Author Topic: Lithium ion or lead acid? I smell a con. (Read 3802 times)

Simon · « **on:** February 17, 2018, 09:43:06 pm »

I have just come across this listing for a battery as my sister asked me about putting a panel on her shed with a little light and possibly providing power to a radio. It seems this company has ingeniously come up with a range of batteries called lion which coincidentally is also the abbreviation of lithium iron although I'm sure the picture of the lion will seal it in law for the manufacturer when people fall foul of not seeing that there is no – between Li and on......

https://www.carparts4less.co.uk/cp4l/p/-/-/-/-/?444770651&0&cc5_994&gclid=Cj0KCQiAwp_UBRD7ARIsAMie3Xb_b0IlR1KLtNRWw8HQNbfv-oWJxxeDzkTpmAXYIuiZeJWgLiX-RX0aAoPeEALw_wcB

the listing cleverly does not mention the chemistry type of the battery. I believe calcium is associated with lead acid and this is the only clue for me. I think this is not the only listing where there is no specific chemistry given for the battery. Obviously people may be full by the fact that they are now available range of lithium batteries aims at cars which have a higher capacity in the same full factor.

edpalmer42 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 17, 2018, 09:54:11 pm »

Gotta love the stupidity of the masses! You could be right that people will be confused. But the company did give one tiny admission that this is a lead-acid battery. The 'do not trash' symbol has Pb underneath it.

Ed

Simon · « **Reply #2 on:** February 17, 2018, 09:56:11 pm »

Oh yes well I'm sure the average punter knows what the chemical symbol of lead is.......

Jeroen3 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 17, 2018, 09:58:37 pm »

Why would you even buy there when they don't tell the chemistry? They don't even specify weight or peak current.
But it's most definitely a lead battery for a car, but with some fancy calcium alloy to have lower self-discharge at the cost of reduced deep discharge capability

The correct name for Lithium-Iron is LiFePO₄ (LFP).

Simon · « **Reply #4 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:01:06 pm »

Indeed I have no intention of buying that battery. I simply came across it when I just wanted to get a quick price for your run of the mill lead acid battery and noticed the coincidence. Yes indeed the car type do not use strictly lithium ion but again does everybody know that?

janoc · « **Reply #5 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:07:15 pm »

LION is just a car battery brand. Unfortunately named, maybe, but given that cars don't use lithium batteries, it is not a problem.

http://www.lionbatteries.com.au/

This exact battery is widely sold.

Nusa · « **Reply #6 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:09:34 pm »

To be fair, nearly all car batteries neglect to mention their chemistry on the label...it's just assumed they're lead-acid unless otherwise identified.
Caveat Emptor on anyone who confuses LION brand with Lithium Ion chemistry. They're far enough apart, in my opinion.

Gyro · « **Reply #7 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:11:11 pm »

I'm pretty sure the name Lion pre-dates the abbreviation for Lithium Ion by a pretty good margin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Brand

Simon · « **Reply #8 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:11:37 pm »

Well maybe I'm confusing complete and utter laziness in listing the item with an attempt to confuse people. If I was listening a battery I would always list the chemistry particularly with the various types there are around now. If I had money to burn I could go out and buy a Lithium whatever it is to put in my car.

Muttley Snickers · « **Reply #9 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:14:22 pm »

We now have a dedicated section for all things dodgy, this thread would probably qualify.

Simon · « **Reply #10 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:16:40 pm »

Which one is that? I wouldn't call it dodgy technology but be happy to moderate my own thread.

Muttley Snickers · « **Reply #11 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:29:23 pm »

It's specifically for questionable products, remarkable marketing and all that stuff, it's a new section.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/

Gyro · « **Reply #12 on:** February 17, 2018, 10:35:43 pm »

Given that they were founded in the 1930s, it doesn't really qualify for the 'questionable products' or 'remarkable marketing'.

janoc · « **Reply #13 on:** February 17, 2018, 11:06:41 pm »

Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2018, 10:11:37 pm

Well maybe I'm confusing complete and utter laziness in listing the item with an attempt to confuse people. If I was listening a battery I would always list the chemistry particularly with the various types there are around now. If I had money to burn I could go out and buy a Lithium whatever it is to put in my car.

I think it is only confusing because you are working with electronics and used to see Li-ion batteries. I don't think anyone buying a car battery would get confused like that - unless you have a Tesla or something of that nature, you are very unlikely to ever encounter a lithium battery in a car. They exist but are pretty rare.

There is nothing misleading or dodgy on that posting, IMO.

IanB · « **Reply #14 on:** February 18, 2018, 01:27:44 am »

Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2018, 09:43:06 pm

I have just come across this listing for a battery...the listing cleverly does not mention the chemistry type of the battery.

Are you serious?

I clicked on the link and it clearly shows a picture of a car battery on a web site called "Car Parts for Less".

Honestly, you would have to be an idiot to be confused by that, or to think it was somehow misleading.

Please. Enough with the clickbait.

bitseeker · « **Reply #15 on:** February 18, 2018, 01:40:18 am »

Quote from: janoc on February 17, 2018, 10:07:15 pm

LION is just a car battery brand. Unfortunately named, maybe, but given that cars don't use lithium batteries, it is not a problem.

http://www.lionbatteries.com.au/

This exact battery is widely sold.

Wow, they've been around since the late 1930s. Just an unfortunate coincidence, this collision is.

Damianos · « **Reply #16 on:** February 18, 2018, 08:59:47 am »

This "thing", next to the word "LION", ate some Lithium ions and its eyes are lit up red!

Kjelt · « **Reply #17 on:** February 18, 2018, 09:27:47 am »

It is not as misleading as Ebay sellers with their "compatible with BRAND A product" where Brand A is the high sought after product and the fonttype of compatible is small or only mentioned in the below section. Now that is misleading, and highly frustrational because a search leads to many garbage listings.

Muttley Snickers · « **Reply #18 on:** February 18, 2018, 10:29:28 am »

I agree and am also sick to death of Ebay sellers who engage in the misleading and unscrupulous bait and switch tactic, those who do will never see my money and Ebay themselves are to blame for permitting such sly and shifty methods.

For those who haven't seen them an example would be say a pen type multimeter listed for $10 then after a bit more digging and the discovery of a drop down list you soon realise that the meter is actually $30 and the $10 was for some other crappy item that you don't want.

Ampera · « **Reply #19 on:** February 18, 2018, 10:31:55 am »

Why you always Lion?

Muttley Snickers · « **Reply #20 on:** February 18, 2018, 10:44:07 am »

Yeah well, I've never fallen for it but what would normally have been a quick search for something now regularly turns into a process of weeding out the rubbish, I have better things to do and they irritate me no end.

Simon · « **Reply #21 on:** February 18, 2018, 11:02:00 am »

The main problem with eBay is that it only cares about making money which in the long run causes problems. This is why I stopped being a seller because I just got fed up with navigating the crap and seeing my sales drop probably because I was been undercut by somebody offering poorer service.

The general intelligence of buyers was also extremely low with one customer opening a case because I supplied her 50 V one micro farad capacitors instead of the very rare and highly sought after 25 V one micro farad capacitors. Credit eBay they did not penalised me and let me deal with her. I allowed her to return the parts and refunded her only the cost of the parts and no shipping. But yes eBay is awash with idiots and crooks alike. EBay is evermore trying to attract the big sellers like Amazon in fact it could be quite easily said that Amazon wants to be more like eBay and eBay wants to be more like Amazon. They make policy changes without giving consideration to the full repercussions. The drop down options was an excellent improvement as it meant for example I could sell resistors all under one listing. But as highlighted above it has also opened the door for people been able to make items appear to be cheaper than they actually are.

So in the short-term eBay thinks it has scored and is going to make more money because it is attracting more sellers and more listings and therefore more sales but in the long run people will stop using eBay as they will become to distrust it. Of course the other thing that eBay does in order to keep itself going and in profit is to charge sellers exorbitant seller fees and the reason for this is that it basically covers an insurance policy run by the eBay disputes team who even on items I have sold myself will offer a refund to the buyer if they are not happy but will not take the money off the seller. While this again on the surface looks nice because it means the seller does not lose out and it shuts the buyer up it is simply done to ensure the buyer comes back to eBay to earn them more seller fees and of course those seller fees are quite high because eBay is using them to reimburse unhappy customers. So they charge you 10% and it is pretty obvious that less than 10% of sales have problem obviously have to pay staff but yes they are making a killing off of the back of running a very inefficient system by keeping everybody happy. Basically it's politics give them what they want and the suckers will come back for more.

I recently ordered a parcel delivery box to put outside my house so that I can receive parcels when I'm not there. I found with ease what I wanted and eBay and it was about £130. However the seller had put the part number of the item in the specs as eBay themselves would like you to do. So I googled that part number and found a company possibly the same company selling that postbox from their website and they were selling it for £90. And this is what happens, eBay is an easy shot in the arm for sales but comes with a lot of side effects even I used to sell the micro currents and eBay but I put a huge markup on them because I knew the potential hassle I could get from eBay and obviously this seller had done the same. I bought directly from them and it has been delivered with no issues. Why should I pay another £40? I have to pay it because the company knows that they are gonna get a lot of hassle through selling on eBay and eBay in turn makes it expensive to sell. If I'm stupid enough to buy on eBay so be it but is the same attitude I took with the micro currents. If people wanted to pay £20 more than they had to just so that they could by it through eBay then so be it.

Red Squirrel · « **Reply #22 on:** February 19, 2018, 04:15:52 am »

That does seem like a rather misleading name but probably coincidental, they probably were aiming for Lion the animal, because it's powerful, rawr!

I've never seen a lithium ion battery pack in such a form factor, and you can see the cell wall markings in the plastic showing that there are 6 compartments which is typical of a 12v lead acid battery. The calcium part is a clue too, lot of lead acid batteries will also have calcium as part of the plate material.

Mind you this is not stuff an average joe would really think to look for.

SL4P · « **Reply #23 on:** February 19, 2018, 09:19:31 pm »

Hang on, if that name is misleading, we’d better campaign to rename all those furry cats in the deserts and zoos.

God help us when they develop Titanium-Germanium devices. (TiGers) for the slow learners!


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Author Topic: Lithium ion or lead acid? I smell a con. (Read 3802 times)

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