[Sunking]

Trojan use to be the go to battery for Golf Cart's and Renewable Energy, but no longer is true. Many Dealers have quit selling them due to warranty returns and have quit carrying the product line and have switched to US batteries.

I am not sure what exactly happened on the business end, but the design was changed to reduce production cost. This is the root cause of the quality issue.

I know they closed the USA manufacturing plant and moved all manufacturing to Mexico..

I am pretty sure I heard a couple of year back Trojan was bought out by a Private Equity group which would explain all the changes as PE is quite well known to change operation, make the company borrow huge amounts of money to pay the PE holders for the cost of the investment, and blled the company dry before being sold again or going bankrupt.

What are your thoughts?

 

[dimitri]

I don't feel bad for Lead Acid companies dying out at all. Its their own damn stupidity to ignore new battery chemistries like LiFePO4, while continue to produce 100 year old products made of highly toxic materials.

A pity that honest workers will loose their jobs because of retarded upper management, while Chinese companies are grabbing the market share with LFP factories working at full capacity and growing like crazy.

 

[Bottomfeeder]

When did this change happen? I've got 830 lbs of Trojan Pb and I'm wondering why it's giving me less than expected results.

 

[rmay635703]

I don't feel bad for Lead Acid companies dying out at all. Its their own damn stupidity to ignore new battery chemistries like LiFePO4, while continue to produce 100 year old products made of highly toxic materials.

Just as LCDs are turning out to be more toxic for the environment than CRTs I will hold my judgement for a while. Lead acid does have a proper waste management stream, whether it is used or not is another discussion.

Lead acid has always been cheap, durable (for the most part) and predictable.

I feel it very unfortunate we have lost a meat and potatoes traction battery solution and blame it more on our countries ideotic need to have other people build our crap.

I also feel it very unfortunate that the higher tech lead acid like firefly carbon foam, failed to enter the market. If produced at a high scale (the scale FLA is produced at) it likely would cost no more (possibly less) than FLA as carbon ain't expensive.

A cheap and durable battery is always preferable to an energy dense but exacting picky tech.

Heck I would love to have edison batteries (modern eagle versions were much better than fla)

Too bad they bought out and done away with in 75.

 

[Bottomfeeder]

Just as LCDs are turning out to be more toxic for the environment than CRTs I will hold my judgement for a while. Lead acid does have a proper waste management stream, whether it is used or not is another discussion.

Are Lead Acid Batteries recycled?

"Lead-acid batteries are the environmental success story of our time. More than 97 percent of all battery lead is recycled. Compared to 55% of aluminum soft drink and beer cans, 45% of newspapers, 26% of glass bottles and 26% of tires, lead-acid batteries top the list of the most highly recycled consumer product."

That's from the Battery Council International.

When I checked last year there was one company that recycled Lithium. Their name was Toxco and there was a press release about how the recent explosion at a battery storage facility didn't slow them down too much. I'm not sure if they have competitors yet.

 

[rmay635703]

Are Lead Acid Batteries recycled?

"Lead-acid batteries are the environmental success story of our time. More than 97 percent of all battery lead is recycled. Compared to 55% of aluminum soft drink and beer cans, 45% of newspapers, 26% of glass bottles and 26% of tires, lead-acid batteries top the list of the most highly recycled consumer product."

97% enter the recycling stream, that says nothing about who or how they are recycled. This same issue however is true of all recycleables, ESPECIALLY computers.

But alas I digress

 

[Bottomfeeder]

I'm not sure why it matters who is doing the recycling. But, there is plenty more information on the How at the link I just gave you. Almost all of the batteries are recycled and processed back into more lead acid batteries. Kind of impressive actually.

 

[dimitri]

A cheap and durable battery is always preferable to an energy dense but exacting picky tech.

There is nothing in LFP battery that is more expensive than LA, its all about economy of scale. If these giant established corporations which produce Lead Acid wanted to stay competitive, they could have licensed LFP technology 10 years ago and by now would have flooded the market with much superior, safer, long lasting batteries. Instead, they sit on their fat corporate ass, milking the cow dry and eventually going bankrupt. Good riddance....

The reason there is no Lithium recycle on a large scale is because there is no production on a large scale yet, and whatever has been produced in past 5 years or so is still working perfectly, so nothing to recycle.

The key here is efficiency, I don't care how well LA can be recycled, its efficiency is 100 years behind and its time to face the change. We can't afford to waste half the energy we put into these batteries.

As for being picky, have you used LFP? Its much less picky than SLA or GEL.

 

[Bottomfeeder]

The reason there is no Lithium recycle on a large scale is because there is no production on a large scale yet, and whatever has been produced in past 5 years or so is still working perfectly, so nothing to recycle.

It's also more difficult to recycle overall. Check out their recycling process for Lithium vs. every other battery. Cooling big batteries down with LN2 is expensive, and only done because they have to for safety. It's a much bigger pain.

I'm not saying that Lithium is bad, but we should be looking at the whole picture, not just how efficient the batteries are when they're in our hands. As consumers we should be exploring how the materials are mined and how the refuse is handled. Cradle to grave.

 

[POP-evolt]

There is nothing in LFP battery that is more expensive than LA, its all about economy of scale. If these giant established corporations which produce Lead Acid wanted to stay competitive, they could have licensed LFP technology 10 years ago and by now would have flooded the market with much superior, safer, long lasting batteries. Instead, they sit on their fat corporate ass, milking the cow dry and eventually going bankrupt. Good riddance....

The reason there is no Lithium recycle on a large scale is because there is no production on a large scale yet, and whatever has been produced in past 5 years or so is still working perfectly, so nothing to recycle.

The key here is efficiency, I don't care how well LA can be recycled, its efficiency is 100 years behind and its time to face the change. We can't afford to waste half the energy we put into these batteries.

As for being picky, have you used LFP? Its much less picky than SLA or GEL.

does one think maybe the big oil co.s have anything to do with supressing the battery tech??????