiFePO4 cells perform at high temperatures? I've worked with this battery chemistry before, and found most off the shelf cells have internal safety circuitry that disconnects the battery at temperatures >70C. Typical engine running temperature is 60-80C (or as much as 90 on a hot day).
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    Hey Jason, good question. It turns out to be a non-issue. Lead-acid batteries have terrible lifetimes at high temperatures, so cars are already designed with enough distance between the engine and battery and enough circulation to ensure the battery is never more than a few degrees above ambient. The batteries in our design also aren't generally active while the engine is running. Let me know if that addresses your concerns.
    • jhayward 11y ago
      Very late on this, sorry. I'm curious to see if you expect to get 7 years life on a LiFePO4 in hot states. I just measured the battery temp (at the terminal) on my truck, it was 163 ºF. Road surface temp is 155 ºF. This is quite common, everyday summer stuff here in Texas. It seems very unlikely that you can hold a LiFePO4 at 100% state of charge in a temperature environment like this and still get anywhere near 7 years of life. Are you doing something like using a 20 A-H battery, charged to 70% SOC or something, to deal with high-heat/high SOC degradation?
• Cshelton 11y ago
  So yesterday Audi/Porsche/VW announced a new v6 engine that will be used in variations across all their vehicles. Further down the line, they said that engine would include an electric drive component as well, incorporating a battery, effectively making all their cars "hybrids". This seems to be the trend, see racing tech (Formula 1, WEC, etc.). We will probably see this in all new consumer cars sometime soon. Once every car has a battery, wouldn't the standard car battery that's most common today be obsolete? At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market, which are also the cars that will electric drive before mid to low end cars. These are also the owners who will replace their cars every 3-5 years anyway. Either from a 3 year lease or the 4 year warranty is out and they want something new. I don't mean to be discouraging but, it seems your market viability, if there is any to begin with, is already limited to 5 years at the most. I do love the idea of saving 30 lbs weight, it's negligible for most of my driving in my sports coupe, but I like to feel like it's making a difference!
  • thaumaturgy 11y ago
    > Once every car has a battery, wouldn't the standard car battery that's most common today be obsolete? That day is still a long way away, and once it arrives, there will still be large numbers of classic and modern hot rods on the road. That's not a small market. > At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market The US automotive aftermarket was around $300 billion in 2013. > ...already limited to 5 years at the most. I seriously doubt that even the majority of vehicles on the road will be EVs within 5 years. And 5 years is plenty of time to develop other innovative automotive products.
  • smeyer 11y ago
    >At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market Is this really true? It sounded from the article like they're only about $50 more than a typical battery, unless I missed something. I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life and features to avoid a dead battery, even if the reduced weight doesn't matter much to them.
    • nacs 11y ago
• krapht 11y ago
  Lead acid is traditionally very forgiving with regards to temperature. How does the electrical performance of your battery vary with temperature, especially at extremely cold (-40C) and extremely hot (80C) conditions?
  • busterarm 11y ago
    Exactly what I was thinking... ...and more on that point, I drive an RX-7 and my engine puts out _extreme_ amounts of heat under the hood. a 50C top-end probably isn't enough for driving on hot days. I would go for one of these without a second thought because a) though my car is light, reducing more weight helps out loads with performance and b) these things are known to kill alternators and I'd love advance warning of when I might end up stranded without having to test the battery's volts every day. I'd love to demo one of these.
    • thrownaway2424 11y ago
      Battery relocation to the trunk is a standard mod for the gen3 rx-7, assuming you're speaking of that one.
      • busterarm 11y ago
        FC, but yeah I have a lot to do. I haven't done it yet because it's a 10AE and basically clean. Still would want a lighter battery though.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    Hey, co-founder here. It's very forgiving to temperature. Supercapacitors don't store energy using a chemical reaction, which make them a lot less finicky. On the low side, our power architecture also allows us to boost the voltage slightly if we sense that its cold outside, so we can account for the increase in resistance. It's also still go superior lifetime at high temps as well.
    • chillingeffect 11y ago
• savrajsingh 11y ago
  I've been looking at ultracaps on digikey for a while, for just this application. Looks like a great implementation, please sign me up for the beta!
• hughes 11y ago
  Can this battery be used to jump another (traditional or Ohm) battery when required?
  • mankyd 11y ago
    Usually, when jumping another car, you are supposed to leave the car running, getting power off the alternator rather than the battery.
    • X-Istence 11y ago
      You don't get the massive amount of power required for the starter from the alternator. You leave your car on so that in case the other car is severely broken or zaps all the remaining juice in your car's battery you don't end up stranded.
      • prutschman 11y ago
        You don't need to; I used to have a really crummy set of jumper cables that wouldn't actually pass enough power to start my car with the battery dead. I'd have to stay connected to the other car long enough to let its alternator charge my battery enough to start.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    Hey! One of the founders here, Like another poster said, you should have your car running when jumping another car, but yes, Ohm can be used to jump another car (and vice versa).
    • bagels 11y ago
      How long will the battery keep charged on the shelf, or in an occasional use car?
      • conjecTech 11y ago
        On a shelf: upwards of 6 months. In a car: around a month if it's powering all the electronics. We also intend to have a switch that can electrically disconnect the battery. It would stop powering everything, but it would also allow you to store it in the car for the same 6+ months, switch it back on, and still start the engine.
• msandford 11y ago
  How does it handle a car that's iffy on starting? It's probably not hard to get something that'll crank a starter for a few seconds. But what happens if it needs to crank for 60 seconds over a 90 second window? I've got a 2006 Forester with a manual. I'll occasionally stall it backing out of a parking spot, so I'll have to start it again. For some reason it's much more difficult to start in between cold and warmed up, so it'll take several seconds of cranking to fire back up. If I were to stall it again trying to get going, would I then be in trouble? It doesn't happen often, perhaps only once a month. But if I'm stuck there for 30 seconds while the LiFe batteries recharge the supercap I'm not going to be happy.
  • digitalneal 11y ago
    Subaru ECU cold start logic is, well, questionable at best. As a side note, if your car is stalling that frequently, I would suggest adjusting the clutch engagement position. Sounds like its either very low or way too high.
    • msandford 11y ago
      It's definitely driver error and not the car's fault. I try not to rev too hard and slip too long, and it occasionally results in a stall. I'm spoiled from having driven a number of very powerful manuals. Big engines mean a lot of rotating mass which means that no revving is needed, just pop the clutch and go. That extra rotating mass also means that the ECU has more time to notice the drop in RPM and give it a little extra gas to bring idle back up. Not so in the Subaru. It's a very light engine and seemingly a pretty light flywheel too.
      • jaytaylor 11y ago
        Just out of curiosity- Do you recall the approximate weight of flywheels in referenced "big powerful manuals"? IIRC the Subaru flywheels for the Impreza weigh in at about 20 lbs - and this is likely similar or identical to what is used in the Foresters.
        • 11y ago
• allworknoplay 11y ago
  This is cool. Rarely in such established industries do people step back and reconsider the actual product requirements in such a practical way. Car batteries serve two TOTALLY distinct purposes (starting engine and running electronics), and this is a great solution for those. I'd be worried about the impact of rapidly increasing electrification (including hybrids) on the high end market (the most likely consumers for this), but it's such a huge market at present that it probably doesn't matter. Kudos, guys.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    Thanks for the kind words! Electrification is definitely happening, but for now there's plenty of market to go around. In the end we think the tech we are creating will be more an enabler of electrification rather than its victim. :)
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• sandworm101 11y ago
  (1) Those nasty things inside car batteries are easily recycled and in fact are recycled more often than not (like 95%+) (2) Car batteries do not last only 3-4 years as per the OP. Car batteries can last decades. There are many variables, but the car in my battery is far older than 4 years. (lol) (3) Replacing an easily-recyclable product with a less-recyclable one is no step forwards. (4) XX addressed by OP comment, see below XX This thing is a capacitor? What's the voltage potential in there? Any device with internals significantly beyond that may be a serious fire risk in a crash.. (5) Car batteries are not needlessly heavy, nor are they a stock size. Manufacturers do care about performance. If they thought the car could do with lighter battery they would use one. Have some respect for the thought behind stock engineering before replacing it. (6) Shutting down the voltage supply can be a real pain. A "dead" battery generally still has enough juice to keep electronics ticking over. Cutting it completely is not like turning off a switch. It often means resetting/rebooting stuff once the voltage is restored. For some (BMW) it can even mean a trip to the dealership for a special new battery ritual. http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1355106-Why-can-t-I-replace-my-own-battery http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1355106-Why...
  • morcheeba 11y ago
    I don't get your (4). It's a capacitor + lithium battery. It's got to be nominally 12 volts, or else it wouldn't work in a car. Capacitors only charge to the voltage you apply -- in this case, 12v. I'm not sure if you mean voltage by "beyond that", but fire risk isn't really correlated with voltage - more with chemistry, energy, and fusing. As for (5), they clearly care about cost.
    • sandworm101 11y ago
      I was thinking about the internals. They might have components with higher potentials that are then regulated down to 12v. In a crash, those could be a source of high-voltage shorts that might be a source of ignition.
      • conjecTech 11y ago
• sokoloff 11y ago
  > Oh, and its lifespan (7 years) is about twice that of a lead-acid battery (3-4 years). I live in Cambridge, MA (so we get winters) and I can't remember the last time I've had a regularly driven car's battery fail in under 7 years.
  • bluehawk 11y ago
    In Arizona, you're lucky if it lasts for 2 years. Batteries don't like being in 120 degree heat all day or something.
    • carbocation 11y ago
      I've lived in both Cambridge, MA and Scottsdale, AZ, and my batteries routinely die in under 2 years. I think it's mostly a function of my (infrequent) driving habits.
      • function_seven 11y ago
        > I think it's mostly a function of my (infrequent) driving habits. Yup. I bought a Battery Tender[1] for my infrequently-used vehicles and now the batteries last indefinitely[2] [1] http://amzn.com/B000CITK8S http://amzn.com/B000CITK8S [2] :) Based on the fact that I haven't had to replace them yet after 5 years.
      • notJim 11y ago
        I grew up in AZ, and I don't remember this being the case, so it's probably your driving habits.
      • mzs 11y ago
        Don't crank the terminals onto the posts that hard, you could be cracking the case very slightly.
  • Eiriksmal 11y ago
    I've never figured out why some batteries last and others don't. My '05 6MT V6 sedan still had its OEM battery when the starter finally refused to turn over in 2013. My wife's '07 5AT I4 sedan just got its fourth battery this month. My car grew up in central Kentucky, hers spent its first 3 years in New England before also moving to ol' Kintuck.
• trhway 11y ago
  it is only 10Ah! Comparing that to 45Ah+ typical car battery is like that MongoDB write performance comparison without actual writing to disk :) Such small capacity would work only for perfectly starting engine. Any issues and you're out of capacity. Cranking an engine requires hundreds of Amperes, like 500-800A. Thus each 10s of cranking burns 1.5-2.5Ah. The CCA rating of a car battery is the current the cold battery can produce during 30s. 10Ah LiPo at 30C would mean maximum 300 CCA - i don't think it would satisfy any official reqs for any passenger car around. The super capacitor produces higher current, yet for much shorter bursts. Thus again only easy starting engines on smaller cars.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    One of the things we discovered is it actually takes a lot less current and energy to start engine than we originally thought. It's rare that anyone even uses 1% of the capacity of a regular lead-acid while cranking. So we're confident 10AH is more than enough. The high capacity of most lead-acid is really just a side-effect of making a battery that can deliver high current over a reasonable lifetime.
• smithkl42 11y ago
  My car has a significant design flaw(1), in that it allows children to turn on the backseat car lights and leave them on. I've had more dead batteries in the five years I've had sentient children than I've had in the 40 years prior. This is a great idea. (1) Perhaps the design flaw is in the children.
  • ams6110 11y ago
    You have a Honda? The problem is I don't understand how the battery would shut down just lights and accessories without a) losing all your radio presets b) requiring entering the anti-theft code in the radio (risky because if you get it wrong you can brick your radio) c) still have power to know that you're trying to start the car. It seems to me this requires more than internal battery smarts but changes to the car's wiring to have separate battery connections for computer, accessory, and starter. Right now most cars have just one big post clamp for the + and - battery connections.
    • sliverstorm 11y ago
      Yeah, it's really a problem best solved at the car level. Brownout detectors shut off all but the most important systems in the car, and then shut off everything when the battery is reaching critical levels to prevent damage.
  • Kluny 11y ago
    I recommend removing the lightbulbs and providing flashlights.
  • frgewut 11y ago
    You might try installing led lights there - that might decrease power draw by a factor of 10.
• digitalneal 11y ago
  I could see this being an attractive solution for a battery to power electric turbos but not as a main battery replacement.
• bbcbasic 11y ago
  I remember watching youtube videos of a guy starting his car with just a capacitor a year ago (was it one of you guys?) and thought this idea had a lot of potential. Good on you for bringing it to market. Please be careful to not make it too 'smart'. I don't think a car battery needs to be connected to the internet of things that can be remotely hacked into :-).
  • blueintegral 11y ago
    We've been trying to avoid using the term "smart battery" for that very reason haha. We don't think people would be psyched about having a BLE connection and an app for their car battery.
• sbierwagen 11y ago
  Lithium-ion car batteries are already commercially available, though cripplingly expensive: http://www.jegs.com/p/Lithium-Pros/Lithium-Pros-12-Volt-Lithium-Batteries/1770167/10002/-1 http://www.jegs.com/p/Lithium-Pros/Lithium-Pros-12-Volt-Lith... The innovation here seems to be the capacitor bank, which lets you get away with a much smaller and cheaper lithium ion pack.
  • tmuir 11y ago
    This price has come down by 66% in just a couple of years. A company I used to work for sold these for $1500. The reason people are willing to spend this money is because these are geared toward drag racing, mainly for weight reduction. Compared to other reduction paths, $1500 to remove 30lbs is cheap. The main thing to realize though is that this is a market geared towards people who have purpose-built a car to drive for 10 seconds at a time, a couple times a weekend. Everything geared toward this market is expensive, because basic entry into the market requires a relatively large investment, and companies know that consumers are willing to spend. Its a lot like the wedding industry, in that regard. On the other hand, high margins are the only way to make money in this segment, as the entire market is less than 100,000 consumers.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    You're right. Pure lithium-ion batteries definitely are available. Besides price, one of the reasons they haven't been adopted is they don't have great performance over temperature. By using supercapacitors, we are able to make it a lot more immune to temperature. We really approached the problem from the opposite direction. We started with supercapacitors and asked ourselves how we could make a reliable system around them. Huge current surges at the levels needed for starting a car are hugely destructive for batteries. It's almost as bad as just shorting them with a wrench. We decided that capacitors were fundamentally better suited for what a car battery does.
  • Gravityloss 11y ago
    Trucks have recently started having capacitors for starting. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/03/20150325-maxwell.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/03/20150325-maxwell.htm...
• kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  >if it’s ever about to reach the point that it’ll no longer be able to start your car, it’ll just turn itself off. Your lights will fade out and the radio will go quiet Hope you don't plan on selling in the US because this behavior is going to get you sued into oblivion by the family of whoever ends up dead because the lights turned off abruptly on a vehicle with a faulty charging system.
  • logicallee 11y ago
    This could be rephrased as: "I do see a potential problem with lights turning off abruptly, for example if an accident occurs as a result it could open up the company to a lawsuit, even if it is the result of a faulty charging system." I personally wouldn't agree (do normal battery makers get sued whenever a battery dies?) but it would no longer be gratuitously negative.
  • CamperBob2 11y ago
    Modern cars behave like this already (which is a potential problem for the new battery in itself.)
• jchomali 11y ago
  This is great!
• smoyer 11y ago
  I'd love to have a lighter bank of batteries in my (small) sailing yacht but I need something that can be "deep-cycled". Getting rid of several hundred pounds of batteries would leave capacity for more stuff! I could replace the engine's starter battery with this one for a bit of weight savings ... and it's protected from the "house" circuits" by a charging diode, so there's no risk of discharge.
  • solutionviatech 11y ago
    re: batteries for sailing yachts: I've had good experience with torqeedo. [1] Their products are good albeit expensive. [1] http://www.torqeedo.com/en/products/batteries http://www.torqeedo.com/en/products/batteries
• jhallenworld 11y ago
  It would be nice if the battery had multiple outputs: for example, connect the capacitor to just the starter motor and have a second output for everything else. This way all the lights in the car would not dim during starting (why should the electronics have to deal with brown-outs?). Diodes could be used for the charging current input.
• murbard2 11y ago
  So aside from what's been said, I can get this for $200 http://www.batteryspace.com/Powerizer-LiFePO4-Battery-12V-15Ah-180Wh-30A-rate-with-PCB-and-LED.aspx http://www.batteryspace.com/Powerizer-LiFePO4-Battery-12V-15... and it has 50% more storage than what is being advertised. What's the difference? The supercapacitors?
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    Storing a lot of energy and delivering it faster are two separate problems. The batteries you linked are design to store a lot of energy, but are only rated to deliver it at 30Amps. Cranking even a medium sized sedan would take 5x that or more. Creating something that can do that reliably requires a lower energy density. LiFePO4 by itself also doesn't stand up particularly well to cold temperature. The capacitors do most of the heavy lifting involved in starting the car. Using the combination of the two also enables some other nice things like the dead battery prevention.
  • sliverstorm 11y ago
    Yes, the caps. Classically the reason we use lead-acid in cars is its tremendous power density. Here they are combining LiPo (high energy density) with caps (high power density). My truck battery pumps out 750CA for short bursts. That's about 12 horsepower. Lithium batteries can only accomplish that in large parallel banks.
• kazinator 11y ago
  > Oh, and its lifespan (7 years) is about twice that of a lead-acid battery (3-4 years). Nonsense; lead acid batteries easily last 5 years or more. Since the article lowballs the life of a lead-acid battery, it's reasonable to suspect that it's likewise overestimating the seven year life of this new battery, which would make them about equal. > They’re filled with garbage materials that are terrible for the planet. More FUD. The garbage materials are sealed, and batteries get recycled. Places that sell you the new one take back the old one, generally. Battery places are not going to know what to do with this new-fangled thing. So it's down to the 6 pounds and gas mileage. Okay, realistically, let's talk about the environment now: this is for an internal-combustion-engine car that spews several tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. If you want to save the planet, ride a bicycle. Still, this could make in excess of a one percent difference in fuel economy, which is significant, and will easily more than pay for the battery. Say you spend 200 bucks on fuel per month. Get 3 of those back thanks to the 6 pound battery, that's 36 over 12 months. If it holds up for 10 years, 360 saved. Easier on the lower back is a plus. For many people, this is a do not care; only the DIY battery swappers who do it in the parking lot will be somewhat relieved, as well as the people who swap batteries as part of their work duties. Poor capacity is a minus. People don't just run the stereo while parked; sometimes they have the headlights on or use other accessories, not always ones built-into the car. On a warm day you might listen to the stereo, and have a fan circulating the air. How about emergencies? If you're stranded somewhere with a dead engine, it's better to have more battery capacity than less for whatever. Flashing your lights at another car, say. > They die without warning That is not entirely true: there are in fact warning signs which, combined with age (being say > 5 years) add up to "change the battery". A lead-acid batter that has given you five warnings will then die without an additional warning, if five warnings is all which that battery has been blessed with. Those who don't recognize the warnings of course curse the battery for dying without a warning. Who is to say this battery won't exhibit sudden failure modes? Suppose the business takes off and millions of these that are actually sold to consumers are made in sweatshops overseas, with all kinds of corners cut to save costs. Will those units still hold up? Let's compare prototype to prototype, shipping product on the shelves with shipping product on the shelves.
  • fredkbloggs 11y ago
• johnlarry 11y ago
  http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/08/android-applications-on-windows-mobile.html?m=1 http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/08/android-applications-...
• gcb0 11y ago
  if it is so smaller inside the big case, why not pack twice the caps and have double the running time/service life?
  • JshWright 11y ago
    I suspect the limiting factor is cost.
    • blueintegral 11y ago
      Yeah, the supercaps are our most expensive BOM item.
  • CamperBob2 11y ago
    The capacitors are only there to crank the engine. Once there's enough capacity to do that, there's no upside to adding more caps.
• dmitrygr 11y ago
  1. put this into a modern car 2. do not drive for a month 3. car's slow but steady draw drains battery to where it self shuts off 4. attempt to enter car 5. realize that it is a modern car, and without electricity from the battery you cannot even open the door 6. ... 7. profit?
  • blueintegral 11y ago
    You should get a bit longer than just a month of disuse before it shuts itself off. Are there modern cars that don't even let you use the key to open the door? I know Tesla has the thing where the handle is flush with the door, but are other cars doing that too now?
    • mycelium 11y ago
      I have a 2015 VW Golf that has no keyed entry, just the fob buttons.
      • blueintegral 11y ago
        Maybe it's hidden like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OECOoNYZXmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OECOoNYZXmk
• sliverstorm 11y ago
  One challenge in going after the enthusiast market is going to be, the enthusiast market already has options. Back when I drove a fast sporty little car, I got one of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002ILK6I http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002ILK6I $100, 4 pounds. Proven technology. I can buy it today. Half the cost, 60% more capacity, and 2/3 the weight of this "Ohm". Smaller too, from the looks of the "Ohm". I'm not trying to rag on you guys, but I can't figure out why I would pick the "Ohm", unless maybe it's got a really rippin' CCA. Edit: Amazon is incorrect, ODYSSEY quotes the battery as 15.4lbs: http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc680-p http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc680-p To compare like for like, we would look here: http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc310-p?pp=12 http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc310-p?pp=12 8Ah, 5.9lbs, tiny, $163 on Amazon. I hope you can beat it on CCA.
  • fredkbloggs 11y ago
    You would choose the Ohm because Ohm is a startup, and... startups! YEAH! Tech! Oh yeah! And stuff... Like so much else out there, they want you to think it's better when in reality it's at best a niche offering that's going to be worse for most people. But there are a lot of people out there who are happy to spend 2x or 5x or even 10x on something that a "fellow startup" is making, just because it's novel or made by another small company, regardless of its actual merit. As they've said forever, a fool and his money are soon parted.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    There are other lightweight batteries out there, but they generally aren't suitable for daily use for one reason or another. The usual sacrifices are either lifetime or performance over temperature. The battery you linked is only warrantied for 2 years and likely wouldn't work south of freezing - not quite what you'd expect for the price tag. We think we can already beat them on value prop, but with a little bit more work, we think we'll be able to get them cheaper than other lightweight solutions and eventually price competitive with a normal lead-acid.
    • sliverstorm 11y ago
      It does list itself as "extreme temperature tolerant" and suitable for snowmobiles. And to be honest, a 2 year warranty from a long-established company is worth more to me than a 7-year warranty from a company founded this year that could be gone next year, no offense. Just trying to share some of the challenges you face.
• oppositelock 11y ago
  Modern cars with keyless entry typically draw ~50mA@12V when "off", this power is used to power the receiver, keep ECU state for such things as learned fuel maps, blink the alarm-on indicator, etc. 45Ah capacity gets you a bit over a month to drain down the battery, while 10Ah gets you a bit over a week. This isn't good, you'd have to keep it on a battery tender if you're not driving the car for just a week. I can also see how one would implement a low voltage cutoff to prevent running down the battery, but then, how in the world do you automatically re-engage the battery to allow starting the car? You've shut off the power to the whole car, so you no longer have a circuit to monitor. If you're allowing some amount of current to trickle out, you must, by definition, be allowing the voltage to sag, which can run the ECU or alarm out of spec, causing havoc. As the battery designer, your only input to make these decisions is the resistance of the car's electrical system. The only thing you control is your own internal resistance.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    Co-founder here: The capacity isn't set in stone. You might be right, if we need to increase it we can - or just offer a couple different options, but so far we haven't seen any issues and a number of our beta users are only using their cars once every few weeks. The capacity quoted on lead-acid is also a bit deceptive. There amount of current you can draw drops pretty heavily with state-of-charge. You might have trouble starting your car even with 50% of charge left. So if Ohm doesn't work for you, you'd likely be having trouble with a lead-acid as well. As far as the low-voltage cutout - it's definitely not trivial, but it's been done in other applications previously. I'd be a bit ashamed if you were able to come up with a solution of the cuff though, it took us a lot of work to get it working! It does involve some energy injection, but not enough to cause problems.
    • oppositelock 11y ago
      I can speculate, though :) You can periodically pulse the circuit at a low voltage and figure out the resistance, and if the voltage is low enough, you won't power anything up. When the ignition goes into the ON position, you've got a huge drop in resistance as fuel pump, and other necessary electronics get enabled. A sudden drop in resistance is a good signal that you should turn the power back on. This will not work with some more recent electronic systems, but should work great for most mechanical ones. Pretty sure you haven't solved things like the interaction with a BMW battery monitoring computer, for example, and those cars will probably reject your battery with some crazy error after a while. It's good that you've got space for more reserve capacity, parasitic drag is getting higher as cars get more fancy. For example, radiator fans and turbo oil circulators can run for quite a while after the engine is off. Your super capacitor design is elegant - you can charge the supercap off the battery slowly, even at low state of charge where its voltage would sag too low for the starter relay if you were directly using the battery. I have a little car which I race and weight matters, so I've been using a ~12Ah LiFePO4 home-made battery for a while (A123 cells). This is a very durable little battery chemistry. No fancy super-caps, though, I just keep mine topped off and starting the car puts the battery cells close to their maximum discharge current. I wish you guys the best of luck. Lead acids are pointless with modern battery technology.
• aidenn0 11y ago
  I've prototyped similar with just 7 maxwell caps in series wired in parallel with a lead-acid battery. The caps can start an engine entirely on their own, and the lead-acid maintains the voltage when off. It works fairly well. I think someone already sells a device to work like that for commercial tractors, and I was wondering when someone more interested in starting a company than I am would realize you could have a tiny battery plus EDLCs for a car.
• itg 11y ago
  Wouldn't this need to get DOT approval? Also looking at the replies from the founder, it looks like there hasn't been much actual safety testing done yet.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    We've been asked this a few times, and from everything we've been able to find. DOT approval doesn't apply to starting batteries. There are two different things people generally refer to when they mention. 1) Transporting lithium batteries above a certain size requires an approval. For this one, the battery we use is below the levels they regulate. 2) there are also approvals you have to get for electric vehicle batteries which primarily stipulates a maximum amount of volume of electrolyte that it can spill in the case of it being destroyed in a crash, which doesn't apply to us at all. If we're wrong, and there is some regulation that does apply to us, we'd be more than happy to know about it. Please link me to it. As far as testing, we've been driving on it ourselves for 5 months now. We have a cycle and temperature testing setup in our shop. We will do all of the testing we need to before we ship to anyone. Our earliest customers are likely to be the people in the world closest to us. We won't give you anything we wouldn't feel comfortable with them using.
• curiousjorge 11y ago
  so another inaccurate and unscientific claims that investors love throwing their money at because it's a startup. Techcrunch is like the tabloids for questionable startups and it's really hurt the perceived quality. I've built a filter mechanism for TC since a few years ago when they just became a dvertising platform rather than a serious journalism
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    What claims do you find dubious? I'd be more than happy to try to provide some support for them.
• gscott 11y ago
  Recently my wife's car batter died, end of life. When a new battery was put in it the car ran poorly. Apparently when the battery dies something in the car resets and the car "figures" out the settings again and runs rough at idle. We called a repair shop and they said to just wait a few days and it will fix itself. Which was true, runs fine now. The moral of the story is that with a new car if the battery dies, weird things happen.
  • URSpider94 11y ago
    Yup, I've experienced this.
  • facetube 11y ago
    I've experienced this too. On a year 2000 Toyota with a couple hundred thousand miles on it, battery removal literally makes the car not know how to move for 10-15 minutes. The manual says that the car adapts to "driving style" and engine age/performance; it apparently gets to relearn all of that in a hurry after a reset. TL;DR: The car wakes up with amnesia and has to discover for itself that it's old.
• bliti 11y ago
  @Founders: Any data comparing it to Optima batteries?
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    Coming in the near future! Anything in particular you want to see? I can make sure it's included.
    • bliti 11y ago
      Knowing how it compares in terms of physical durability would be useful. Not interested in your battery matching the optima, but more to see how it compares. Do you plan to offer an off road version (for cars not street legal)?
• saidajigumi 11y ago
  How does the Ohm battery handle extended cold conditions? I lived in a cold climate for a number of years in grad school, cold but not block-warmer cold. My experience was that I had to pay close attention to the cold-cranking amps rating of replacement batteries, so they'd still be able to start my car under the long-duress of winter. Likewise, I found that car batteries seemed to be consumables relative to my warm-climate experience(). () explaining the plural "batteries", above.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    It works really well in low temperatures. Supercapacitors don't store energy using a chemical reaction, which makes them a lot less finicky over a temperature range. We can also react to lower temperatures by increasing the voltage on the capacitors to a higher, but still safe, level to help compensate for the increased difficulty of cranking engines at low temperatures.
• toddkazakov 11y ago
  > With that in mind, Ohm is focusing on the performance car market first. Those are the guys that’ll rip out their passenger seats to gain a tiny performance gain on the track Give me a break. With 10 amp hours my car will probably not be able to make through a single engine start.
• seesomesense 11y ago
  LiFePO4 batteries for cars are not new. You can even buy them on Ebay right now. EV Power is just one of several companies that have been making them for years.
  • mfkp 11y ago
    I was about to say the same thing. I've had a lithium iron battery in my motorcycle for years. I personally love it (it allows me to leave the bike sitting for longer without putting it on a battery tender), and it's much lighter. Just comes at a higher cost.
• franch 11y ago
  This kind of tech has been around for about a year... http://semiaccurate.com/2014/06/30/pretec-takes-step-flash-car-batteries/ http://semiaccurate.com/2014/06/30/pretec-takes-step-flash-c...
• PeterWhittaker 11y ago
  JOOC, what is the CCA rating? I don't recall seeing it in the comments. There aren't many of us who run winches, but thems of us that do want quite a few (650 CCA is not uncommon, and some winch manufacturers recommend deep cycle batteries like the Yellowtop Optima).
  • aggie 11y ago
    Their site says '550+'. From the sound of it, this battery would not be suited to running a winch for more than a quick pull.
    • PeterWhittaker 11y ago
      That was my impression, as well.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    I'd be very interested to see what the current use on a winch is! Do you happen to be located around the bay area?
    • PeterWhittaker 11y ago
      No, Ottawa. A quick search shows that some lighter duty winches will draw 60-90A, while heavier duty winches can easily draw ~250A to ~350A. The winch I'll be installing next month as a 10,000lb pull rating. That requires a lot of power.... (Why 5T? Because my Jeep weighs a hair over 2.25T, and if it's stuck in the mud, I'll need to overcome the mud....) A winch is typically connected directly to the battery and is controlled via a relay: The control cable uses very low current to activate/deactivate a solenoid that switches the winch on/off. (It's an interesting and ironic bit of jargon: When winch owners refer to a winch's solenoids, they are referring to the control relays... ...but any winch contains at least three solenoids, one low-draw solenoid in the relay, and two high-draw solenoids in the winch itself, that is, the electromagnets that are the heart of the motor....)
      • 11y ago
• ilurkedhere 11y ago
  Car user here. I didn't know I had this problem.
  • blackbeard 11y ago
    You don't. Also car user. The battery in my Fiat is the one that was in it when I got it in 2006.
• rebootthesystem 11y ago
  A solution looking for a problem. Sorry, it isn't my intention to be less than cordial. I just don't see a problem screaming for a fix. Nobody I know is screaming about the batteries in their cars. I don't even know (or care) what batteries are in our vehicles and I am far more aware of automotive matter than the average person out there. Longevity isn't an issue. Weight? People are far more interested in losing 34 lbs of fat from their bodies than 34 lbs of battery from their cars. The former would make them very happy while the latter is completely off their radar. "It costs more but it's better" (paraphrasing). The world is littered with the carcasses of businesses who thought "better" was equivalent to "sales". I've done that before and lived to learn a few expensive lessons. This might very well be better in objective terms from a certain point of view but people are not going to hand over another $50 for something they truly don't care about. This isn't an iPhone or a Nest type product where "luxury makes me feel good" is part of the mental process. I do agree the racing community might have interest in something like this. That said, if I were building a race car I would use Lithium Polymer battery packs that deliver tremendous power at a lower volume and weight. Are there rules prohibiting this due to fire hazard issues? And yet, I could be absolutely wrong in my view.
• sakopov 11y ago
  Perhaps I am in the minority here, but in the 15 years I've owned cars I don't remember a time when I planned changing the battery. It was happens in the worst time, most frequently when I'm trying to get to work or home. So getting a new battery is always an emergency to get my car rolling so I don't get it towed or start accumulating parking tickets. Getting an eco-friendly battery is the last of my worries. I wonder how many folks out there feel the same and how this could impact a novel product like this going forward.
• venomsnake 11y ago
  > Ohm’s battery reserve comes in at 10 amp hours; Have these guys tried to start atmospheric diesel at -20 C? That capacity is absurdly low. I roll my 80 hp diesel with 7 times the capacity. I see no benefit at all - you take something reliable as hell, make it unrealiable by adding hardware and software, reduce the capacity, just to shave 20 pounds of weight of a 3000 pound car. If it was normal sized battery with some smarts - it could have been useful. But the current incarnation is - works only in the very moderate climates with mild winters.
• kseifried 11y ago
  How does this battery handle -40C weather? What about sitting at -40C for say 12 hours (not everywhere has plugins for block heaters). Currently a ~$100 winter battery will handle that no problem. I'm from Canada so this is not a hypothetical question.
  • conjecTech 11y ago
    We think we can make it work, but we don't want to promise anything before we're certain we can delivery. If you're in that kind of environment, we'd love to have you test a unit over the winter and help find out for sure. Feel free to drop me an email at hello@getohm.com.
• legulere 11y ago
  I wonder how this will play with deposit refund systems for lead acid car batteries like they exist for instance in Germany.
• teekert 11y ago
  Perhaps it is time to start using CMSs that translate units into local units as can already be done for timezones. Just a thought :)
• netcan 11y ago
  I wonder what the long game is here. High end replacement batteries for existing cars seems like a beachhead attempt rather than the real target. Apart from the environmentals (see sandworm101), are debatable and the main tradeoffs is weight vs capacity. Sports car enthusiasts seems like the most likely market. Some of these guys will drill holes into foot pedals to save grams. You'd need to look at what's available to them to see if this would sell. Comparing to average lead batteries is not much use. Anyway, this probably isn't the long game.
• walshemj 11y ago
  Is the weight/size of a battery really that important in the total mass of a car - what's the USP here.
• frgewut 11y ago
  I have always wondered whether it would be possible to remove alternator from ICE cars and substitute it with a chargeable battery.