Look at this way. Compared to other batteries, say watch batteries, alkaline, NiMh, LiIon, the car batteries are dirt cheap.
How much power and capacity will you get with $75 worth of other batteries even if you ware to find the best deal on them?
Let us suppose you rob Eneloop factory and have unlimited supply of NiMh AA cells. 1.2V 2000mAh each;
You need 10 of them in series to get to 12V; So you have now 12V 2Ah unit. To get 80AH (typical car battery), you will need 40 of those units hooked up in parallel.
So you will need 400 Eneloops. At $1.50/Eneloop, you are talking $600 just for the cost of the cells!
We can do similar calculation with LiIon 18600 cells and it is never going to be as cheap as the lead acid battery.
Would you rather have lead acid battery industry go to China or are you willing to pay US prices on it for the industry to stay in North America. You can not have both.
How much power and capacity will you get with $75 worth of other batteries even if you ware to find the best deal on them?
Let us suppose you rob Eneloop factory and have unlimited supply of NiMh AA cells. 1.2V 2000mAh each;
You need 10 of them in series to get to 12V; So you have now 12V 2Ah unit. To get 80AH (typical car battery), you will need 40 of those units hooked up in parallel.
So you will need 400 Eneloops. At $1.50/Eneloop, you are talking $600 just for the cost of the cells!
We can do similar calculation with LiIon 18600 cells and it is never going to be as cheap as the lead acid battery.
Would you rather have lead acid battery industry go to China or are you willing to pay US prices on it for the industry to stay in North America. You can not have both.
