Reputable Battery Supplier: 60v 100ah

[talltrees]

Looking for recommendations for a quality battery supplier for a 60v 100ah or more battery for this electric tuk tuk I have (currently running on lead acid).

It’s to power a 60v 1.5 kw motor with a 37A current (45A on startup).

I don’t know a lot about ebikes and I’m currently scrolling through aliexpress and dhgate hoping to not make an expensive mistake.

Not sure if I should go LiFEPO4 or Li Ion.

I’m not looking to build a system, but rather but a prebuilt pack with BMS.

Any recommendations on suppliers appreciated. Thanks!

 

[CrossRoads]

You're not going to find any ebike battery packs in the 100 Ah range but you could piece together three 30 Ah's or 3 35's or 2 40's or something. Having a few separate batteries in parallel has some advantageous though: you get higher wattage discharge, quicker charge time if you have three parallel chargers, and you have some redundancy engineering reliability like, if one of the packs fail. Often when a battery fails it's because of the bms or something, not the cells, so having 3 separate packs could be a serious reliability bonus. You'll want to use one of those parallel discharge battery doohickies, forget what they're called.

BtrPower has a few 60v lith ion phosphate options on amazon at 30, 35, 40 Ah.

 

[m@Robertson]

For a tuk tuk I assume you have lots of room underneath something. Like your seats or the cargo bed. Especially if you are using lead-acid right now. So if you have a lot of room available, that makes it more likely that LiFEPO4 will work for you. But... those cells are a lot less energy dense so that means more size... and more weight. I personally like it for its high cycle count and the fact it won't go boom; but mostly because its often good for 2-3000 cycles versus 800. It also is more tolerant of being left at a high state of charge.

For a pack that is li-ion, hands down I would go to Bicycle Motorworks. Contact Matt Bzura the owner and ask him to make you something to your requested spec. He has done so for me. My last was a 35ah pack that was really big... yours will be triple that size. Cost will be significant but this is a made-in-USA battery that should actually be safe.

btrPower would be my best guess as a vendor for LiFEPO4 but thats all it is.

Paralleling packs is not something for the novice to attempt. You need identical packs, identical charge cycles between them, and charging if not using a battery blender will be bypassing the BMS' protection for overcharge. A Datex2 battery blender with charge protection, 60a capacity and the ability to handle 3 batteries is about $600 just for that part at their retail outlet. And its on backorder.

DATEx2 Parallel Battery Adapter - Big Game Bikes

Upgrade your eBike journey with the DATEx2 Parallel Battery Adapter – the 'battery blender' for seamless rides. Connect up to three batteries, handle diverse types, chemistries, and charge states. Say goodbye to inconvenient swaps! Voltage range: 24V to 84V.

biggamebikes.com

The actual manufacturer of Datex2 units sells them for much less, but you have to navigate a very primitive web presence. Google Datex2 and look for their Facebook page. Go from there to their web site... which is actually a Google Docs document. Price for what you need for a 3-battery system is quite a bit less assuming that channel is open.

 

[CrossRoads]

Correct me if i'm wrong here, as i haven't personally used one, but doesn't a "battery discharge converter" or "parallel discharge adapter" or whatever they are called (it seems like there is no industry standard for naming this device) include one-way transistors and thusly prevent current from returning from one battery to the other through the discharge port? I know there is a discussion on this somewhere else on the forum. I thought that was kinda the whole point of these things. I guess they also balance the discharge current (?). Seems like you could have 2 or 3 batteries in parallel and charge them separately.

 

[CrossRoads]

these only work for 36v or 72v, but... related, anyone have experience with grin's li-go modular battery modules? Seems like a pretty cool way of building big battery packs of any size without hiring a custom battery builder.

LiGo Batteries - Grin Products - Product Info

The LiGo battery is a modular 36V pack designed and manufactured at Grin that is just under the 100 Wh limit allowed for passenger air travel. This allows you to bring multiple small batteries with you in your carry-on baggage, and then hook the packs together to behave as a single large battery...

ebikes.ca

 

[kmccune]

For a tuk tuk I assume you have lots of room underneath something. Like your seats or the cargo bed. Especially if you are using lead-acid right now. So if you have a lot of room available, that makes it more likely that LiFEPO4 will work for you. But... those cells are a lot less energy dense so that means more size... and more weight. I personally like it for its high cycle count and the fact it won't go boom; but mostly because its often good for 2-3000 cycles versus 800. It also is more tolerant of being left at a high state of charge.

For a pack that is li-ion, hands down I would go to Bicycle Motorworks. Contact Matt Bzura the owner and ask him to make you something to your requested spec. He has done so for me. My last was a 35ah pack that was really big... yours will be triple that size. Cost will be significant but this is a made-in-USA battery that should actually be safe.

btrPower would be my best guess as a vendor for LiFEPO4 but thats all it is.

Paralleling packs is not something for the novice to attempt. You need identical packs, identical charge cycles between them, and charging if not using a battery blender will be bypassing the BMS' protection for overcharge. A Datex2 battery blender with charge protection, 60a capacity and the ability to handle 3 batteries is about $600 just for that part at their retail outlet. And its on backorder.

DATEx2 Parallel Battery Adapter - Big Game Bikes

Upgrade your eBike journey with the DATEx2 Parallel Battery Adapter – the 'battery blender' for seamless rides. Connect up to three batteries, handle diverse types, chemistries, and charge states. Say goodbye to inconvenient swaps! Voltage range: 24V to 84V.

biggamebikes.com

The actual manufacturer of Datex2 units sells them for much less, but you have to navigate a very primitive web presence. Google Datex2 and look for their Facebook page. Go from there to their web site... which is actually a Google Docs document. Price for what you need for a 3-battery system is quite a bit less assuming that channel is open.

yes beware of the cascading effect if a battery pack would fail, personally I would go for a 72 or 60 volt Fe pack of about a 35 amp flavor, the reason I said 72 volt was for more Wh if the controller will handle it. the discharge curve can fool you if you do not have a reliable battery gauge, click then nothing, the old Pb batteries would give you increasingly less juice( maybe get home) the Lithium batterys BMS will stop you cold after a certain level, some controllers will do the same( maybe I am confused, power tools do this click- run, then click - nothing) Its all I can surmise not being a battery Guy like Micah Toll.

 

[m@Robertson]

Correct me if i'm wrong here, as i haven't personally used one, but doesn't a "battery discharge converter" or "parallel discharge adapter" or whatever they are called (it seems like there is no industry standard for naming this device) include one-way transistors and thusly prevent current from returning from one battery to the other through the discharge port? I know there is a discussion on this somewhere else on the forum. I thought that was kinda the whole point of these things. I guess they also balance the discharge current (?).

These things are essentially black boxes. They do whatever the seller says they do (we hope), and the job they do varies by manufacturer. Some pull current from identical packs evenly. Some pull from whatever you plug in until the high-voltage one matches the low voltage one and then pull evenly. Some pull first from one pack until a LVC happens, then pull from the other pack.

I know of a couple of much lower-cost ones that come from China that do... stuff. I wouldn't trust them. The Datex2 products have been on the market for quite some time and I've never heard anything bad about their use. If there was a problem it would have surfaced by now.

Seems like you could have 2 or 3 batteries in parallel and charge them separately.

Not if they are connected directly. Current will always flow backwards in thru the connected output ports. Sure you could hook a charger up to each battery, but current will still flow freely between those output connections.

I have parallel'd packs that are permanently connected for many years without incident. But I'm also very careful. I parallel'd packs back when I couldn't do what I do now which is have big, custom batteries built. This is one of those topics where if someone needs to ask how to do it, they shouldn't.

Interestingly, I took a look at the btrpower automotive lipo packs and they are expressly designed for serial and parallel connections. Which is not uncommon for banks of batteries on boats and larger vehicles. But they don't go to 60v. You could do a serial connection on three 24v packs but thats going to exceed 60v. They have a custom battery construction service that is probably worth a go.

 

[hsdrggr]

I buy batteries and battery packs from BatteryHookup in PA. They do a lot of Li-ion liquidations. I purchased 2 of 48v 13s4p 12.8Ah e-bike packs made with LG MH1 cells for $50 each. Had to remove the proprietary BMS and I installed an active balancing board with 40amp fuses. So I had $70 into each one. It was a killer deal. Keep your eyes out on their site, you can get great buys. I also buy individual cells from them and spot weld my own batteries together with a Kweld.
As for the black boxes from Aliexpress/Amazon that parallel multiple batteries. I have 2 of them rated at 30amps on 2 of my 500w rear hub bikes. They seem to work fine. Been using them for maybe 9 months. Who knows how efficient they are but they do bring the batteries down equally.
But I’m not going to use them any more in multi battery builds. I have wired multiple 13s packs in parallel without BMS boards, just balance boards and fused. I charge them on the bike through one of the battery charge ports at 4amps and they all charge simultaneously. So no worry about differing voltages transferring rapidly like what happens when plugging together separately charged packs.