Did you know many mobility scooters still use toxic lead acid batteries? Understandably, some manufacturers continue to use lead acid batteries because they are cheap and easy to source. 

However, when you factor in that lead acid batteries often need to be replaced every 1–3 years due to low cycle life, upgrading to a more expensive lithium (LiFePO4) battery that last 10+ years and thousands of cycles makes much more sense.

Beyond the life of the battery, lithium batteries provide many advantages that benefit daily users. One of the biggest advantage is in the increased performance and capacity of lithium batteries. For the same space, one could fit a much higher capacity battery and at almost 1/2 the weight, allowing the mobility scooter to travel 50–100% further depending on the upgraded battery.

Another big advantage is in the significantly faster charging lithium batteries. Lead acid batteries often take 6–12+ hours to charge versus an average of 3–4 hours for a similar capacity lithium battery. In addition, lithium batteries can use 100% of their capacity unlike lead acid which typically can only use 30–50% of the rated capacity.

The performance difference is a clear, but also safety is a huge difference. Some lead acid batteries not only require maintenance but can also release acidic gas if charged improperly or damaged and contain toxic lead. Lithium batteries with LiFePO4 chemistry, use non-toxic materials and have extraordinary safe properties, such as being non-explosive even when punctured and high thermal limits. Lithium batteries also have no maintenance or upkeep required beyond a small partial charge if not used every 6 months.

So, why doesn’t your mobility scooter provider just offer lithium batteries? While some select scooter manufacturers are starting to offer lithium battery upgrades, some scooter models can not easily change to lithium batteries due to the battery meter and other internal electronics requirements. We do recommend contacting your mobility scooter manufacturer before attempting to upgrade your personal scooter.

If you did want to replace your mobility scooter batteries and upgrade to lithium batteries for your mobility scooter, we’ve made a quick demo video to show how to easy it is to replace your lead acid with lithium batteries.

With all the benefits lithium batteries provide, many do find the performance boost and peace of mind in terms of safety worth the initial extra cost.

If you needed any help choosing the right battery for your mobility scooter or had more questions, we are happy to assist. You can reach us anytime by email at contact@aegisbattery.com or call us 949–469–1776 during our business hours.

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Today lithium batteries come in all shapes and sizes. However, some may not know there are different chemistries that make up the core internal battery.

For small consumer electronics like your cell phone, laptop or RC toy you often find Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LCO), Lithium Manganese Oxide (LMO), or Lithium Polymer Oxide (LiPo) chemistries.

However, for more demanding battery applications like electric vehicles, e-bikes, trolling motors, mobility scooters, solar storage, robots, etc. you will often need a chemistry that can provide larger amp hours and at higher voltages.

The first popular chemistry Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) can be found powering EVs like Tesla to ebikes and trolling motors for one main reason. NMC can deliver power! NMC provides consistent high power and at large capacities compared to other chemistries that simply can not deliver high power rates.

A good battery supplier’s NMC battery should be able to consistently output 2–3C rate (charge/discharge rate) and last for 1000+ full cycles. For example, we routinely run full discharge tests to ensure our power delivery curve is performing correctly. Without fully testing the output at full discharge, you can not be sure your battery does not have faulty cells. For our battery packs, we test till the entire battery capacity is used, not just partial cycles like some sellers claiming to provide 10K+ cycles.

Another advantage of NMC is the relatively smaller battery pack size, due to each cell being 3.7 volts vs 3.3 volts in LiFePO4 cells. While this may not seem like much, once you start getting into larger capacity batteries (100Ah+), these can utilize 100–200+ cells, which take up more valuable space and add weight to whatever application it is powering.

Overall, NMC is a proven battery chemistry for high performance and energy density. This allows it to fulfill applications where size and space is limited but still requires high power and capacity.

The second very popular chemistry Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) can be found in various applications like RV power to solar storage due to their high cycle life (3000+ full cycles) and extraordinary safety.

Due to iron phosphate crystal stability, LiFePO4 batteries can often be charged and discharged many times without much degradation compared to other chemistries that oxidate at high temperatures like LCO. Further, in many puncture or short-circuits tests did not create any fire or explosive events.

The drawback of LiFePO4 is the relatively small power delivery of 1–2C and at a less dense energy due to utilizing 3.2–3.3V cells. As mentioned, this starts to add up in size and weight for larger capacity batteries. For this reason, we generally recommend LiFePO4 for applications that might have thousands of partial cycle usage like RV back-up power, solar storage, power gates, etc and have no size or weight restrictions.

LiFePO4 continues to be one of the most popular choices for many people as it can often last 10+ years without much worry due to its high cycle life and inherent safety features.

To learn more about lithium NMC & LiFePO4 batteries, you can check out our battery specifications on our website www.aegisbattery.com

If you needed any help choosing the right battery for your application or had more questions, we are happy to assist. You can reach us anytime by email at contact@aegisbattery.com or call us 949–469–1776 during our business hours.

In an increasingly electric world, many are looking to replace their old lead acid batteries with more powerful, safer and longer lasting lithium batteries. Not only do lithium batteries offer significantly better performance, faster charging, and longer 3000+ full charge/discharge cycles, but are also often 1/2 the weight.

So, can I just replace my lead acid batteries with the same volt lithium batteries? While in many cases it is that simple, one thing to consider is that good lithium batteries will have a battery management system (BMS) that is designed to protect the specific lithium battery.

While a cheaper battery supplier will often use generic off the shelf BMS with incorrect ranges, a good battery manufacturer will use BMS that is custom tailored to the specific volt and amp rated for the battery. This protects the battery from things like over-charging, over-voltage, extreme temperatures, other potential issues like accidental reversed polarity, all to ensure the battery is protected and lasts for many years.

Although the BMS provides great protection, it also means that in some applications it may either limit the performance or cut off power when the power draw exceeds the BMS protection settings. This typically happens when users try to run multiple batteries in series to achieve higher voltage or in parallel to achieve more amp hours.

For example, larger motors typically utilize 48V due to power draw requirements. Some users will try and run two 24V in series to achieve the 48V. However, for lithium batteries this will often trigger the over volt protection, as the system detects 48V draw when it is rated for 24V.

So, you might wonder, why not just have the BMS run at 24V-48V ranges? Well the problem is this negates any protection the BMS offers as it would not be able to react to over volt, over charging, and short circuit situations in time to save the battery cells from damage.

You will often see cheap resellers of LiFePO4 on Amazon or other retailers claiming they can run for an absurd 10K+ cycles and in series. Typically their BMS does not react in time to prevent damage and many resellers do not care much or lose interest in the end customer once the sale is made. This often leaves customers with no real support or ability to utilize the warranty if needed.

At Aegis Battery, we do our best to find you the right matching battery for your application. As this often means, the battery will last much longer and perform correctly for the end user application.

As talked about in the 48V example, we would recommend a single 48V battery pack with larger amp hours and BMS designed to last for a larger motor. Rather than trying to run multiple 24V batteries. Many users will find that the single 48V will still fit into the same battery area and if coming from lead acid, 1/2 the weight or more.

The one downside, is of course the cost. Lithium is a much more expensive material than lead and the batteries often have higher quality internal materials and better connectors. However, if you consider a good lithium battery should last 5–10 years (compared to 1–3 of lead acid battery), it becomes much more reasonable to compare to buying 2 or 3+ lead acid batteries.

Lithium batteries often charge 3x faster (e.g. 2 hours vs 6+ hours), are light-weight and overall provide superior performance. The initial cost is higher, but when you consider the advantages and long life, it can make replacing your lead acid batteries worthwhile.

If you are thinking about replacing or upgrading to a lithium NMC or LiFePO4 battery, Aegis Battery is happy to help you find the right battery for your application. In addition, we truly do stand behind our warranty as a US company and being our own battery manufacturer. We carry a wide variety of battery packs and if not in our stock we can custom manufacture a perfect matching battery for you.

For more details regarding our custom lithium battery either for NMC battery pack or LiFePO4 batteries, please feel free to contact us at contact@aegisbattery.com or complete the Custom Battery form located on our website here.

Aegis Battery is a leading developer and manufacturer of Lithium-ion battery. Aegis Battery is building its industry-leading technology upon a combination of advanced materials developed by Aegis Technology and batteries from Aegis Energies (dba: Aegis Battery). Our team has a wide range of expertise to design and develop a stand-form battery for customers – required battery to fit customers’ specifications.

Our products are vital to many applications in defense, medical technology, semiconductors, energy and aerospace industries as well as direct to consumers!