I agree with Thallium. In the past batteries came in a wide range of build qualities, and better batteries had a much larger plate area and much more lead to hold the plates securely.
Now all batteries are made to the lowest specification so only last a few years. That is what people expect of anything now, so that is what they get.
Volvo obviously specified the best quality battery available, and 13 years on, it shows.
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A few years ago I was shown around the new car battery production line at Oldham batteries (was part of Hawker Siddley IIRC).
As with their traction batteries, every aspect of the construction had been addressed with new designs of porous cell separators, extruded plastic packing pieces, new antimony alloy plates, adequate space for debris to collect, vibration and shock resistance etc. and most importantly a quality system with feedback on the line.
Think this system pretty well killed off their car battery production as the demand for frequent replacement batteries declined.
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I wasna fu but just had plenty.
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Is this a record? The 'wet' Bosch battery in my TR7 has finally expired - installed in May 2002, well before the start of this thread. I attribute its longevity to having travelled only about 10,000 miles, and being disconnected during non-use. (I just slip off the positive terminal - finger tight, no spanner required, contact always sufficient to start cold engine.)
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In my experience it's lots of short journeys that kills batteries. If your TR7 is used rarely but for a good run when it does go out, then I think that will have been a great help.
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In my experience it's lots of short journeys that kills batteries. If your TR7 is used rarely but for a good run when it does go out, then I think that will have been a great help.
I also suspect that his car also doesn't have any electronic devices (such as a car alarm/immobiliser) that will continue to slowly drain the battery if it were connected, and I presume that modern cars' CPUs etc have to have some kind of power all the time to keep all their settings, never mind the ICE.
On the subject of batteries, my Nokia 3410 oldest mobile phone's OEM battery is still going perfectly well (admitedly I don't use it much, but occasionally recharge it to keep all the settings, recently changed network providers too) since mid 2003. Not sure about how long the battery lasts in active use compared to when it was new though.
John's situation does show that car batteries can last if the circumstances are right.
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In my experience it's lots of short journeys that kills batteries. If your TR7 is used rarely but for a good run when it does go out, then I think that will have been a great help.
I think you can be lucky or not with batteries. I decided to replace the original one in the Pug 207SW diesel at 12½ years of age, as it had been sounding a bit sluggish in the previous winter. Probably a good move, as we had a cold snap soon after. It had lasted about 80K miles of mixed driving but not many short trips.
I always understood that starting diesels took more out of a battery than petrols, but I don't think my battery owed me anything. It was accidentally flattened once but didn't suffer for it, and the 2008 car had the usual amount of background drain for a car of that age. I never gave it any attention, especially as it was enclosed in a black plastic box.
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Why have traditional lead acid car batteries not been replaced with a much lighter alternative - seems an easy way to take 5-10kg off the weight and improve fuel economy.
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Why have traditional lead acid car batteries not been replaced with a much lighter alternative - seems an easy way to take 5-10kg off the weight and improve fuel economy.
Cost I suspect.. You need a far more sophisticated charging system, cooling - lots of it go high loads when starting and inability to use full capacity without endangering battery life.
A second hand Tesla 75kwh battery costs c £800 on ebay
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A second hand Tesla 75kwh battery costs c £800 on ebay
That's proportionately very cheap. My new 36 amp-hour battery, which presumably translates to 0.43kwh, will cost nearly fifty quid including delivery.
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A second hand Tesla 75kwh battery costs c £800 on ebay
That's proportionately very cheap. My new 36 amp-hour battery, which presumably translates to 0.43kwh, will cost nearly fifty quid including delivery.
Yes, a 75kWh battery is gigantic by comparison with a car battery and that is a second hand one.
A better comparison might be that a new 17Ah 36V (0.6kWh) nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC, the most energy dense option) Li-ion battery for my Bosch e-bike is about £750. That's a proprietary thing but even a generic one will be on a scale of half that price.
That's before you get into its ability to produce a up to 400amps several times daily for years on end.
What seems to kill lead acid batteries is repeated discharge below about 50% charge, and especially being left discharged. That's why car batteries can last a long time if the car is used every day, or kept on a smart charger.
We part-owned a narrow boat for several years with a battery monitoring system, and about 500Ah of leisure batteries. For a while we seemed to be replacing these batteries nearly every year. We finally figured out that the problem was caused by the BMS. Not that it was faulty, the problem was that it showed the state of charge and instead of just running the engine first thing every day to recharge it, people staying on a mooring would see it still had 50%, 40%, 30%, 20%, 10% charge left and continue to use power before recharging. Once it was understood that they needed recharging at ~50%, we had fewer problems. NMC battery packs would actually be great for leisure use because they don't mind being "fully" discharged (they actually contain their own electronic BMS that stops them discharging to the point that would damage them, and balances charge across the cells).
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"What seems to kill lead acid batteries is repeated discharge below about 50% charge, and especially being left discharged. That's why car batteries can last a long time if the car is used every day, or kept on a smart charger."
That would explain why my motorbike is still on its original battery (2008) despite many people on the biking forums having to replace them at four years. For the winter months or even any prolonged period in the milder weather, I connect it up to the battery smartcharger.
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"What seems to kill lead acid batteries is repeated discharge below about 50% charge, and especially being left discharged. That's why car batteries can last a long time if the car is used every day, or kept on a smart charger."
That would explain why my motorbike is still on its original battery (2008) despite many people on the biking forums having to replace them at four years. For the winter months or even any prolonged period in the milder weather, I connect it up to the battery smartcharger.
Odd why my Mazda goes through its battery every 4-5 years, whether I'm using it every weekday for decent-length commuting/work purposes, or periods of it being used once a week/fortnight (still for decent length trips of 10-15 miles+ each way) when commuting by train/unemployed. It's a shame I can't use a smart charger given I live in a flat. Oh well.
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I bought a secondhand 40ah Yuasa battery in 2013 for £10. It had been bought new in 2011 and the car then scrapped (MOT).
I use it twice a year to fumigate my bees.(it heats up a tray using a diesel glowplug and vaporises oxalic acid.). I recharge it when used and then every three months it is put on charge for a day. It is now 10 years old and still shows over 12.5Volts.
So despite not being used as designed, it has lasted very well. (It is never left discharged)
Edited by madf on 13/05/2021 at 11:33
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"What seems to kill lead acid batteries is repeated discharge below about 50% charge, and especially being left discharged. That's why car batteries can last a long time if the car is used every day, or kept on a smart charger."
That would explain why my motorbike is still on its original battery (2008) despite many people on the biking forums having to replace them at four years. For the winter months or even any prolonged period in the milder weather, I connect it up to the battery smartcharger.
Odd why my Mazda goes through its battery every 4-5 years, whether I'm using it every weekday for decent-length commuting/work purposes, or periods of it being used once a week/fortnight (still for decent length trips of 10-15 miles+ each way) when commuting by train/unemployed. It's a shame I can't use a smart charger given I live in a flat. Oh well.
My limited experience of Japanese brands is that they fit the smallest capacity battery based on the climate of the specific market the model is destined for - in the case of the UK with mild winters, it's not very big.
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Why have traditional lead acid car batteries not been replaced with a much lighter alternative - seems an easy way to take 5-10kg off the weight and improve fuel economy.
I think the weight saved by changing to a lighter battery would be an insignificant fraction of the 1-ton + of any present-day car.
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Why have traditional lead acid car batteries not been replaced with a much lighter alternative - seems an easy way to take 5-10kg off the weight and improve fuel economy.
I think the weight saved by changing to a lighter battery would be an insignificant fraction of the 1-ton + of any present-day car.
A number of small fractions add up - hence the use of high strength steel, smaller fuel tanks, removing spare wheels, etc.
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A Li-ion battery could certainly save weight. My bike battery holds the same amount of power as a 50Ah car battery (15Kg.?) and weighs 3 Kg.
You can actually get 12V Li-ion batteries in that sort of capacity. They use a slight;y different chemistry, LiFePo4, and normally sold for leisure or mobility. They aren't as power dense as NMC but they can cope with high discharge rates IIRC.
www.tayna.co.uk/mobility-batteries/siga/s45-l/
£500 for 45Ah.
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<< ... small fractions add up - hence the use of high strength steel, smaller fuel tanks, removing spare wheels, etc. >>
They do, but the public won't pay to save a few kilos. The evidence of the last few decades suggests that they pay for the opposite. Of course a lot of that has been caused by more solid crash protection, which they will pay for.
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Why have traditional lead acid car batteries not been replaced with a much lighter alternative - seems an easy way to take 5-10kg off the weight and improve fuel economy.
I think the weight saved by changing to a lighter battery would be an insignificant fraction of the 1-ton + of any present-day car.
A number of small fractions add up - hence the use of high strength steel, smaller fuel tanks, removing spare wheels, etc.
The problem is that despite all that, cars of today are still about 10% heavier than those of the same size from 15 years ago. Must be all the extra safety devices and electronics I suppose.
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A significant portion must be in the larger wheels that are typically used nowadays too. My Mazda6 has 19" alloys, the mass of which I believe are 13.8 kg each. A tyre for these alloys in size 225/45/19 are about 10.5 kg each (according to Michelin) so that gives a mass for each corner of 24.3 kg, or 97.2 kg for the set. Probably not that far away from the mass of the engine.
A set of 15's that would have been more common on the cars of yesteryear are bound to be a lot less than this.
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