Replacement Battery Prices

[jhruk]

Seeing some recent talk of replacement battery prices I thought it might be interesting to do a comparison - so I’ve trawled through a few websites and come up with the following table. It’s not intended to be definitive, just a snapshot of advertised prices I could find in an hour. The last column is the one for comparisons as it shows the price per 100watt-hours.

Not surprisingly a lot of websites do not quote replacement prices at all, some do not quote a capacity and others make them hard to find. The capacities are those claimed on the websites - they haven’t been tested! Most of them are some form Lithium and I’ve stated where they are otherwise. Carriage is included in some prices but not others, it was sometimes difficult to separate.

Of course this is only a comparison of initial cost; overall cost will depend on how much use you get before scrappage, which will depend on how well the battery lasts for your particular usage.

I’m sure everyone will have their own views, but for lithium those from Kudos and Juicy Bike do look very competitive to me. For the occasional user SLAs still can’t be beaten - providing you can put up with the weight that is.

 

[NRG]

Good work! Well done for compiling all that data, its really useful.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Thanks for some very good and useful work. Another place where a lot of us get batteries from is BMSbattery.com, but you can't find the shipping charge without making an account and working your way through the checkout procedure. Looking at the list, I would say that their prices are extremely competitive.

Their 15aH 36v rack fitting battery is £254 inc shipping for 540wh - approx. £47 for 100wH unless you're unlucky enough to get caught for duty, which seems to be happening more now.

 

[thingaby]

Good job. Thank you.

 

[andyh2]

That's very helpful. Do we have warranty information to add to that?

 

[shemozzle999]

For another BMSBattery battery similar to d8veh's entry read:

Their 15aH, 24v "frog" seatpost mounted battery is £169 inc. shipping for 360wh excluding duty - approx. £47 for 100wH

almost an identical price.

 

[jhruk]

For another BMSBattery battery similar to d8veh's entry read:

Their 15aH, 24v "frog" seatpost mounted battery is £169 inc. shipping for 360wh excluding duty - approx. £47 for 100wH

almost an identical price.

I've now added the two BMS batteries from you & d8veh - thanks. I hadn't forgotten them - just rather time consuming to get an inclusive price.

 

[flecc]

Excellent job jhruk, many are going to find this very useful. Although prices change over time, the relative positions of suppliers tends not to, so the chart will be useful for a very long time.

Thank you.

 

[cwah]

Hey,

I'm glad a benchmark is being done on batteries.Thankssss I think what is missing or could be added to this benchmark is the number of lifecycles (because it doesn't matter how good it is if it doesn't last) and Kg/wh (to choose the lightest pack).

For the lipo we have this:
Zippy Flymax 18.5V8AH :
Battery price: £47
£/100wh: £32
Kg/100wh: 0.71 => Very important indicator if you're looking for the lightest battery
N° of lifecycle: 500



The winforce lipo 22.2V5.2AH
Battery price: £30.59
£/100wh: £26
Kg/100wh: 0.68
N° of lifecycle: Not confirmed yet. Probably less than 500 for this price.



Lipo are almost 2 times cheaper, but they have very short number of lifecycles. Lifepo4 from Kudos rated at 1500+ lifecycle can last 3 times longer. So they are better deal on long term use.

SLA are the cheapest, but if we look at kg/100wh, I bet it's going to hit the roof and wouldn't worth it.

 

[flecc]

These you quote are not in any way comparable though cwah.

The voltages are non-standard, they do have any BMS integrated, or any casing specific to any e-bike.

They have their uses, but are not appropriate to this comparison chart.

 

[cwah]

Ok. I didn't know.

I was actually planning to use my 2 zippy flymax in parallel to connect it to my actual ebike.

Voltage would be 18.5*2 = 37V.

Would that still work with my bike? It's now 36V. But would voltage difference kill a controller?

 

[flecc]

That will work fine cwah. However, with no Battery Management System included and the need to provide casing and connections, it doesn't compare to the batteries made for specific e-bikes.

My point therefore is that they cannot be compared for price etc, so don't really have a place in the same chart. Ideally we need three comparison charts. One for e-bike specific batteries which would help in choosing an e-bike to buy, one for substitute e-bike batteries complete with BMS/charger etc like those supplied by Ping and BMSbattery, and one for home constructor packs like the one's you've posted about.

 

[Biged]

Thanks a lot for that, i know where i will be going for my Panasonic 10ah (i don't need more than that) when mines had it, nice £28 saving at On Bike.

 

[flecc]

Regarding SLA value, it's important to realise the effect of Peukert's law. In high discharge usage as in our e-bikes, SLA batteries will only give up around half their content or a little more. This means a 12 Ah battery will only have effectively about 6 or 7 Ah in most e-bike usage, and never anywhere near the nominal 12 Ah.

Obviously this drastically changes the £/100Wh figure in the chart. For example, the ebay Ritar 12 Ah SLAs shown as £15.74 per 100Wh is in reality more like £28 to £31 per 100Wh for comparison with most bike specific lithium batteries.

 

[Cyclezee]

Well done JHRUK,

Although you have listed eZee batteries as sold by OnBike, Cylezee sell FP (flat pack type) eZee batteries as used with conversion kits and prices can be on our website here Shop - Cyclezee Ltd
VP (vertical pack type) as fitted to eZee bikes will be also be available from January.

Regards,

 

[mike killay]

My main problem with batteries is distinguishing the various 'Lithium' types, and their varying characteristics.

 

[flecc]

My main problem with batteries is distinguishing the various 'Lithium' types, and their varying characteristics.

With today's batteries it's only really necessary to think of two types Mike, LiFePO4 (aka lithium iron phosphate), and all the others.

LiFePO4 has a potentially longer life, generally in the range of 1000 to 2000 charges or about 3 to 4 years, depending on usage and motor power (current drain rate).

The others, referred to as li-ion, li-polymer etc don't last as long generally, number of charges generally in the range 500 to 1000 or around 2 to 3 years with the best ones, again depending on usage and motor power.

 

[Scottyf]

I'm with Flecc on the Lipo. It really doesn't have a place. For that it would be comparing cell by cell.
Or bare 18650 cells.

Very good chart though and gives out some interesting figures that are useful.
More suprised at the ping batteries being quite good value. Although they also don't come hardcased from what I read??

 

[mike killay]

I'm with Flecc on the Lipo. It really doesn't have a place. For that it would be comparing cell by cell.
Or bare 18650 cells.

Very good chart though and gives out some interesting figures that are useful.
More suprised at the ping batteries being quite good value. Although they also don't come hardcased from what I read??

Which one is a LiPo?

 

[flecc]

Which one is a LiPo?

The ones cwah referred to in this post.

They are lithium polymer and rank among "others" in my post above. Unfortunately some of these packs made for other uses as in models and tools are LiFePO4 which can confuse matters, but not in this instance.

Basically the two types come down to the cathode used. LiFePO4 use an iron based cathode as the lithium iron phosphate name indicates, while all the others use a manganese cathode or a compound one of several materials with manganese still an important element.