Trusted and Reliable companies list for batteries

[scoot-e]

First, to stay on thread, I want to confirm one seller and add another:

1) I want to second Supower111 ebay seller as a trusted provider
Little pricey for small quantities (like over $8 a loose cell vs around $4 or $5 all in) but if people were to buy larger orders they definitely sell quality, ship on time and have a variety of related accessories for combo packs of batts/chargers/bms units and the holders and related pieces for sale at a much better price and fast shipping (but need to order maybe 1500-2000 cells vs 100 cells to get the better pricing according to the rep)

2) Cycle Analyst maker GrinTechnologies:
http://www.ebikes.ca/shop/ebike-parts/batteries.html
Bit pricey compared to direct from China suppliers (but sometimes you get what you pay for...) but this Canadian company does everything well and quality and stands behind their products so even at double the going rate they are definitely providing a quality product. Have bought numerous items from them (not batts but I assume the support is the same until told otherwise) and not a prob with anything so far
Part of the cost may be explained by their following of legal shipping protocols and safety:
"Please note that large lithium batteries like those used in electric bicycles must be shipped as Class 9 Dangerous Goods as per UN38.3, with special boxes, special packing materials, and of course extra Dangerous Goods fees. The typical hazmat shipping rate within Canada is about $80, to the US is about $120, and overseas is even more."
On a side note they wrote this on their blog:
"All our recent stock of higher capacity eZee batteries are using Japanese Sony V3 cells as standard.
While the Samsungs have worked reliably, their cycle life at higher discharge currents left a little to be desired and we’re hoping the highly regarded Sony cells yield better longevity. "


I am vetting 2 more alibaba venders and they seem to have worked out but don't to post about them until I have a chance to test out their products I received more thoroughly over the next week or two but so far so good, shipped DHL and received (in San Francisco from China/HK) in less than 5 days - great start and fair pricing for limited quantities too!

Yxmzone update:
Day 38, filed paypal dispute and awaiting the response (he hasnt yet) cutoff for Paypal in another 2 days for my refund which I fully expect to get. As "jpodtbc " confirmed, as a second buyer, this is one company on Ebay to AVOID at all costs
Funny enough within a day of filing the paypal dispute (and writing "Tony" at yxmzone a separate email to advise him of it) "Tony" said he "sent the wrong EMS shipping tracking number (which showed being received in Portland, Oregon!) and was resending a new shipment and provided a new tracking number and this message:

"Hi friend,
sorry,the post office make wrong the package,this is your package tracking number:CY00XXXXX8CN regard." (*I removed some numbers for privacy)

Now 5 days later it still shows "sorting in dispatch for shipping out" and I have no doubt it is another fake tracking to someone other than my product. Regardless, glad I used paypal on this one...Remember, my other alibaba vender (using paypal) sent via DHL and I got the package within 5 days...so 5 days for "still sorting" is a joke imho

 

[frankrs]

Hello,

Can anybody tell me out off experience if this company is trusted.

EVVA TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD

Greetz Frank

 

[friendly1uk]

Sunthing should also be on the cheap list, not reliable. The quality just isn't there. It was something like 3 negative threads in 3 days last month.


HK don't regularly develop faults and they're assembled consistently. Local to everyone, they speak the language and stick to the warranty they offer. Great prices and quick delivery. If you accept the d.o.a rate, they don't deliver any surprises. I find that reliable.

 

[dnmun]

this reference is to the problem several people had with their 25Ah battery pack from sunthing28 guy.

two of the people never showed us how the batteries failed. one guy actually sent his back to china for no reason when it did not work, another guy also posted a trashing thread of sunthing guy but also refused to analyze how the battery had failed. so we learned absolutely nothing from the guys who just posted up trashing threads.

the third guy actually did examine his battery and found it was not functional because a single sense wire had pulled loose and so that shut down the BMS. he repaired the sense wire by soldering it back onto the pouch and the battery works fine now.

this was all for the 48V25Ah pack from sunthing guy. if you look at the batteries that sunthing guy sells you can see there are three types. 10Ah, 20Ah, 25Ah. one has the duct tape and external BMS identical to the big 60A signalab from ping and the other is in the blue shrink wrap and uses an internal BMS installed under the end cover. the third type is the large 25Ah batteries which is made from 25Ah pouches, unlike the others made with 5Ah pouches like ping does.

http://stores.ebay.com/sunthing28/LiFePO4-battery-/_i.html?_fsub=2328193016

http://stores.ebay.com/hunk801/Battery-/_i.html?_fsub=5333444014

you can see that sunthing guy is buying his batteries from a third party and the hunk801 guy is also buying the same batteries or he is just another name for the sunthing guy. so both of these guys have the same batteries built from the 5Ah pouches.

you can see how the sunthing 25Ah packs have a totally different charger which is why i think that battery is made by someone other than sunthing guy, but it uses a BMS identical to the 15 and 20Ah BMS that he uses except for more mosfets. hunk801 doesn't use a different charger with his 25Ah packs but if you look at how the chargers connect, there is a different plug on the different batteries so that also points to a third party building the batteries and these guys just resell them.

anyway, just wanted to clarify since sunthing makes good batteries and alotta people have bot them, but this recent addition of the 25Ah pouches has had problems and i think the two guys who posted up the trashing threads may have had the same problem of a loose sense wire too. so if they had cooperated, we coulda had their batteries fixed too.

but some people just find it easier to not fix stuff so if you don't have the ability to fix things, you should most likely avoid the 48V25Ah packs which had this problem. none of the other packs built from the 5Ah pouches has been reported to have problems yet. but if you are tempted by the low price of the 48V25Ah pack then you should be prepared to ask for help if it also has a loose sense wire. it is a pretty easy fix too though.

 

[gameofbikes]

this reference is to the problem several people had with their 25Ah battery pack from sunthing28 guy.

two of the people never showed us how the batteries failed. one guy actually sent his back to china for no reason when it did not work, another guy also posted a trashing thread of sunthing guy but also refused to analyze how the battery had failed. so we learned absolutely nothing from the guys who just posted up trashing threads.

the third guy actually did examine his battery and found it was not functional because a single sense wire had pulled loose and so that shut down the BMS. he repaired the sense wire by soldering it back onto the pouch and the battery works fine now.

this was all for the 48V25Ah pack from sunthing guy. if you look at the batteries that sunthing guy sells you can see there are three types. 10Ah, 20Ah, 25Ah. one has the duct tape and external BMS identical to the big 60A signalab from ping and the other is in the blue shrink wrap and uses an internal BMS installed under the end cover. the third type is the large 25Ah batteries which is made from 25Ah pouches, unlike the others made with 5Ah pouches like ping does.

http://stores.ebay.com/sunthing28/LiFePO4-battery-/_i.html?_fsub=2328193016

http://stores.ebay.com/hunk801/Battery-/_i.html?_fsub=5333444014

you can see that sunthing guy is buying his batteries from a third party and the hunk801 guy is also buying the same batteries or he is just another name for the sunthing guy. so both of these guys have the same batteries built from the 5Ah pouches.

you can see how the sunthing 25Ah packs have a totally different charger which is why i think that battery is made by someone other than sunthing guy, but it uses a BMS identical to the 15 and 20Ah BMS that he uses except for more mosfets. hunk801 doesn't use a different charger with his 25Ah packs but if you look at how the chargers connect, there is a different plug on the different batteries so that also points to a third party building the batteries and these guys just resell them.

anyway, just wanted to clarify since sunthing makes good batteries and alotta people have bot them, but this recent addition of the 25Ah pouches has had problems and i think the two guys who posted up the trashing threads may have had the same problem of a loose sense wire too. so if they had cooperated, we coulda had their batteries fixed too.

but some people just find it easier to not fix stuff so if you don't have the ability to fix things, you should most likely avoid the 48V25Ah packs which had this problem. none of the other packs built from the 5Ah pouches has been reported to have problems yet. but if you are tempted by the low price of the 48V25Ah pack then you should be prepared to ask for help if it also has a loose sense wire. it is a pretty easy fix too though.

I've read your discussions in the threads about the 25Ah packs that people had trouble with. At first I thought something seemed fishy because you were always jumping to the defense of sunthing, but after reading this post it makes sense. I'm glad that you are rationalizing the situation, and after reading this I would consider buying from sunthing. I did find it a little strange that you were defending packs that didn't work out of the box though.

The buyers did have a point there, if I buy a battery, I expect it to work out of the box. I shouldn't have to troubleshoot and solder anything to fix it, if I do, I think it's totally valid to consider it defective and send it back. However, I am one of those willing to actually troubleshoot and tinker, so I would actually go the route that you advise, which is to put some time into finding out what's wrong, and fixing it if the solution is reasonable and cheap. I wouldn't expect everyone to be willing to do that though, and they have a valid claim for calling the product defective.

I'm probably going with calibike for speed of shipping, us based vendor with waranty, etc, but after reading your post here I might now buy a 15-20Ah pack from sunthing in the near future just to have as a cheaper backup solution in case something goes wrong with my main pack.

 

[dnmun]

i was not defending the manufacturer. i was trying to determine why the 25Ah packs were failing when we already have about 30 of the sunthing guy packs out there already with no problems reported.

it was a shame the first guy had such a hateful attitude and would not help find the cause of his failure. he even was able to get the sunthing guy to send him parts, but he did not know what to do with it. second guy was no help either because he just sent his battery back expecting to get a refund. fat chance of that happening and i wonder if he ever got anything out of sending it back even.

it really helped that the last guy was willing to open his pack up so we could figure out what was wrong because that was how we could see they were different sized pouches from the other sun-thing guy packs which all use 5Ah pouches like ping.

anyway it was clear immediately what the problem was once he cut open the pack.

i would not recommend someone buy the 25Ah pack that they build that way with the big pouch if they are not prepared to fix the problem of the poor sense wire support. but we know nothing about the reliability of these big 25Ah pouches and without proper compression they could have problems imo.

this guy is always stalking me about his smart BMS from bmsbattery that he thinks everyone should use so you have to ignore his comments meant to insult me. he has made a number of statements about the bestechpower BMSs on other threads even though he does not understand how they work. he also told me i could not turn off the BMSs using the O2 micro chips for control by turning off power to the processor even though i have done it. he made claims i knew by my own experiments were not true. plus i feel like his constant pushing of the smart BMS onto other people is unfair because it is a piece of junk and the only reason people would wanna buy it is because it is the cheapest piece of junk out there for a BMS. i hated them they were so bad at balancing a lifepo4 pack. but that is how he gets even with bmsbattery for sending him a package that got damaged in shipment by getting people to buy their junky BMSs.

 

[mlt34]

Let me start this with a disclaimer that I have nothing personally against Rafe or Calibike. I simply support open and honest trade in ebike parts. Ok.

I'm not sure if Calibike should be on a list of trusted and reliable battery companies. Yes, they do have a good reputation for providing fast and friendly service, but there is serious doubt about the quality of their products as well as what some have called "fraudulent" marketing claims.

1) Calibike uses Ultrafire cells. Ultrafire doesn't manufacture any cells - they don't even have a factory. They just re-wrap rejected cells from other companies that didn't pass quality control. This is well documented. Start reading here: http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25904&hilit=ultrafire+ypedal&start=105. Most "3000mah Ultrafire" batteries struggle to put out half of their 'rated' capacity, some barely make a third of it. These cells are meant for use in flashlights where a bad cell doesn't really matter - not in ebikes where a bad cell kills a pack (not too mention a pack full of bad cells).

2) Calibike claims to use the same cells as those used by Tesla. Here is the language from their website: "These are the same 18650 cell based batteries as in the Tesla car."




When called out on the fact that Tesla would NEVER use spent/rejected batteries in their cars, the owner of Calibike stated "My language is clear that I use 18650 and not for example lipos or headways. I dont say these are the same as tesla. I say same type. reading carefully is not too hard." So he claims his website does not technically claim that these are the same exact cells Tesla uses, rather they are the same "type" meaning 18650 which itself means cells that are 18mm wide and 60mm long. So while his literature implies he uses the same cells as Tesla, he admits after questioning that he really means his cells are only the same physical dimensions as Tesla cells. The difference is they are of inferior quality on a level that isn't even verifiable due to the undocumented, counterfeit nature of these cells.

Community members didn't buy this explanation.


3) Calibike claims to be the "top seller of 48V lithium batteries on ebay", yet according to ebay they are selling on average 2.5 48V batteries per month. I don't claim to know which seller is the "top seller", but many chinese vendors on ebay move dozens or hundreds of batteries per month. This doesn't inspire confidence that Calibike's bold claim of being "the top seller of 48V lithium batteries on ebay" is anywhere remotely close to being true.

Until Calibike either improves their literature and marketing to remove ambiguous and misleading statements, and ends the practice of misleading uninformed buyers into believe they are getting high quality cells instead of low quality rejects, and until Calibike improves their quality of the cells used in their packs to something above rejected counterfeit cells, I don't think that they qualify as a trusted and reliable vendor.

 

[mwesleyroper]

Shenzhen Jente Energy Technology Co., Ltd. have my thumbs up.

I purchased two battery packs on Alibaba from them about 12 months ago. Their advertised prices seamed fare so I messaged them out of the blue asking if they could supply 2 52v packs inside Reention Dorado Max cases which fit my Frey. Even though they didn't have that case listed they made it happen with the cells and connectors that I requested. I can't remember exact details but I was pleased with all aspects of the deal; fast shipping, good communication, etc. Savings were somewhere around $500USD compared to the cost of a pair from Frey. I ignorantly fried a BMS by having it wired in parallel with 3 Flexvolts. They other is still doing well collecting dust. Flexvolts make go much faster.