Ultrabatt lithium batteries

[FastBikeGear]

Mission critical. Ultrabatt Lithium batteries with the built in over voltage protection, short circuit, built in cell load balancing charger and anti-bricking protection they have become the first choice lithium batteries for mission critical applications where failure is not an option! They are used by several Formula 1 teams, in aeroplanes (reauires CAA certification) by many superbike and MotoGP teams, in aeroplanes, marine drones and we have even sold them for use in ride on lawn mowers (some ride on mowers are mission critical!) ....our latest customer is using one in very cool grass track kart. Not sure if this is as mission critical as an aeroplane though. Many thanks for the pic of your very cool kart Steve. (The battery is housed in the aluminum box on the left behind the drivers seat.)

A free set of FastBikeGear stickers to the first person who can identify the Superbike rider in the photo.

[jellywrestler]

A free set of FastBikeGear stickers to the first person who can identify the Superbike rider in the photo.

craig sherriffs

[FastBikeGear]

Well we think this FastBikeGear customer's ride on lawn mower might be approaching mission critical classification?

Yep that is a Ducati engine in it!

Oh and it's also fitted with one of our programmable Ignitech ignition systems (Our customer felt it might need a little power boost)

[FastBikeGear]

craig sherriffs

Nope Craig is using our radiator guards but the photo is not Craig.

[jellywrestler]

NopeCraig is using our radiator guards but the photo is not Craig.

ohh and he doesn't ride a kawasaki now i think of it, is it marcus beagley?

[Edbear]

ohh and he doesn't ride a kawasaki now i think of it, is it marcus beagley?

Craig and Marcus use Shorai batteries. Marcus is a dealer for them.

That's Nick Cole in the pic.

[FastBikeGear]

Craig and Marcus use Shorai batteries. Marcus is a dealer for them.

That's Nick Cole in the pic.

Ed Congratulations your set of FastBikeStickers is on their way.

[FastBikeGear]

ohh and he doesn't ride a kawasaki now i think of it, is it marcus beagley?

Sorry not Marcus. Marcus has been one of our Titax lever sponsored riders but he's not the rider in the photo.

[Katman]

Sorry not Marcus. Marcus has been one of our Titax lever sponsored riders but he's not the rider in the photo.

Is it Aaron Crafar?

[FastBikeGear]

Stock notice.

Just to advise guys we have fewer that 30 Ultrabatt 400 and 600 batteries in stock at the moment.

We have deliberately let our stock levels fall as we will shortly be recieving the new 3rd Generation Lithium Batteries and once these are avaliable you will understandably not want to purchase the 2nd generation batteries.

The current 2nd generartion batteries have a four function Battery Management System built into them that provides
[*]Anti-bricking protection (prevents Lithium battery's turning into expensive bricks if they are accidentally fully discharged)[*]Over voltage protection[*]Cell balancing[*]Short cirucit protection.[/LIST]


We are under the usual non disclosure terms until the formal announcement by Ultrabatt on what the new innovations are with the third generation batteries ...but I can advise that due to much larger production volumes and some new technology the pricing is going to fall dramatically and this is one of the key reasons we wish to give you a heads up so that you can make the choice whether you want to hold off ordering until we can reveal the new technology and pricing.

Depite the pricing on the new models being dramatically less expensive, we won't be discounting our existing stock because the pricing is extremely competitive already with other brands, even with earlier 1st generation lithium batteries that don't have built in BMS systems.

Current models and pricing

Ultrabatt 200's (all sold out)
Ultrabatt 400s, 728 grams, Built-in full four function BMS, 240 CCA, $289 (less than 30 left)
Ultrabatt 600s, 1100 grams, Built-in full four function BMS 360 CCA, $359 (less than 20 left)

We expect this stock will run out in the next few days and there may be a gap of a couple of weeks while we wait for the new ones to arrive.

[Edbear]

Ed Congratulations your set of FastBikeStickers is on their way.

Cool!

It wasn't difficult. I feel a bit guilty as I know Nick well and when his name is on the pic...

[jellywrestler]

Cool!

It wasn't difficult. I feel a bit guilty as I know Nick well and when his name is on the pic...

yeah I knew too, am one of his sponsors, but didn't want a sticker...

[Edbear]

yeah I knew too, am one of his sponsors, but didn't want a sticker...

Now I feel even more guilty...

[FastBikeGear]

Stock notice.

Just to advise guys we have fewer that 30 Ultrabatt 400 and 600 batteries in stock at the moment.

We have deliberately let our stock levels fall as we will shortly be recieving the new 3rd Generation Lithium Batteries and once these are avaliable you will understandably not want to purchase the 2nd generation batteries.

The current 2nd generartion batteries have a four function Battery Management System built into them that provides

1. Anti-bricking protection (prevents Lithium battery's turning into expensive bricks if they are accidentally fully discharged)
2. Over voltage protection, to prevent cells being damaged by being over charged.
3. Cell balancing.
4. Short cirucit protection.

We are under the usual non disclosure terms until the formal announcement by Ultrabatt on what the new innovations are with the third generation batteries ...but I can advise that due to much larger production volumes and some new technology the pricing is going to fall dramatically and this is one of the key reasons we wish to give you a heads up so that you can make the choice whether you want to hold off ordering until we can reveal the new technology and pricing.

Depite the pricing on the new models being dramatically less expensive, we won't be discounting our existing stock because the pricing is extremely competitive already with other brands, even with earlier 1st generation lithium batteries that don't have built in BMS systems.

Current models and pricing

Ultrabatt 200's (all sold out)
Ultrabatt 400s, 728 grams, Built-in full four function BMS, 240 CCA, $289 (less than 30 left)
Ultrabatt 600s, 1100 grams, Built-in full four function BMS 360 CCA, $359 (less than 20 left)

We expect this stock will run out in the next few days and there may be a gap of a couple of weeks while we wait for the new ones to arrive.

After all the interest generated in this thread and the other thread by the technical discussions over the last two days ....we seem to have got quite surge in orders today.

I can say with a very very high degree of certainty that we are definitely going to run out of stock before the next shipment of the new third generation batteries arrive. All I can do to offer you consolement if you end up waiting is to promise you that you will get the benefit of the very dramatic price drop.

[FastBikeGear]

It's a measure of Lambda!

Ok I will start.
In general:
- Solar Trickle Chargers. In theory if had something outside with a Solar Trickle Charger hooked up to the LiPO and used very little power.........how long could I expect the battery to last? As effectively the battery would be maintainted while sun was up. So V would remain high. Can they tolerate consistent trickle charging?

Electric Motorbike (or any vehicle really):
As A123 hits financial difficulty - its is best to custom build a battery pack or COULD it be financially viable to say bolt a few off the shelf LiPo 12V? Or is that the dumbest idea ever?

What a bloody fantastic question! You have proably asked the smartest question possible.

OK this is going to be a bit of a rapid brain dump that probably needs a bit of re-editing later so don't pick too many holes in it ...but here I go.

I run solar panels on the roof of my bus. In between the solar panels and the batteries I have a fairly sophisticated BMS (well it was sophisticated by the standards of a couple of years ago).
I run two battery banks (House batteries and starter batteries) and the BMS I use controls the charging profile to each battery pack and also manages when it takes input power from the solar panel, alternator or the onboard 230V charger. The BMS monitors the conditions of the battery constantly to determine the best charging profile. It is sophisticated enough that even if the voltage from the solar panels is less than what it determines the batteries need at any instance it can step up the voltage to a higher voltage. When I installed it I advised it what battery chemistry I was using. It takes this into account in manageing the charge and maintenance profile because lead acid batteries, AGM batteries and Lithium batteries all prefer different charging profiles.

The little CTEK smart chargers that we and everyone else sells for lead acid batteries are acutally pretty clever BMS (Battery Managemetn System) units, Hence their popularity and OEM use by Ferrari, BMW and Masserati etc.
They are designed to provide the ideal charge profile for your lead acid battery, The little MX5 units have multiple profiles in them for small motorcycle batteries, larger car batteries, desulphating recovering modes and even cold charging modes. They also have a little comfort LED array on them that indicates at which step the charge profile is at. When I used to use lead acid batteries I had a CTEK smart charger plugged into my bike whenever it wasn't being ridden. CTEK advise to do this to increase the life of a LEAD ACID battery. Remeber that protecting and extending the life of any type of battery is the key function of a BMS. (Note LEAD ACID in the last sentence is in bold letters because this is not also true for Lithium batteries).


It is the job of the BMS to control the charging profile to suit the battery pack technology in use. Lithium batteries like being charged reasonably robustly. A good charging voltage is 14.4 Volts. Once the battery is brought up to full capacity you ideally want to cut the charging until the capacity drops to a prescibed level. The problem with this is that a Lithium batteries voltage remains much more constant as it's capacity is depleted. So determining when to start and cut off the charging is much harder to on a Lithium battery than it is to do on a legacy lead acid battery.

The BMS in my bus deals with this by counting the electrons in and out. (Not literally but it's a good thinking picture). What it does is measure how much power has gone into the battery and how much power has left the battery on an ongoing basis as a running count (A bit like how you count cards in black jack if you are trying to beat the house). It even has a meter that displays this 'running count' battery capacity in real time. This is far more accurate than trying to guess capacity from a voltage reading.

So a BMS in a lead acid battery is ideally a fairly sophisticated microprosser device rather than a simple assortment of zenor diodes, hence the more advanced ones like that used inside the Ultrabatt batteries actually have a sophisticate microprocessor controller on the BMS circuit board.

One interesting point to interject here is that once you hava a battery with a microprocessor powerd BMS inside it you can also use the microprocessor to incorporate data logging capability. So that with the right interface you can interrogate how the battery has be charged and used and how it has performed. ....watch this space Ultrabatt (Who are a divsion of a large instrumentation company) have some interesting stuff in this area that they have already revealed to us. I will see if I can find some photos of tis to put in a following post. Some of the Lithium battery powered tools also have microprocesors in the batteries and the service technicians can see stuff like how many times you have fully flattened the batteries.

Coming back to Lithium batteries. Lithium batteries lose only a small percentage of their storage capacity (rated in amp hours) when they are sitting on a shelf. They lose an even smaller percentage of their starting capacity (rated in CCAs) when they sit on a shelf. So unless you have systems on your bike that draw current when your bike is not in use your really don't need to have your battery constantly being topped up. We can take a battery out of storage after a year of not being used, plug it into a bike and start it up.

Putting a lithium battery on permanent charge is unnecessary and best practice is not to leave mains devices plugged in and turned on unless their is a good reason to (Environment, power bils, electrical safety and all that). However none of these other than safety comes into play with a solar charger. Why did I exclude safety. Well a lithium batery that is not being charged with a load balancing BMS can have a cell go into thermal runaway. Understand that thermal runaway is sub optimal in the the way that crossing the beams in ghost busting terms can lead to the very fabric of the universe becoming unstable.

So back to your original question.

Lithium batteries don't like being constantly trickle charged. A nominal 12V Lithium battery ideally likes being charged at 14.4 volts with a reasonably robust current of 3 amps or more. If you watch the voltage out put on many car battery charges (with a volt meter) you will see the voltage output typically ramp up to much more than this when use on small capacity motorcycle batteries (a whole other discussion). My 'Repco' special car battery will jump up to over 15 volts when I use it to fast charge an Ultrabatt battery and at this point I feel inclined to unplug it. Which is exactly the reason why we recommend you don't use a Repco special battery charger on Ultrabatt batteries.

And even if your have over voltage protection you proabably don't want to continually be testing if your overvoltage protection is still working. I ahve never seen the value in testing a parachute any more than you absolutely have to!

So know unless you are using a sophisticated BMS that you absolutely trust will never fail I wouldn't leave a Lithium battery constantly on charge...why would you take the risk when their is absoultuely no benefit.

Remember with electronics it's not a case of if it will fail but when.