Lifespan Of Li Batteries

[DAP]

I bought an iQue3600 on 2004/11/6, just before the warranty ended, it stopped receiving GPS satellites, so put that at one year. Garmin replaced it with a new unit.
On 2008/9/08, I bought a replacement battery for it since the old one would no longer hold a charge, so 2 years and 10 months.
I ordered my Pandora on 2008/10/4
The replacement battery no longer holds a charge, so I ordered the second replacement battery on 2010/7/24, so 1 year 10 months.

Are Lithium Ion batteries normally that short lived? Am I going to have to replace the Pandora's battery every 2 years?

 

[mali]

^ It depends on the amount of charge/discharge cycles and heat exposure. Some of the Pandora batteries might have been deeply discharged because of the long storage time without use. It doesn't reflect the lifespan of a new battery.

 

[zappy]

I was under the impression that the Pandora's battery is Lithium Polymer, which might have different charge/discharge/wear characteristics than the Lithium Ions that we all know and love.

That said, I have a ~10-year-old Handspring Visor PDA with a built-in Li-ion battery which still works well and holds a lot of charge after all this time. So sitting on a shelf for a while isn't necessarily a death sentence for a Li-ion battery. It seems to depend on a lot more factors than just the battery's age.

 

[craigix]

That's very strange - the Pandora batteries all come from the factory half charged - they still all have that half charge even now after sitting for over a year. They should be good for a few years if you look after them, but yes, it does seem all batteries will die eventually but it's often more of a gradual fade away than a sudden death.

Makes me slightly worried about electric cars because I really love the idea of them, so elegant in the way they work.

 

[mali]

^ There were some flat batteries at the beginning of delivery, though. Maybe the were just damaged from the start, who knows.

 

[craigix]

^ There were some flat batteries at the beginning of delivery, though. Maybe the were just damaged from the start, who knows.

There can't be dead because we test them with the battery. Everything is done with the battery it ships with, from the initial hardware test, wifi test, keyboard test, firmware flash, first boot, first shut down.

It would be very odd for the battery to then die, it's more likely that the contacts somehow became misaligned/failed.

 

[mali]

^ Maybe just the very first were affected. Sometimes the remaining charge was so low that the unit had to sit for a while before the charging indicator light came one after plugging in the charger.
Anyhow, there is a battery mini-FAQ in the Tweaks Thread on how to check misbehaving batteries, if a contact misalignement has been ruled out already.

 

[sparkymark]

That's very strange - the Pandora batteries all come from the factory half charged - they still all have that half charge even now after sitting for over a year. They should be good for a few years if you look after them, but yes, it does seem all batteries will die eventually but it's often more of a gradual fade away than a sudden death.

Makes me slightly worried about electric cars because I really love the idea of them, so elegant in the way they work.

?why does mine completely discharge after about 3 days then - is the Pandora sucking some charge out of the battery even when it's turned off, or do I have a dud battery?

 

[tsh]

That's very strange - the Pandora batteries all come from the factory half charged - they still all have that half charge even now after sitting for over a year. They should be good for a few years if you look after them, but yes, it does seem all batteries will die eventually but it's often more of a gradual fade away than a sudden death.

Makes me slightly worried about electric cars because I really love the idea of them, so elegant in the way they work.

?why does mine completely discharge after about 3 days then - is the Pandora sucking some charge out of the battery even when it's turned off, or do I have a dud battery?

Sounds like a dud to me. You're not the only one, but our scientific testing showed 0 +/- about 1% loss of charge over 12-20 hours. Have a look through the i need help forum (several threads)...

 

[mali]

At least one thread( one original plus a split piece from a different thread that got merged with it) is from sparkymark. You should definitely request a new battery already

 

[urjaman]

That's very strange - the Pandora batteries all come from the factory half charged - they still all have that half charge even now after sitting for over a year. They should be good for a few years if you look after them, but yes, it does seem all batteries will die eventually but it's often more of a gradual fade away than a sudden death.

Makes me slightly worried about electric cars because I really love the idea of them, so elegant in the way they work.

?why does mine completely discharge after about 3 days then - is the Pandora sucking some charge out of the battery even when it's turned off, or do I have a dud battery?

Sounds like a dud to me. You're not the only one, but our scientific testing showed 0 +/- about 1% loss of charge over 12-20 hours. Have a look through the i need help forum (several threads)...

Plus my personal measurement of off-mode current of the pandora resulted in 0.24mA (IIRC), which would equal nearly 2 years to drain a battery with a pandora in off mode; My personal guess at that time was that the battery would self-discharge faster than this, but then if what craigix said is true, i dunno.

 

[wdt]

AFAIK all LiPo are based on LiCoO2. If someone says "LiIon" AND does not/can not specify
WHAT KIND of lithium battery, then they are not an 'expert'
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liion , a bit dated)

> Are Lithium Ion batteries normally that short lived?
>Am I going to have to replace the Pandora's battery every 2 years
LiCoO2 really hate being hot, they also don't like being at 100% charge ALL the time
That's why they come half charged from the maker, take this as a clue

> Makes me slightly worried about electric cars because I really love the idea of them, so elegant in the way they work.
Electric car won't have a LiCoO2 battery in it, more likely LiFePO4
(or something else, see etvmotors.com)
There is a reason that the bat pack costs $10K-$30K, not just low volume production
Lots of embedded energy in the bat

An aside, I've recently been scavanging lipos as a easy source of Cobalt for
trace minerals (not for me), I'll know in a few months if the russian research is relevant
This may be the last piece of the puzzle re CCD (colony collapse disorder)

dave

 

[lulzfish]

> Makes me slightly worried about electric cars because I really love the idea of them, so elegant in the way they work.
Electric car won't have a LiCoO2 battery in it, more likely LiFePO4
(or something else, see etvmotors.com)
There is a reason that the bat pack costs $10K-$30K, not just low volume production
Lots of embedded energy in the bat

No, I think Craig was worried about the lifespan of electric car batteries, not their capacity.
I'm also worried about this, I'd hate to get an electric car, use it regularly, and then after 2 years the battery shits itself.
My laptop's battery still works decently after about 3 years, but it almost never gets used, I keep it on mains all the time. (actually, this is the secondary battery, I think I killed the first one freshman year by running it down regularly)

 

[wdt]

> No, I think Craig was worried about the lifespan of electric car batteries, not their capacity.
I must not have been clear, life of bat is what I was talking about
LiFePO4 has only ~ 2/3 charge/mass or 2/3 charge/volume .. vrs LiCoO2
but LiFePO4 has high "C" rating AND up to 1000 charge cycles before <80% capacity
Also it is not fussy about charge method, they do NOT catch fire,
can be overcharged with no consequences, are relatively rugged
LiCoO2 have perhaps 4-500 cycles to 80%, UNLESS you "treat it nice"
ie keep it "cool" and seldom over 90% charge (less is better)
As well keep it above 5% charge at all times

For those with batterys going flat: Is this in pandora
or out of it? Do you have DVM? (digital volt meter)

dave

 

[chris_c]

I have to say what you find about battery technology out there is very confusing, some sites seem to indicate that trickle charging a full battery is dangerous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_polymer_battery#Charging
"It is important to note that trickle charging is not acceptable for lithium batteries; Li-ion chemistry cannot accept an overcharge without causing damage to the cell," and some sites get positively hysterical!

So what's the score with the Pandoras trickle charging when full behaviour, is it safe to leave charging overnight for example? and why!

 

[mali]

^ It works exactly as TI intended

edit:
Battery care is a topic many talk about but most don't understand. Plug it in, works, next. When it breaks buy a new one. Don't waste your life caring about batteries

 

[Spirit]

They should be good for a few years if you look after them, (...)

How do I do that?

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

well, ive charged one of them, put it into the battery case, and used the other battery i have.

and when ive needed to switch, the battery that had a full charge upon storage, now have under 30%
this has happened reapetedly, with both batteries for me :/

 

[SomeGuy99]

Isn't this why hydrogen fuel cells have been proposed/created for cars?

The energy is stored as hydrogen by splitting apart water, which is then recombined within the car (released said energy). No chemicals are involved, right?

I think the biggest issue will be maintaining the motor or something.

 

[lulzfish]

Isn't this why hydrogen fuel cells have been proposed/created for cars?
The energy is stored as hydrogen by splitting apart water, which is then recombined within the car (released said energy). No chemicals are involved, right?
I think the biggest issue will be maintaining the motor or something.

The issues for hydrogen as I recall them:
* The fuel cells cost like a million dollars and are all prototypes
* Otherwise, you burn the hydrogen with oxygen, and lose some energy to combustion
* Also, hydrogen can leak through steel tanks, so you'd probably need a weird and expensive tank to store it, or just keep cracking water
* Splitting hydrogen is difficult, so you either have an expensive, possibly unsafe machine taking up space in your garage, or you have to build infrastructure, which is a bitch.
* Not sure how you pump hydrogen into a car, it's a gas, not liquid?
* Liquid hydrogen is really cold

None of it really makes sense, but the only chemicals involved are hydrogen, so it's not like a battery that will break down.
Fuel cells should last indefinitely, and electric motors are also super-durable. But since large fuel cells are ridiculously expensive, you'd just have a combustion engine that burns hydrogen instead of de-electrolyzing it, so there's all kinds of parts and shit like special fuel pumps and valves and timing.

At least battery-electric cars use existing fuel and existing infrastructure, it's just the batteries that suck and are expensive.