I have a 144-volt 1998 Ford Ranger that I'm converting from lead to lithium. 18 months ago the 24 Interstate 6-volt batteries in it cost just over $3400. The previous pack--also Interstate because they're just down the road--lasted 5 years and 15000 miles.
The replacement pack of 45 CALB CA100's cost slightly over $5400. I think that even though they are less than half the Ah capacity that I will have equal or greater range because of being able to use more of that capacity and because the truck will be 1300 pounds lighter. I'll be spending less on electricity too. Currently the truck uses 350Wh/mi and I believe that will drop to 250. I'm also expecting much better cold weather performance and that they will last much longer than 5 years. Oh yeah and I don't have to water them. Those advantage would make lithium a no-brainer to me in a new conversion. I wouldn't even consider lead any more. In this case the decision was a little harder. I wanted to convert to lithium but was planning to wait a year. The current pack is working great and I'm driving the truck often. But winter is coming. The decider was actually Tesla. I bought a small lot of Tesla stock at $25 a couple years ago. The recent explosion in the stock price let me afford to do the conversion now. Full disclosure is that the conversion is actually costing slightly over $8000 because in addition to the cells I needed a new charger, interconnects, some new instrumentation, and battery boxes. Obviously not inexpensive now, but I think I will save a fair amount of money over the next decade. --Rick On 10/03/2013 03:23 AM, Martin WINLOW wrote: > Hi Peter, > > Would you be prepared to tell us all what that 3.5 years of lead cost? Be > honest, now! > > MW > > > On 2 Oct 2013, at 16:10, SLPinfo.org wrote: > >> Sam, >> >> The range would be quite different because 6 volt batts have greater >> Amp-Hour (AH) capacity than 12 volt. Typical 6v golf cart batts hold >> 200-220 AH while most 12v batts only hold 100-120 AH. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
