Price of lithium ion batteries

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blup

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They have gone up in price in the last year or so. For example the Makita 3Ah 18 v batteries were around £30, now about £50. Presumably a shortage of the raw materials because of rocketing electric car sales.

Does anyone have recent experience of the compatible batteries sold on Amazon etc? Do they last? Are particular makes better than others? My instinct is to avoid them and either pay the extra for the OEM or wait for the price to drop.

Blup
 
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I have tried several well reviewed suppliers but they don't seem to go on as long, mind you the price of extra batteries is a total scam, considering a new tool costs only a few quid more!
 
Official makita batteries can still be had for £10 per Ah when on deal.

Aftermarket batteries will in general be susceptible to battery "recycling" and supply chain issues with lower quality or not throughrougly tested cells making an appearance.

If you can find a local outfit that will "repack" packs with properly tested cells this is most likely the most cost effective way to get packs, but decent cells are similar in cost to Makita packs on deal.

Also Makita themselves are not immune from some poor cells entering packs, very few people test true ah capacity.
 
Genuine Makita batteries £30??? When I last priced them there were approx £56 (approx 3-4 years ago). This is why I went to Lidl power tools, cheap tools, cheap batteries, does the job.
 
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4ah genuine Makita was £42.56 on amazon UK on Sunday.

3ah will most likely be in a 2 pack for £63 ish.
 
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Generally paying about £75 on 5Ah Mak batteries with the 6Ah in the £90s. Those are genuine batteries from a Makita dealer, not potentially fake ones off eBay. That's this week, BTW

OEM batteries have the big plusses that they have balanced cells as well as they incorporate protection circuitry, which makes cooking batteries a thing of the past. In my experience they tend to last longer and the casings are made from less brittle plastic (so are less likely to crack or break of dropped on a hard concrete floor)
 
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Rare to get a knock-off pack that can do 10amp+ discharge, the Makita cells will usually be rated near 20amp and thus the tool won't stall under load.

Generally also the knock-off packs will actually be a better strength plastic (pure ABS), but the molding shape is different (cheaper) so they have the result of being less robust.
 
I have some moody 6Ah battery packs, but I accept that they won't last as long as the Makita OEM ones, they aren't as robust, but they are less than half the price of comparable OEM items.

I have a few more moody 9Ah batteries (which really do work) because unlike other manufacturers, Makita won't offer such high power batteries - they seem to expect me to buy a lot more 6Ah batteries at (more than) twice the unit price of the 9Ah moody ones, or switch to 40 volt. Fat chance of that!
 
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The lithium issue is only going to get worse as electric vehicles sales increase.

It's expensive to get the ore out the ground and scaling up for extra capacity increases the cost aswell.

Battery recycling will hopefully come on leaps and bounds in the near future, it can be done but needs to be scaled up considerably and improvements made.

I still don't think electric cars are the way to go when taking into consideration other external impacts it has on the climate.

I do have a genuine fear that my kids will end up in a mad Max style utopia in the not too distant future as world resources plummet and energy and fuel for mobility and everyday life becomes non existent...
 
sxturbo said:
The lithium issue is only going to get worse as electric vehicles sales increase.

It's expensive to get the ore out the ground and scaling up for extra capacity increases the cost aswell.

Battery recycling will hopefully come on leaps and bounds in the near future, it can be done but needs to be scaled up considerably and improvements made.

I still don't think electric cars are the way to go when taking into consideration other external impacts it has on the climate.

I do have a genuine fear that my kids will end up in a mad Max style utopia in the not too distant future as world resources plummet and energy and fuel for mobility and everyday life becomes non existent...
Click to expand...
I think you may be more worried for your kids after watching Panorama on AI last night..it'll be on iplayer if you missed it
 
JobAndKnock said:
I have some moody 6Ah battery packs, but I accept that they won't last as long as the Makita OEM ones, they aren't as robust, but they are less than half the price of comparable OEM items.

I have a few more moody 9Ah batteries (which really do work) because unlike other manufacturers, Makita won't offer such high power batteries - they seem to expect me to buy a lot more 6Ah batteries at (more than) twice the unit price of the 9Ah moody ones, or switch to 40 volt. Fat chance of that!
Click to expand...
You must have gigantic arms, handling tools with 9ah batteries! :eek:
Never thought of corded tools?
 
johnny2007 said:
You must have gigantic arms, handling tools with 9ah batteries! :eek:
Never thought of corded tools?
Click to expand...
The 9Ah are about half as big again as the 5Ah ones, so not that big. I have them for specific tools though, e.g. cordless plunge saw, cordless mitre saw, cordless recip saw, cordless framing saw (all of which need two batteries) and sometimes for my little 165mm vordless rip saw (to get extra run time).

In any case corded tools aren't always feasible in on site work. For instance, when you are nearing the end of a project there are times when the only way to get 110 volt power is to drag a transformer around with you. That gets very tiring, very quickly! Sometimes, like on a little sub-project I did last week, there is no power and no possibility of getting any (power there would have needed to be run across a busy public right of way - so trip hazard and risk of electrocution, etc). So cordless does have a definite upside if you are in trade
 
JobAndKnock said:
The 9Ah are about half as big again as the 5Ah ones, so not that big. I have them for specific tools though, e.g. cordless plunge saw, cordless mitre saw, cordless recip saw, cordless framing saw (all of which need two batteries) and sometimes for my little 165mm vordless rip saw (to get extra run time).

In any case corded tools aren't always feasible in on site work. For instance, when you are nearing the end of a project there are times when the only way to get 110 volt power is to drag a transformer around with you. That gets very tiring, very quickly! Sometimes, like on a little sub-project I did last week, there is no power and no possibility of getting any (power there would have needed to be run across a busy public right of way - so trip hazard and risk of electrocution, etc). So cordless does have a definite upside if you are in trade
Click to expand...
I seem to recall you saying the batteries were Waitley, do you have a link to where you purchased them please?
 
9ah half the size of 5ah...
How is that possible?
In my lifetime with all batteries I ever came across, on same voltage, the higher the ah the bigger and heavier the battery.
New technology?
The bigger ah, the smaller and lighter the battery?
 
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