Gotion LiFePO4 Cell

[mustafayilmaz]

I purchased a 100Ah LiFePO4 cell from a local seller. The seller sent me Gotion brand.

The price is quite affordable: Approximately 50usd

I couldn't manage to read the QR code on it.

Does anyone have information about this brand? Or is it a bad Chinese product?

[ejeffrey]

What matters more than the brand is how the cell came to you.  If it's genuine it's probably fine.  If it's a factory reject or didn't pass testing to be used in an EV pack and was sold on the grey market it could be OK for stand alone use or it could be a poorly performing fire hazard.

[mustafayilmaz]

What matters more than the brand is how the cell came to you.  If it's genuine it's probably fine.  If it's a factory reject or didn't pass testing to be used in an EV pack and was sold on the grey market it could be OK for stand alone use or it could be a poorly performing fire hazard.

Hello, thank you for your answer.

Cell weights are as stated (1.95kg).

I managed to scan the QR code. The page says the code is correct.

https://www.gobelpower.com/lifepo4_decoder.html

There is no physical damage to the cells. Is there still a danger of explosion?

How do I comment on whether these cells are real?

[RLP]

Curious is the discrepancy between the manufacture date on the label (12th September 2023) and the one on the QR code readout (22nd August 2023), but they are at least similar - it seems at least plausible that that's normal. I would be more suspicious if there was a discrepancy of many months, or years.

I've heard of this brand before because they're also sold in my country. I haven't got any experience with them myself, but like many of the other LiFePO4 suppliers, these are large companies that obviously make good business, probably primarily in supplying OEMs not consumers, which is why most of us may not have heard of them. Thus, I am inclined to believe that they sell products that meet their specifications.

As ejeffrey says, your cell is either genuine, or the most likely alternative is that it is a factory reject of some sort - which is nonetheless still a real cell from the stated manufacturer. B-grade LiFePO4 cells, as they are often called, are not known for spontaneously combusting or exploding - it's much more likely for them simply to have substandard performance in some respect (capacity, self discharge, internal resistance...). That's not to say it's impossible for B-grade cells to be unsafe, for example fast charging a cell with high internal resistance or using unbalanced cells in a pack could still create hazards... but in my view it's not as serious as the more volatile lithium chemistries like NMC where it is very plausible for faulty cells to cause fires.