About six months ago, the NCR18650G was all the rage in forum reviews. Even though the increase in capacity was not huge, it was looked at as a significant step forward in terms of battery capacity. People spoke of how the day of the 4000mAH 18650 couldn’t be too far away. But these days, you never even hear a PEEP about them around here. It would appear that everyone still uses 3400mAH cells. To top it off, only two vendors sell them (Keeppower and Orbtronic), and only as protected cells. What happened here? How is it that these cells just fizzled the way they did?
My guess is the EV market is snapping them up. 6% increase on 200+ miles means a lot more then a few extra minutes of runtime. They are available at US$10 a cell from taobao here , but I think the 4.35v cells are more suited for LEDs and have a much better price point.
Tesla took them all.
Then why was this not an issue back when the 3400 was king?
Is taobao legit? I’ve never seen a site that requires western union payment - that does not seem safe… I’d rather give them my cc #.
Tesla is the only carmaker to use small "commodity" 18650 cells for plug-in vehicles; Nissan, General Motors, BMW, and others use larger-format cells, which contain up to 10 times the energy in each cell.
Too bad for us that the Volt is using lithium polymer batteries.
how many amps will a polymer cell phone battery give ?
When something first comes out of course everyone is interested to know about it and talk about. With the NCR18650G I would guess people have realized that its not worth the price premium. Remember 3600mAh is down to 2.5v. Many lights won’t be able to get 3600 out of them.
Rejoice soon the world will be filled Panasonic NCR 18650G! :bigsmile: :bigsmile: :bigsmile:
Panasonic, Tesla agree to partnership for US car battery plant
On the Tesla forums some guys are talking about that the latest cell used is the NCR18650BD 3200mAh (the 10A rated cell)
That actually makes ALOT of sense. If you crunch the numbers, a lower discharge cell like the NCR18650B or NCR18650G is going to have a hard time kicking out 300-400HP - even if there are 8000 of them. On the other hand, 8000 NCR18650BDs will produce 397HP continuous and 595HP burst. With the losses associated with the wiring, controller, motor, and other factors, this is just about spot-on. Simply put, Tesla NEEDS a 10A continuous, 15A burst cell to hit the numbers.
One day, someone is going to stop doing laptop pulls and start doing Tesla pulls. Probably yielding enough batteries for 80 days of continuous illumination.
Hahaha, now it will be marketing nightmare!
I believe the industry will concentrate more on the high power cells, as long as the competition is increased on delivering more amps, the capacity will also increase eventually.
But of course for regular folk (even initiated flashaholics) more capacity will always sound better.
After all for Tesla or power tool manufactures high amp rated cells means charges with higher currents in the long term (hundreds of cycles) and this is probably a bigger advantage for the user than gaining 200-400mAh.
For me safe super fast charging for the entire lifecycle rating of the cells is more important than small capacity gains. Again this is more useful for cars and other high drain devices where you don't have the time to wait over the day, you need to do you job now.
With flashlights it's another thing, you have time all day time to charge your cells so it's not a make it or break it feature.
Also, in the grander scheme of things, individual cells for flashlights are dirt cheap compared to battery packs for EVs. So you can also have several cells kicking around and ready for use. This is certainly not as feasible for EV batteries, which generally have a four or five figure price tag.
IMHO current best allround cell are Panas PF, they beat everything in price/performance category.
4x PF cost = 14$ less then BD!
TUCSON Az Was up for the battery contract I don’t know how that paned out yet
I’m interested in getting a set of 4 18650G.
I spent quite some time and found several offers…
Aliexpress :
- $13/cell
- protected (I prefer unprotected)
- fairly-trustworthy platform, if I get ripped-off I can get money back
- requires agent
- $11-$20/cell after fees / shipping
- unprotected
- there are also other sellers offering unused laptop pulls for quarter the price. May be a good budget option.
- can I trust the agent?
- can I trust the seller?
- can I trust the seller?
- haven’t contacted the seller yet, so I don’t know the price
As you can see I’m not really comfortable with any of these options….any suggestions?
As you can see above, I assumed that a brand name 3600 mAh cell would be 18650G.
Apparently I was wrong, Klarus (and the cell I listed in the post above) is said to use LG MJ1:
If that’s true, Klarus is yet another cheating rewrapper.
I wonder if we can get a confirmation from another source…