Greetings,
After selling our pop up camper in 2013, our family is blissfully back in the throws of car camping, using our Tacoma as our primary camping rig with our massive small village sized REI Tent. Life is good.
With our electronic needs such as computers (my mobile office) not to mention our great Engel fridge, I was looking into alternate battery power. Tried the Goal Zero Yeti 400 and it was far from adequate.
I then started looking at the dual battery systems which seemed to be a tried and true method, however now I feel there is a new option out there with Lithium Ion batteries from Smart Battery and wanted to see if anyone has had experience. I've attached their link.
http://www.lithiumion-batteries.com/index.php
What makes this battery option very compelling is that they seem drop in ready, are built strong (they provide batteries for military Humvees), are very light relative to lead acid (28 pounds for 100 AH), have cold cranking power that rivals Optima/Diehard, etc. But the killer feature is the 3000-5000 discharge and recharge cycles compared to perhaps a couple hundred for a traditional lead acid.
The downside to these batteries is the price. $1000 for 80 AH and $1200 for 100 AH, however when I compare this to a dual battery setup and the fact that I likely will never need to replace this battery, makes me wonder why it wouldn't be a better way to go for basic auxiliary needs like fridge and inverter (DC to AC, ETC).
I've talked to Smart Battery the company now several times. They even suggest better/easier engine starting due to no loss of voltage plus a much faster recharge time due to zero resistance (1% resistance?), which makes it work better with any time of solar or batter charge system. Also, built in technology prevents overcharge and over draining so we wouldn't even need to spend money on charging regulators.
What am I missing other than lack of real world experience from these batteries? They seem like a very simple option over that of dual systems.
Thanks,
Brian
After selling our pop up camper in 2013, our family is blissfully back in the throws of car camping, using our Tacoma as our primary camping rig with our massive small village sized REI Tent. Life is good.
With our electronic needs such as computers (my mobile office) not to mention our great Engel fridge, I was looking into alternate battery power. Tried the Goal Zero Yeti 400 and it was far from adequate.
I then started looking at the dual battery systems which seemed to be a tried and true method, however now I feel there is a new option out there with Lithium Ion batteries from Smart Battery and wanted to see if anyone has had experience. I've attached their link.
http://www.lithiumion-batteries.com/index.php
What makes this battery option very compelling is that they seem drop in ready, are built strong (they provide batteries for military Humvees), are very light relative to lead acid (28 pounds for 100 AH), have cold cranking power that rivals Optima/Diehard, etc. But the killer feature is the 3000-5000 discharge and recharge cycles compared to perhaps a couple hundred for a traditional lead acid.
The downside to these batteries is the price. $1000 for 80 AH and $1200 for 100 AH, however when I compare this to a dual battery setup and the fact that I likely will never need to replace this battery, makes me wonder why it wouldn't be a better way to go for basic auxiliary needs like fridge and inverter (DC to AC, ETC).
I've talked to Smart Battery the company now several times. They even suggest better/easier engine starting due to no loss of voltage plus a much faster recharge time due to zero resistance (1% resistance?), which makes it work better with any time of solar or batter charge system. Also, built in technology prevents overcharge and over draining so we wouldn't even need to spend money on charging regulators.
What am I missing other than lack of real world experience from these batteries? They seem like a very simple option over that of dual systems.
Thanks,
Brian
