Lithium Batteries (lifepo4) battery woes – Anyone else?

Steve Root wrote:

25,000 brands of lithium battery on the market right now.

There’s only 25000 different stickers

Charger and battery en route.

I’ll report back with my findings once I get it rigged up and use it a few times

The big test is in 4 or 5 years. Hopefully they work well for a long time. I am such a you get what you pay for kind of guy from trying cheap products over the last 45 years, only to find it isn’t worth a crap. I am so jaded I can’t change my view. This may be the one case where a cheap battery will perform well enough for me to say, maybe I should have bought them instead.

I agree that buying cheaper lithium batteries is a gamble. Warranties and entire “companies” may be obsolete in a few years. However, once you do the Math the gamble isn’t that crazy.

I ordered a 24v 100ah LiTime battery for ~$450. The Dakota Lithium applicable battery is ~$1500-1600.

I am willing to gamble that the LiTime battery lasts me for a minimum of 1/3 of the time the Dakota Lithium one would, thus resulting in money saved. If it lasts for nearly as long, there’s a potential to save $1000 on that one 24v battery.

mojogunter wrote:

The big test is in 4 or 5 years. Hopefully they work well for a long time. I am such a you get what you pay for kind of guy from trying cheap products over the last 45 years, only to find it isn’t worth a crap. I am so jaded I can’t change my view. This may be the one case where a cheap battery will perform well enough for me to say, maybe I should have bought them instead.

Even if the litimes stay good for 3 to 4 seasons then it’s well worth the money. And well worth the money savings then not going with a premium brand who has no issues charging the customer lots of extra money.
In fact, I know lots of guys who run the litimes and I am yet to hear of a issue, compare that to Dakota and I hear of lots of issues.

I agree about the Dakota’s. I talked a friend out of even looking at them. Too many reports of the customer support being bad if you do end up having an issue. I told him about the Li Time’s and that he maybe should try them. Better him to try them than me.