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You're right! Lead acid car batteries are one of the great recycling success stories. What's interesting is that the volume of lead acid car batteries in the wo

You're right! Lead acid car batteries are one of the great recycling success stories. What's interesting is that the volume of lead acid car batteries in the world is so high, that even at that high recycling rate, that still leaves 24 million pounds of lead each year from car batteries that don't get recycled. There's also been some problems recently with lead recycling plants contaminating the environment [1]. You're also right that it's more complicated to recycle lead than lithium batteries, but a recycling process does exist, and it's getting better thanks to the proliferation of lithium batteries in electric cars. It's actually got 6 capacitors in series (2.7V each). We don't charge them all the way up to 2.7V, so it's normally at about 13V on the terminals. We are super paranoid about safety. The EDLC caps we picked aren't a fire risk, since it's just carbon and a few mL of electrolyte. You're probably thinking of what electrolytic caps do when you reverse bias them, but EDLC caps are much nicer. The worst they'll do is vent the electrolyte, not explode. LiFePO4 batteries are also really stable and are used in electric vehicles all the time. [1]: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/07/08/lead-contamination-near-exide-plant-may-be-worse-than-previously-thought/ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/07/08/lead-contamination...

CamperBob2 11y ago
Some thoughts: The price point is impressive if you can sell at only ~$50 more than a standard lead-acid battery. If pressed to find a flaw, I think the biggest is one you've already identified: There’s one: you can’t run your lights and/or stereo as long with your engine turned off. Ohm’s battery reserve comes in at 10 amp hours; most lead-acid car batteries come in at about 45 amp hours. If you can run your stereo with your engine off for three hours on your current battery, you’d be able to run it on Ohm for less than an hour. Nobody with a modern car or SUV is going to get three hours' runtime for their accessory equipment. With the original equipment (AGM lead acid, 70 AH/450 CCA) battery in my two-seat passenger car, I'm lucky to get 15 minutes' worth of stereo/nav/etc. operation with the ignition off. There's no conceivable way that 10 AH is enough for this application. The more "luxurious" the car, and the newer it is, the worse this problem will be. Meanwhile, LiFePO4 battery cost will probably go in the opposite direction, leaving room for competitors to offer more power for less money. So I'd reconsider the size of the LiFePO4 battery, even if it makes the product cost a bit more. You need those high-end buyers. You're not going to sell these to Joe Sixpack for installation in his '98 F-150 pickup. And yes, your marketing materials are grossly exaggerating both the environmental problems with lead-acid batteries and their typical service life. There is clearly a global regulatory jihad against lead in all of its forms and uses, though, so you do have that going for you. Edit: Don't forget that auto stop/start is growing in popularity as well. I think it's actually mandatory in some (European?) markets. OEMs are moving toward "smarter" (read: DRM-locked) batteries to handle these additional requirements. I wonder if a better business model might be to offer recycling/rebuilding services that swap out lead plates for LiFePO4/supercap hardware in existing batteries?
- heywire 11y ago
  >Nobody with a modern car or SUV is going to get three hours' runtime for their accessory equipment. Really? I've left the satellite radio playing for hours in my 2011 Hyundai Sonata at moderate volume with no hint of problem starting my car afterwards. It has the premium sound system (including subwoofer) and navigation.
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    There are always going to be anecdotes to the contrary, but the trend is pretty clearly in the opposite direction. Usually what happens in my case is I forget to turn the headlights from 'Auto' to 'Off.' But even with the lights and fans off I don't tend to see more than 20-30 minutes of operation at most. The car's version of HAL 9000 tries to be conservative and shut things down as soon as the battery voltage goes below about 11.9.
    - micaeked 11y ago
      That's also anecdotal.
      - CamperBob2 11y ago
        No, that's a repeatable observation. There's a difference. Look, take it up with Volkswagen AG. They're the ones who designed the electrical system in the car in question. Don't shoot the messenger, but a long term business plan centered around aftermarket car batteries is going to be a challenging play, for these and other reasons.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - ars 11y ago
      Headlight != radio. The headlights can be easily 150watt. I doubt the radio uses more than 15.
sandworm101 11y ago
Glad to see you are on top of the voltage/fire thing. But I still see these things as non-recyclable in comparison to industry-standard lead-acid batteries. I can drop my current battery off at any number of garages without issue. Once this new device inevitably breaks down (anything under a hood will eventually) it seems like just more e-waste.
- blueintegral 11y ago
  Yeah, we're still figuring out the best way to handle collecting the units at the end of life, but there's already places like this that we can send them to and keep it from turning into e-waste: http://www.kinsbursky.com/ http://www.kinsbursky.com/
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    You might want to add language re battery orientation. It looks like your device doesn't care about up and down. That's a big deal for car people. They pay extra for a 'dry' battery that can be mounted in weird places and angles. And mention venting or lack thereof. That's another sticking point for people shopping for aftermarket batteries. Also, vibration testing if you have done any. Custom cars and offroad machines shake. Nobody wants a battery with internals that look like they might break loose. If you really want to sell a premium battery, create a motorcycle model. Sportbike owners are really into weight reductions and eat through batteries. It might as simple as a smaller plastic shell.
    - bri3d 11y ago
      Sportbike owners are already buying cheap LiFePO4 batteries sans capacitors in droves, so there'd have to be some kind of strong differentiation for Ohm.
      - aidenn0 11y ago
        Do LiFePO4 provide enough cranking amps for a sportbike?
aidenn0 11y ago
It will probably take a few years to get certified, but take a look at what goes for $600 as a flooded-cell battery in general aviation. The fact that you use LiFePO cells will probably help, as there is no way a LiPo would ever get approved.
- ansible 11y ago
  Wasn't there a problem at Boeing recently where LiIon batteries overheated and caught fire?
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    Yes, those were lithium cobalt IIRC. LiFePO were new technology when the 787 was designed (it's a long product cycle) and the FAA required a metal shield around the LiIon batteries. LiFePO is much less likely to enter thermal runaway, and much less explosive when it does. Overcharging them is about as bad as non lithium chemistries (it's even possible to start a fire by overcharging a lead-acid). Don't try this at home, but overcharging and shorting a LiFePO isn't nearly as catastrophic as doing so with a LiCoO or LiPo. With those chemistries you're basically relying on the battery firmware to keep the battery from exploding under those conditions.
fredkbloggs 11y ago
If your device had an equal market share, what fraction of it would be recycled? What core charge would a new buyer be expected to pay for that recycling cost?
OopsCriticality 11y ago
> that still leaves 24 million pounds of lead each year from car batteries that don't get recycled Is that actually a lot? Similar statements are made with respect to nuclear waste, but frankly, I've regarded these statements in units of mass as deliberately misleading due to nuclear waste (or lead in this case) to be uniquely dense relative to what we are accustomed to dealing with on a daily basis. Siri, via Wolfram Alpha, says that 24 million pounds of lead is about 33,900-ft3, or a cube of 32-ft a side. If correct, that doesn't feel like a lot considering this is framed as a the global lead acid car battery recycling waste.
- qq66 11y ago
  All of the mined gold in the world is a cube about 70 ft on a side. Big cubes are hard to intuitively reason about.
  - schoen 11y ago
    Lead is also pretty bad for people. From some research on Wikipedia and with GNU units, an adult can get clinically significant lead poisoning by absorbing about half a milligram of lead into their bloodstream. (You would have to eat, breathe, or touch more than that in order to get it into the blood.) If you took all of that non-recycled car battery lead waste and distributed it evenly across the whole U.S. population, you would have 6 orders of magnitude more than the absorbed dose required to give everyone in the country clinical lead poisoning. (Obviously most of that waste has no likelihood of being absorbed into someone's body, so this calculation isn't necessarily that meaningful.)
  - OopsCriticality 11y ago
    In the more familiar unit of "swimming pools", it looks like it might be around 10.
    - TylerE 11y ago
      Actually I get substantially less than that. Olympic sized pool = 164ft x 82ft x 9ft 10 inches = 132, 300ft^3. Density of lead: 709 lbs per ft^3. So a single Olympic-sized pool would weight almost 94,000,000 lbs if filled with lead. (If you really want to blow your mind, that same pool would weight almost 200 million lbs if filled with Osmium, the most dense element. Of course, that's WAY WAY more than the amount of Osmium that exists...I can't find a world wide figure but US production is only about 250 lbs per year)
mzs 11y ago
This might be an unpopular view here but I think artificially increasing core charge fee via laws could easily bring that recycling percentage to 99%. Could you imagine if you did not hand in your old battery when buying a new one it cost an extra $300 instead of $20 or so like now? A token portion of that could be used to fund state inspections of recycling facilities. The whole dismantler/recycling system in place for automobiles is really something quite impressively successful. Having so many places to pull used parts to keep other cars going lessens environmental burden multiple fold. Battery recycling is probably the biggest triumph of them all though.
- JosephRedfern 11y ago
  What if you're not replacing one?
  - hunter2_ 11y ago
    Valid concern: it means every possible application of a car battery, if the $300 fee is to be avoided, must involve purchasing a product that already contains a battery. Bad news for DIY makers that need one: they'd need to find a containing product rather than purchasing a battery alone, which might make for a market where fake containing products (to be completely discarded aside from the battery) exist to fill the gap, thus rendering the whole model broken. Is there a solution?
    - mzs 11y ago
      That's a good point. For me though I have had plenty of cars that only last a few months before I drag them to the junk yard. I've used lots of parts from them for cores to offset the cost of rebuilt parts I need to keep another of my cars going. I've also borrowed the car battery from a running car that I'm not using much for art and audio projects. Considering how much some of them had cost another $300 would not have mattered much.

CamperBob2 11y ago

Some thoughts: The price point is impressive if you can sell at only ~$50 more than a standard lead-acid battery. If pressed to find a flaw, I think the biggest is one you've already identified: There’s one: you can’t run your lights and/or stereo as long with your engine turned off. Ohm’s battery reserve comes in at 10 amp hours; most lead-acid car batteries come in at about 45 amp hours. If you can run your stereo with your engine off for three hours on your current battery, you’d be able to run it on Ohm for less than an hour. Nobody with a modern car or SUV is going to get three hours' runtime for their accessory equipment. With the original equipment (AGM lead acid, 70 AH/450 CCA) battery in my two-seat passenger car, I'm lucky to get 15 minutes' worth of stereo/nav/etc. operation with the ignition off. There's no conceivable way that 10 AH is enough for this application. The more "luxurious" the car, and the newer it is, the worse this problem will be. Meanwhile, LiFePO4 battery cost will probably go in the opposite direction, leaving room for competitors to offer more power for less money. So I'd reconsider the size of the LiFePO4 battery, even if it makes the product cost a bit more. You need those high-end buyers. You're not going to sell these to Joe Sixpack for installation in his '98 F-150 pickup. And yes, your marketing materials are grossly exaggerating both the environmental problems with lead-acid batteries and their typical service life. There is clearly a global regulatory jihad against lead in all of its forms and uses, though, so you do have that going for you. Edit: Don't forget that auto stop/start is growing in popularity as well. I think it's actually mandatory in some (European?) markets. OEMs are moving toward "smarter" (read: DRM-locked) batteries to handle these additional requirements. I wonder if a better business model might be to offer recycling/rebuilding services that swap out lead plates for LiFePO4/supercap hardware in existing batteries?

heywire 11y ago
>Nobody with a modern car or SUV is going to get three hours' runtime for their accessory equipment. Really? I've left the satellite radio playing for hours in my 2011 Hyundai Sonata at moderate volume with no hint of problem starting my car afterwards. It has the premium sound system (including subwoofer) and navigation.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  There are always going to be anecdotes to the contrary, but the trend is pretty clearly in the opposite direction. Usually what happens in my case is I forget to turn the headlights from 'Auto' to 'Off.' But even with the lights and fans off I don't tend to see more than 20-30 minutes of operation at most. The car's version of HAL 9000 tries to be conservative and shut things down as soon as the battery voltage goes below about 11.9.
  - micaeked 11y ago
    That's also anecdotal.
    - CamperBob2 11y ago
      No, that's a repeatable observation. There's a difference. Look, take it up with Volkswagen AG. They're the ones who designed the electrical system in the car in question. Don't shoot the messenger, but a long term business plan centered around aftermarket car batteries is going to be a challenging play, for these and other reasons.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - ars 11y ago
    Headlight != radio. The headlights can be easily 150watt. I doubt the radio uses more than 15.

sandworm101 11y ago

Glad to see you are on top of the voltage/fire thing. But I still see these things as non-recyclable in comparison to industry-standard lead-acid batteries. I can drop my current battery off at any number of garages without issue. Once this new device inevitably breaks down (anything under a hood will eventually) it seems like just more e-waste.

blueintegral 11y ago
Yeah, we're still figuring out the best way to handle collecting the units at the end of life, but there's already places like this that we can send them to and keep it from turning into e-waste: http://www.kinsbursky.com/ http://www.kinsbursky.com/
- sandworm101 11y ago
  You might want to add language re battery orientation. It looks like your device doesn't care about up and down. That's a big deal for car people. They pay extra for a 'dry' battery that can be mounted in weird places and angles. And mention venting or lack thereof. That's another sticking point for people shopping for aftermarket batteries. Also, vibration testing if you have done any. Custom cars and offroad machines shake. Nobody wants a battery with internals that look like they might break loose. If you really want to sell a premium battery, create a motorcycle model. Sportbike owners are really into weight reductions and eat through batteries. It might as simple as a smaller plastic shell.
  - bri3d 11y ago
    Sportbike owners are already buying cheap LiFePO4 batteries sans capacitors in droves, so there'd have to be some kind of strong differentiation for Ohm.
    - aidenn0 11y ago
      Do LiFePO4 provide enough cranking amps for a sportbike?

aidenn0 11y ago

It will probably take a few years to get certified, but take a look at what goes for $600 as a flooded-cell battery in general aviation. The fact that you use LiFePO cells will probably help, as there is no way a LiPo would ever get approved.

ansible 11y ago
Wasn't there a problem at Boeing recently where LiIon batteries overheated and caught fire?
- aidenn0 11y ago
  Yes, those were lithium cobalt IIRC. LiFePO were new technology when the 787 was designed (it's a long product cycle) and the FAA required a metal shield around the LiIon batteries. LiFePO is much less likely to enter thermal runaway, and much less explosive when it does. Overcharging them is about as bad as non lithium chemistries (it's even possible to start a fire by overcharging a lead-acid). Don't try this at home, but overcharging and shorting a LiFePO isn't nearly as catastrophic as doing so with a LiCoO or LiPo. With those chemistries you're basically relying on the battery firmware to keep the battery from exploding under those conditions.

fredkbloggs 11y ago

If your device had an equal market share, what fraction of it would be recycled? What core charge would a new buyer be expected to pay for that recycling cost?

OopsCriticality 11y ago

> that still leaves 24 million pounds of lead each year from car batteries that don't get recycled Is that actually a lot? Similar statements are made with respect to nuclear waste, but frankly, I've regarded these statements in units of mass as deliberately misleading due to nuclear waste (or lead in this case) to be uniquely dense relative to what we are accustomed to dealing with on a daily basis. Siri, via Wolfram Alpha, says that 24 million pounds of lead is about 33,900-ft3, or a cube of 32-ft a side. If correct, that doesn't feel like a lot considering this is framed as a the global lead acid car battery recycling waste.

qq66 11y ago
All of the mined gold in the world is a cube about 70 ft on a side. Big cubes are hard to intuitively reason about.
- schoen 11y ago
  Lead is also pretty bad for people. From some research on Wikipedia and with GNU units, an adult can get clinically significant lead poisoning by absorbing about half a milligram of lead into their bloodstream. (You would have to eat, breathe, or touch more than that in order to get it into the blood.) If you took all of that non-recycled car battery lead waste and distributed it evenly across the whole U.S. population, you would have 6 orders of magnitude more than the absorbed dose required to give everyone in the country clinical lead poisoning. (Obviously most of that waste has no likelihood of being absorbed into someone's body, so this calculation isn't necessarily that meaningful.)
- OopsCriticality 11y ago
  In the more familiar unit of "swimming pools", it looks like it might be around 10.
  - TylerE 11y ago
    Actually I get substantially less than that. Olympic sized pool = 164ft x 82ft x 9ft 10 inches = 132, 300ft^3. Density of lead: 709 lbs per ft^3. So a single Olympic-sized pool would weight almost 94,000,000 lbs if filled with lead. (If you really want to blow your mind, that same pool would weight almost 200 million lbs if filled with Osmium, the most dense element. Of course, that's WAY WAY more than the amount of Osmium that exists...I can't find a world wide figure but US production is only about 250 lbs per year)

mzs 11y ago

This might be an unpopular view here but I think artificially increasing core charge fee via laws could easily bring that recycling percentage to 99%. Could you imagine if you did not hand in your old battery when buying a new one it cost an extra $300 instead of $20 or so like now? A token portion of that could be used to fund state inspections of recycling facilities. The whole dismantler/recycling system in place for automobiles is really something quite impressively successful. Having so many places to pull used parts to keep other cars going lessens environmental burden multiple fold. Battery recycling is probably the biggest triumph of them all though.

JosephRedfern 11y ago
What if you're not replacing one?
- hunter2_ 11y ago
  Valid concern: it means every possible application of a car battery, if the $300 fee is to be avoided, must involve purchasing a product that already contains a battery. Bad news for DIY makers that need one: they'd need to find a containing product rather than purchasing a battery alone, which might make for a market where fake containing products (to be completely discarded aside from the battery) exist to fill the gap, thus rendering the whole model broken. Is there a solution?
  - mzs 11y ago
    That's a good point. For me though I have had plenty of cars that only last a few months before I drag them to the junk yard. I've used lots of parts from them for cores to offset the cost of rebuilt parts I need to keep another of my cars going. I've also borrowed the car battery from a running car that I'm not using much for art and audio projects. Considering how much some of them had cost another $300 would not have mattered much.