
Ohm (YC S15) is a smarter, lighter car battery that works with your existing car - blueintegral
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/12/ohm-is-a-smarter-lighter-car-battery-that-works-with-your-existing-car/
======
sandworm101
(1) Those nasty things inside car batteries are easily recycled and in fact
are recycled more often than not (like 95%+)

(2) Car batteries do not last only 3-4 years as per the OP. Car batteries can
last decades. There are many variables, but the car in my battery is far older
than 4 years. (lol)

(3) Replacing an easily-recyclable product with a less-recyclable one is no
step forwards.

(4) XX addressed by OP comment, see below XX This thing is a capacitor? What's
the voltage potential in there? Any device with internals significantly beyond
that may be a serious fire risk in a crash..

(5) Car batteries are not needlessly heavy, nor are they a stock size.
Manufacturers do care about performance. If they thought the car could do with
lighter battery they would use one. Have some respect for the thought behind
stock engineering before replacing it.

(6) Shutting down the voltage supply can be a real pain. A "dead" battery
generally still has enough juice to keep electronics ticking over. Cutting it
completely is not like turning off a switch. It often means
resetting/rebooting stuff once the voltage is restored. For some (BMW) it can
even mean a trip to the dealership for a special new battery ritual.
[http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1355106-Why...](http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1355106-Why-
can-t-I-replace-my-own-battery)

~~~
blueintegral
You're right! Lead acid car batteries are one of the great recycling success
stories. What's interesting is that the volume of lead acid car batteries in
the world is so high, that even at that high recycling rate, that still leaves
24 million pounds of lead each year from car batteries that don't get
recycled. There's also been some problems recently with lead recycling plants
contaminating the environment [1].

You're also right that it's more complicated to recycle lead than lithium
batteries, but a recycling process does exist, and it's getting better thanks
to the proliferation of lithium batteries in electric cars.

It's actually got 6 capacitors in series (2.7V each). We don't charge them all
the way up to 2.7V, so it's normally at about 13V on the terminals. We are
super paranoid about safety. The EDLC caps we picked aren't a fire risk, since
it's just carbon and a few mL of electrolyte. You're probably thinking of what
electrolytic caps do when you reverse bias them, but EDLC caps are much nicer.
The worst they'll do is vent the electrolyte, not explode. LiFePO4 batteries
are also really stable and are used in electric vehicles all the time.

[1]: [http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/07/08/lead-
contamination...](http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/07/08/lead-
contamination-near-exide-plant-may-be-worse-than-previously-thought/)

~~~
CamperBob2
Some thoughts:

The price point is impressive if you can sell at only ~$50 more than a
standard lead-acid battery. If pressed to find a flaw, I think the biggest is
one you've already identified:

    
    
       There’s one: you can’t run your lights and/or stereo as 
       long with your engine turned off. Ohm’s battery reserve 
       comes in at 10 amp hours; most lead-acid car batteries 
       come in at about 45 amp hours. If you can run your 
       stereo with your engine off for three hours on your 
       current battery, you’d be able to run it on Ohm for less 
       than an hour. 
    

Nobody with a modern car or SUV is going to get three hours' runtime for their
accessory equipment. With the original equipment (AGM lead acid, 70 AH/450
CCA) battery in my two-seat passenger car, I'm lucky to get 15 minutes' worth
of stereo/nav/etc. operation with the ignition off. There's no conceivable way
that 10 AH is enough for this application. The more "luxurious" the car, and
the newer it is, the worse this problem will be. Meanwhile, LiFePO4 battery
cost will probably go in the opposite direction, leaving room for competitors
to offer more power for less money.

So I'd reconsider the size of the LiFePO4 battery, even if it makes the
product cost a bit more. You _need_ those high-end buyers. You're not going to
sell these to Joe Sixpack for installation in his '98 F-150 pickup.

And yes, your marketing materials are grossly exaggerating both the
environmental problems with lead-acid batteries and their typical service
life. There is clearly a global regulatory jihad against lead in all of its
forms and uses, though, so you do have that going for you.

Edit: Don't forget that auto stop/start is growing in popularity as well. I
think it's actually mandatory in some (European?) markets. OEMs are moving
toward "smarter" (read: DRM-locked) batteries to handle these additional
requirements. I wonder if a better business model might be to offer
recycling/rebuilding services that swap out lead plates for LiFePO4/supercap
hardware in existing batteries?

~~~
VLM
You're probably getting downvoted because a c*4 discharge rate implies over 3
kilowatts continuous draw, which is rather unlikely.

Probably your battery is near dead.

Also F150 pickup trucks are about $60K when loaded with options. Those guys
are free spenders compared to commuter car drivers.

~~~
CamperBob2
That's not how it works. By design, there is still plenty of capacity left in
the battery when the car's computer shuts down the accessories.

The accessory draw is enough to lower the (indicated) terminal voltage from
about 12.6 volts to about 12.0 in 15-30 minutes, depending on what accessories
are actually turned on.

~~~
rm-rfU
My car has a timer that shuts things down after 15min (or so). Regardless of
battery voltage.

------
oppositelock
Modern cars with keyless entry typically draw ~50mA@12V when "off", this power
is used to power the receiver, keep ECU state for such things as learned fuel
maps, blink the alarm-on indicator, etc. 45Ah capacity gets you a bit over a
month to drain down the battery, while 10Ah gets you a bit over a week. This
isn't good, you'd have to keep it on a battery tender if you're not driving
the car for just a week.

I can also see how one would implement a low voltage cutoff to prevent running
down the battery, but then, how in the world do you automatically re-engage
the battery to allow starting the car? You've shut off the power to the whole
car, so you no longer have a circuit to monitor. If you're allowing some
amount of current to trickle out, you must, by definition, be allowing the
voltage to sag, which can run the ECU or alarm out of spec, causing havoc.

As the battery designer, your only input to make these decisions is the
resistance of the car's electrical system.

The only thing you control is your own internal resistance.

~~~
conjecTech
Co-founder here: The capacity isn't set in stone. You might be right, if we
need to increase it we can - or just offer a couple different options, but so
far we haven't seen any issues and a number of our beta users are only using
their cars once every few weeks.

The capacity quoted on lead-acid is also a bit deceptive. There amount of
current you can draw drops pretty heavily with state-of-charge. You might have
trouble starting your car even with 50% of charge left. So if Ohm doesn't work
for you, you'd likely be having trouble with a lead-acid as well.

As far as the low-voltage cutout - it's definitely not trivial, but it's been
done in other applications previously. I'd be a bit ashamed if you were able
to come up with a solution of the cuff though, it took us a lot of work to get
it working! It does involve some energy injection, but not enough to cause
problems.

~~~
oppositelock
I can speculate, though :)

You can periodically pulse the circuit at a low voltage and figure out the
resistance, and if the voltage is low enough, you won't power anything up.
When the ignition goes into the ON position, you've got a huge drop in
resistance as fuel pump, and other necessary electronics get enabled. A sudden
drop in resistance is a good signal that you should turn the power back on.
This will not work with some more recent electronic systems, but should work
great for most mechanical ones. Pretty sure you haven't solved things like the
interaction with a BMW battery monitoring computer, for example, and those
cars will probably reject your battery with some crazy error after a while.

It's good that you've got space for more reserve capacity, parasitic drag is
getting higher as cars get more fancy. For example, radiator fans and turbo
oil circulators can run for quite a while after the engine is off.

Your super capacitor design is elegant - you can charge the supercap off the
battery slowly, even at low state of charge where its voltage would sag too
low for the starter relay if you were directly using the battery.

I have a little car which I race and weight matters, so I've been using a
~12Ah LiFePO4 home-made battery for a while (A123 cells). This is a very
durable little battery chemistry. No fancy super-caps, though, I just keep
mine topped off and starting the car puts the battery cells close to their
maximum discharge current.

I wish you guys the best of luck. Lead acids are pointless with modern battery
technology.

------
krapht
Lead acid is traditionally very forgiving with regards to temperature. How
does the electrical performance of your battery vary with temperature,
especially at extremely cold (-40C) and extremely hot (80C) conditions?

~~~
busterarm
Exactly what I was thinking...

...and more on that point, I drive an RX-7 and my engine puts out _extreme_
amounts of heat under the hood. a 50C top-end probably isn't enough for
driving on hot days.

I would go for one of these without a second thought because a) though my car
is light, reducing more weight helps out loads with performance and b) these
things are known to kill alternators and I'd love advance warning of when I
might end up stranded without having to test the battery's volts every day.

I'd love to demo one of these.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Battery relocation to the trunk is a standard mod for the gen3 rx-7, assuming
you're speaking of that one.

~~~
busterarm
FC, but yeah I have a lot to do. I haven't done it yet because it's a 10AE and
basically clean.

Still would want a lighter battery though.

------
sokoloff
> Oh, and its lifespan (7 years) is about twice that of a lead-acid battery
> (3-4 years).

I live in Cambridge, MA (so we get winters) and I can't remember the last time
I've had a regularly driven car's battery fail in under 7 years.

~~~
bluehawk
In Arizona, you're lucky if it lasts for 2 years. Batteries don't like being
in 120 degree heat all day or something.

~~~
carbocation
I've lived in both Cambridge, MA and Scottsdale, AZ, and my batteries
routinely die in under 2 years. I think it's mostly a function of my
(infrequent) driving habits.

~~~
function_seven
> I think it's mostly a function of my (infrequent) driving habits.

Yup. I bought a Battery Tender[1] for my infrequently-used vehicles and now
the batteries last indefinitely[2]

[1] [http://amzn.com/B000CITK8S](http://amzn.com/B000CITK8S)

[2] :) Based on the fact that I haven't had to replace them yet after 5 years.

------
smithkl42
My car has a significant design flaw(1), in that it allows children to turn on
the backseat car lights and leave them on. I've had more dead batteries in the
five years I've had sentient children than I've had in the 40 years prior.
This is a great idea.

(1) Perhaps the design flaw is in the children.

~~~
ams6110
You have a Honda?

The problem is I don't understand how the battery would shut down just lights
and accessories without a) losing all your radio presets b) requiring entering
the anti-theft code in the radio (risky because if you get it wrong you can
brick your radio) c) still have power to know that you're trying to start the
car.

It seems to me this requires more than internal battery smarts but changes to
the car's wiring to have separate battery connections for computer, accessory,
and starter.

Right now most cars have just one big post clamp for the + and - battery
connections.

~~~
sliverstorm
Yeah, it's really a problem best solved at the car level. Brownout detectors
shut off all but the most important systems in the car, and then shut off
_everything_ when the battery is reaching critical levels to prevent damage.

------
allworknoplay
This is cool. Rarely in such established industries do people step back and
reconsider the actual product requirements in such a practical way. Car
batteries serve two TOTALLY distinct purposes (starting engine and running
electronics), and this is a great solution for those.

I'd be worried about the impact of rapidly increasing electrification
(including hybrids) on the high end market (the most likely consumers for
this), but it's such a huge market at present that it probably doesn't matter.

Kudos, guys.

~~~
conjecTech
Thanks for the kind words! Electrification is definitely happening, but for
now there's plenty of market to go around. In the end we think the tech we are
creating will be more an enabler of electrification rather than its victim. :)

------
blueintegral
Hey everyone! I'm Hunter, one of the cofounders of Ohm. Let me know if I can
answer any questions.

~~~
eggoa
Will this work when its -30F?

~~~
daniel-levin
>> Rated for -30°C to +50°C [1]

-22F ~ -30C

[1] [http://www.getohm.com/](http://www.getohm.com/)

~~~
chrisBob
Is that expected to be sufficient? Typical automotive electrical components
are rated over -40C to 85 or 105C. I think the engine compartment is typically
hotter than 50C when a car is running. This might be more suitable to a car
that mounts the battery remotely: I have seen BMWs with the battery in the
trunk.

~~~
blueintegral
We're being conservative with the temperature rating for now. The components
are rated better than that, but we're still running cycle tests in our temp
chamber and waiting to get the system tested by an outside lab.

------
msandford
How does it handle a car that's iffy on starting? It's probably not hard to
get something that'll crank a starter for a few seconds. But what happens if
it needs to crank for 60 seconds over a 90 second window?

I've got a 2006 Forester with a manual. I'll occasionally stall it backing out
of a parking spot, so I'll have to start it again. For some reason it's much
more difficult to start in between cold and warmed up, so it'll take several
seconds of cranking to fire back up. If I were to stall it again trying to get
going, would I then be in trouble?

It doesn't happen often, perhaps only once a month. But if I'm stuck there for
30 seconds while the LiFe batteries recharge the supercap I'm not going to be
happy.

~~~
digitalneal
Subaru ECU cold start logic is, well, questionable at best. As a side note, if
your car is stalling that frequently, I would suggest adjusting the clutch
engagement position. Sounds like its either very low or way too high.

~~~
msandford
It's definitely driver error and not the car's fault. I try not to rev too
hard and slip too long, and it occasionally results in a stall.

I'm spoiled from having driven a number of very powerful manuals. Big engines
mean a lot of rotating mass which means that no revving is needed, just pop
the clutch and go. That extra rotating mass also means that the ECU has more
time to notice the drop in RPM and give it a little extra gas to bring idle
back up.

Not so in the Subaru. It's a very light engine and seemingly a pretty light
flywheel too.

~~~
jaytaylor
Just out of curiosity- Do you recall the approximate weight of flywheels in
referenced "big powerful manuals"?

IIRC the Subaru flywheels for the Impreza weigh in at about 20 lbs - and this
is likely similar or identical to what is used in the Foresters.

~~~
msandford
No idea, but one of the cars that I learned to drive stick in was a friend's
2003 Mustang Cobra. All cast iron engine and something like 400WHP. I don't
know that the weight of the flywheel was everything, the crankshaft weighs a
lot and I think even the moving mass of the pistons and rods translates into
rotational inertia. Finally having 8 cylinders versus 4 means that your engine
response time is theoretically twice as fast.

When the clutch engagement time is say 1 second and your engine is idling at
900 rpm you're only doing 1.5 rev/sec. In a four stroke, four cylinder engine
that means you're getting on average 1.5 combustion events per second. In the
1 second engagement, you get 1 or 2 combustion events. In the 8 cylinder you
get at least 2 and probably 3.

I thought about doing the math for how much energy is in a cylinder firing
versus stored in the rotational inertia of the moving parts, but honestly I
don't know that I really care. I know anecdotally that big engines make it
easier to get cars moving for some reason, and that smaller engines make it a
little more difficult. I just speculated as to why I thought that might be.

~~~
digitalneal
I'd gamble it has more to do with the fact you have to overcome the resistance
of 2 extra axles and mechanical differentials of the AWD forester that is
making it appear to be a bit more difficult than the lazy v8 2WD Cobra.

With that said, check out where the engagement of your clutch is. I've had
people complain about grabby clutches(stalling) only to find out the
engagement point is almost at the top of the throw (Former Subaru tech)

------
gscott
Recently my wife's car batter died, end of life. When a new battery was put in
it the car ran poorly. Apparently when the battery dies something in the car
resets and the car "figures" out the settings again and runs rough at idle. We
called a repair shop and they said to just wait a few days and it will fix
itself. Which was true, runs fine now. The moral of the story is that with a
new car if the battery dies, weird things happen.

~~~
facetube
I've experienced this too. On a year 2000 Toyota with a couple hundred
thousand miles on it, battery removal literally makes the car not know how to
move for 10-15 minutes. The manual says that the car adapts to "driving style"
and engine age/performance; it apparently gets to relearn all of that in a
hurry after a reset.

TL;DR: The car wakes up with amnesia and has to discover for itself that it's
old.

------
sbierwagen
Lithium-ion car batteries are already commercially available, though
cripplingly expensive: [http://www.jegs.com/p/Lithium-Pros/Lithium-
Pros-12-Volt-Lith...](http://www.jegs.com/p/Lithium-Pros/Lithium-Pros-12-Volt-
Lithium-Batteries/1770167/10002/-1)

The innovation here seems to be the capacitor bank, which lets you get away
with a much smaller and cheaper lithium ion pack.

~~~
conjecTech
You're right. Pure lithium-ion batteries definitely are available. Besides
price, one of the reasons they haven't been adopted is they don't have great
performance over temperature. By using supercapacitors, we are able to make it
a lot more immune to temperature.

We really approached the problem from the opposite direction. We started with
supercapacitors and asked ourselves how we could make a reliable system around
them. Huge current surges at the levels needed for starting a car are hugely
destructive for batteries. It's almost as bad as just shorting them with a
wrench. We decided that capacitors were fundamentally better suited for what a
car battery does.

------
rebootthesystem
A solution looking for a problem.

Sorry, it isn't my intention to be less than cordial. I just don't see a
problem screaming for a fix. Nobody I know is screaming about the batteries in
their cars. I don't even know (or care) what batteries are in our vehicles and
I am far more aware of automotive matter than the average person out there.

Longevity isn't an issue.

Weight? People are far more interested in losing 34 lbs of fat from their
bodies than 34 lbs of battery from their cars. The former would make them very
happy while the latter is completely off their radar.

"It costs more but it's better" (paraphrasing). The world is littered with the
carcasses of businesses who thought "better" was equivalent to "sales". I've
done that before and lived to learn a few expensive lessons. This might very
well be better in objective terms from a certain point of view but people are
not going to hand over another $50 for something they truly don't care about.
This isn't an iPhone or a Nest type product where "luxury makes me feel good"
is part of the mental process.

I do agree the racing community might have interest in something like this.
That said, if I were building a race car I would use Lithium Polymer battery
packs that deliver tremendous power at a lower volume and weight. Are there
rules prohibiting this due to fire hazard issues?

And yet, I could be absolutely wrong in my view.

------
Cshelton
So yesterday Audi/Porsche/VW announced a new v6 engine that will be used in
variations across all their vehicles. Further down the line, they said that
engine would include an electric drive component as well, incorporating a
battery, effectively making all their cars "hybrids".

This seems to be the trend, see racing tech (Formula 1, WEC, etc.). We will
probably see this in all new consumer cars sometime soon.

Once every car has a battery, wouldn't the standard car battery that's most
common today be obsolete?

At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market,
which are also the cars that will electric drive before mid to low end cars.
These are also the owners who will replace their cars every 3-5 years anyway.
Either from a 3 year lease or the 4 year warranty is out and they want
something new.

I don't mean to be discouraging but, it seems your market viability, if there
is any to begin with, is already limited to 5 years at the most.

I do love the idea of saving 30 lbs weight, it's negligible for most of my
driving in my sports coupe, but I like to feel like it's making a difference!

~~~
smeyer
>At your price point, performance/luxury cars seem to be your only market

Is this really true? It sounded from the article like they're only about $50
more than a typical battery, unless I missed something. I could see some
people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life and features to
avoid a dead battery, even if the reduced weight doesn't matter much to them.

~~~
trhway
>I could see some people with normal cars shelling out $50 for the longer life
and features to avoid a dead battery, even if the reduced weight doesn't
matter much to them.

my current BMW battery cost $130 and rated for something like 6 years - the
car is 14.5 years old, had batteries replaced at 6.5 and 12.5 years (both
times it wasn't dead yet, just on suggestion by the shop).

------
murbard2
So aside from what's been said, I can get this for $200
[http://www.batteryspace.com/Powerizer-
LiFePO4-Battery-12V-15...](http://www.batteryspace.com/Powerizer-
LiFePO4-Battery-12V-15Ah-180Wh-30A-rate-with-PCB-and-LED.aspx) and it has 50%
more storage than what is being advertised. What's the difference? The
supercapacitors?

~~~
sliverstorm
Yes, the caps. Classically the reason we use lead-acid in cars is its
tremendous power density. Here they are combining LiPo (high energy density)
with caps (high power density).

My truck battery pumps out 750CA for short bursts. That's about 12 horsepower.
Lithium batteries can only accomplish that in large parallel banks.

------
sliverstorm
One challenge in going after the enthusiast market is going to be, the
enthusiast market already has options.

Back when I drove a fast sporty little car, I got one of these:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002ILK6I](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002ILK6I)

$100, 4 pounds. Proven technology. I can buy it today.

Half the cost, 60% more capacity, and 2/3 the weight of this "Ohm". Smaller
too, from the looks of the "Ohm".

I'm not trying to rag on you guys, but I can't figure out why I would pick the
"Ohm", unless maybe it's got a really rippin' CCA.

Edit: Amazon is incorrect, ODYSSEY quotes the battery as 15.4lbs:

[http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc680-p](http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc680-p)

To compare like for like, we would look here:

[http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc310-p?pp=12](http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc310-p?pp=12)

8Ah, 5.9lbs, tiny, $163 on Amazon. I hope you can beat it on CCA.

~~~
conjecTech
There are other lightweight batteries out there, but they generally aren't
suitable for daily use for one reason or another. The usual sacrifices are
either lifetime or performance over temperature. The battery you linked is
only warrantied for 2 years and likely wouldn't work south of freezing - not
quite what you'd expect for the price tag. We think we can already beat them
on value prop, but with a little bit more work, we think we'll be able to get
them cheaper than other lightweight solutions and eventually price competitive
with a normal lead-acid.

~~~
sliverstorm
It does list itself as "extreme temperature tolerant" and suitable for
snowmobiles. And to be honest, a 2 year warranty from a long-established
company is worth more to me than a 7-year warranty from a company founded this
year that could be gone next year, no offense.

Just trying to share some of the challenges you face.

------
jhallenworld
It would be nice if the battery had multiple outputs: for example, connect the
capacitor to just the starter motor and have a second output for everything
else. This way all the lights in the car would not dim during starting (why
should the electronics have to deal with brown-outs?). Diodes could be used
for the charging current input.

------
trhway
it is only 10Ah! Comparing that to 45Ah+ typical car battery is like that
MongoDB write performance comparison without actual writing to disk :)

Such small capacity would work only for perfectly starting engine. Any issues
and you're out of capacity. Cranking an engine requires hundreds of Amperes,
like 500-800A. Thus each 10s of cranking burns 1.5-2.5Ah.

The CCA rating of a car battery is the current the cold battery can produce
during 30s. 10Ah LiPo at 30C would mean maximum 300 CCA - i don't think it
would satisfy any official reqs for any passenger car around. The super
capacitor produces higher current, yet for much shorter bursts. Thus again
only easy starting engines on smaller cars.

~~~
conjecTech
One of the things we discovered is it actually takes a lot less current and
energy to start engine than we originally thought. It's rare that anyone even
uses 1% of the capacity of a regular lead-acid while cranking. So we're
confident 10AH is more than enough.

The high capacity of most lead-acid is really just a side-effect of making a
battery that can deliver high current over a reasonable lifetime.

------
hughes
Can this battery be used to jump another (traditional or Ohm) battery when
required?

~~~
mankyd
Usually, when jumping another car, you are supposed to leave the car running,
getting power off the alternator rather than the battery.

~~~
X-Istence
You don't get the massive amount of power required for the starter from the
alternator. You leave your car on so that in case the other car is severely
broken or zaps all the remaining juice in your car's battery you don't end up
stranded.

~~~
prutschman
You don't need to; I used to have a really crummy set of jumper cables that
wouldn't actually pass enough power to start my car with the battery dead. I'd
have to stay connected to the other car long enough to let its alternator
charge my battery enough to start.

------
ilurkedhere
Car user here. I didn't know I had this problem.

~~~
blackbeard
You don't.

Also car user.

The battery in my Fiat is the one that was in it when I got it in 2006.

------
dmitrygr
1\. put this into a modern car

2\. do not drive for a month

3\. car's slow but steady draw drains battery to where it self shuts off

4\. attempt to enter car

5\. realize that it is a modern car, and without electricity from the battery
you cannot even open the door

6\. ...

7\. profit?

~~~
blueintegral
You should get a bit longer than just a month of disuse before it shuts itself
off. Are there modern cars that don't even let you use the key to open the
door? I know Tesla has the thing where the handle is flush with the door, but
are other cars doing that too now?

~~~
mycelium
I have a 2015 VW Golf that has no keyed entry, just the fob buttons.

~~~
blueintegral
Maybe it's hidden like this?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OECOoNYZXmk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OECOoNYZXmk)

------
itg
Wouldn't this need to get DOT approval? Also looking at the replies from the
founder, it looks like there hasn't been much actual safety testing done yet.

~~~
conjecTech
We've been asked this a few times, and from everything we've been able to
find. DOT approval doesn't apply to starting batteries. There are two
different things people generally refer to when they mention. 1) Transporting
lithium batteries above a certain size requires an approval. For this one, the
battery we use is below the levels they regulate. 2) there are also approvals
you have to get for electric vehicle batteries which primarily stipulates a
maximum amount of volume of electrolyte that it can spill in the case of it
being destroyed in a crash, which doesn't apply to us at all. If we're wrong,
and there is some regulation that does apply to us, we'd be more than happy to
know about it. Please link me to it.

As far as testing, we've been driving on it ourselves for 5 months now. We
have a cycle and temperature testing setup in our shop. We will do all of the
testing we need to before we ship to anyone. Our earliest customers are likely
to be the people in the world closest to us. We won't give you anything we
wouldn't feel comfortable with them using.

------
savrajsingh
I've been looking at ultracaps on digikey for a while, for just this
application. Looks like a great implementation, please sign me up for the
beta!

------
seesomesense
LiFePO4 batteries for cars are not new. You can even buy them on Ebay right
now.

EV Power is just one of several companies that have been making them for
years.

~~~
mfkp
I was about to say the same thing. I've had a lithium iron battery in my
motorcycle for years. I personally love it (it allows me to leave the bike
sitting for longer without putting it on a battery tender), and it's much
lighter. Just comes at a higher cost.

------
jasonlaramburu
Great idea in a very stagnant market. How do the LiFePO4 cells perform at high
temperatures? I've worked with this battery chemistry before, and found most
off the shelf cells have internal safety circuitry that disconnects the
battery at temperatures >70C. Typical engine running temperature is 60-80C (or
as much as 90 on a hot day).

~~~
conjecTech
Hey Jason, good question. It turns out to be a non-issue. Lead-acid batteries
have terrible lifetimes at high temperatures, so cars are already designed
with enough distance between the engine and battery and enough circulation to
ensure the battery is never more than a few degrees above ambient. The
batteries in our design also aren't generally active while the engine is
running. Let me know if that addresses your concerns.

~~~
jhayward
Very late on this, sorry.

I'm curious to see if you expect to get 7 years life on a LiFePO4 in hot
states. I just measured the battery temp (at the terminal) on my truck, it was
163 ºF. Road surface temp is 155 ºF.

This is quite common, everyday summer stuff here in Texas.

It seems very unlikely that you can hold a LiFePO4 at 100% state of charge in
a temperature environment like this and still get anywhere near 7 years of
life.

Are you doing something like using a 20 A-H battery, charged to 70% SOC or
something, to deal with high-heat/high SOC degradation?

------
sakopov
Perhaps I am in the minority here, but in the 15 years I've owned cars I don't
remember a time when I planned changing the battery. It was happens in the
worst time, most frequently when I'm trying to get to work or home. So getting
a new battery is always an emergency to get my car rolling so I don't get it
towed or start accumulating parking tickets. Getting an eco-friendly battery
is the last of my worries. I wonder how many folks out there feel the same and
how this could impact a novel product like this going forward.

------
netcan
I wonder what the long game is here. High end replacement batteries for
existing cars seems like a beachhead attempt rather than the real target.

Apart from the environmentals (see sandworm101), are debatable and the main
tradeoffs is weight vs capacity.

Sports car enthusiasts seems like the most likely market. Some of these guys
will drill holes into foot pedals to save grams. You'd need to look at what's
available to them to see if this would sell. Comparing to average lead
batteries is not much use.

Anyway, this probably isn't the long game.

------
venomsnake
> Ohm’s battery reserve comes in at 10 amp hours;

Have these guys tried to start atmospheric diesel at -20 C? That capacity is
absurdly low. I roll my 80 hp diesel with 7 times the capacity.

I see no benefit at all - you take something reliable as hell, make it
unrealiable by adding hardware and software, reduce the capacity, just to
shave 20 pounds of weight of a 3000 pound car.

If it was normal sized battery with some smarts - it could have been useful.
But the current incarnation is - works only in the very moderate climates with
mild winters.

------
saidajigumi
How does the Ohm battery handle extended cold conditions? I lived in a cold
climate for a number of years in grad school, cold but not block-warmer cold.
My experience was that I had to pay close attention to the cold-cranking amps
rating of replacement batteries, so they'd still be able to start my car under
the long-duress of winter. Likewise, I found that car batteries seemed to be
consumables relative to my warm-climate experience( __).

( __) explaining the plural "batteries", above.

~~~
conjecTech
It works really well in low temperatures. Supercapacitors don't store energy
using a chemical reaction, which makes them a lot less finicky over a
temperature range. We can also react to lower temperatures by increasing the
voltage on the capacitors to a higher, but still safe, level to help
compensate for the increased difficulty of cranking engines at low
temperatures.

------
aidenn0
I've prototyped similar with just 7 maxwell caps in series wired in parallel
with a lead-acid battery. The caps can start an engine entirely on their own,
and the lead-acid maintains the voltage when off. It works fairly well.

I think someone already sells a device to work like that for commercial
tractors, and I was wondering when someone more interested in starting a
company than I am would realize you could have a tiny battery plus EDLCs for a
car.

------
smoyer
I'd love to have a lighter bank of batteries in my (small) sailing yacht but I
need something that can be "deep-cycled". Getting rid of several hundred
pounds of batteries would leave capacity for more stuff!

I could replace the engine's starter battery with this one for a bit of weight
savings ... and it's protected from the "house" circuits" by a charging diode,
so there's no risk of discharge.

~~~
solutionviatech
re: batteries for sailing yachts: I've had good experience with torqeedo. [1]
Their products are good albeit expensive.

[1]
[http://www.torqeedo.com/en/products/batteries](http://www.torqeedo.com/en/products/batteries)

------
bbcbasic
I remember watching youtube videos of a guy starting his car with just a
capacitor a year ago (was it one of you guys?) and thought this idea had a lot
of potential. Good on you for bringing it to market.

Please be careful to not make it too 'smart'. I don't think a car battery
needs to be connected to the internet of things that can be remotely hacked
into :-).

~~~
blueintegral
We've been trying to avoid using the term "smart battery" for that very reason
haha. We don't think people would be psyched about having a BLE connection and
an app for their car battery.

------
franch
This kind of tech has been around for about a year...
[http://semiaccurate.com/2014/06/30/pretec-takes-step-
flash-c...](http://semiaccurate.com/2014/06/30/pretec-takes-step-flash-car-
batteries/)

------
PeterWhittaker
JOOC, what is the CCA rating? I don't recall seeing it in the comments.

There aren't many of us who run winches, but thems of us that do want quite a
few (650 CCA is not uncommon, and some winch manufacturers recommend deep
cycle batteries like the Yellowtop Optima).

~~~
aggie
Their site says '550+'. From the sound of it, this battery would not be suited
to running a winch for more than a quick pull.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
That was my impression, as well.

------
kseifried
How does this battery handle -40C weather? What about sitting at -40C for say
12 hours (not everywhere has plugins for block heaters). Currently a ~$100
winter battery will handle that no problem. I'm from Canada so this is not a
hypothetical question.

~~~
conjecTech
We think we can make it work, but we don't want to promise anything before
we're certain we can delivery. If you're in that kind of environment, we'd
love to have you test a unit over the winter and help find out for sure. Feel
free to drop me an email at hello@getohm.com.

------
kazinator
> _Oh, and its lifespan (7 years) is about twice that of a lead-acid battery
> (3-4 years)._

Nonsense; lead acid batteries easily last 5 years or more.

Since the article lowballs the life of a lead-acid battery, it's reasonable to
suspect that it's likewise overestimating the seven year life of this new
battery, which would make them about equal.

> _They’re filled with garbage materials that are terrible for the planet._

More FUD. The garbage materials are sealed, and batteries get recycled. Places
that sell you the new one take back the old one, generally.

Battery places are not going to know what to do with this new-fangled thing.

So it's down to the 6 pounds and gas mileage. Okay, realistically, let's talk
about the environment now: this is for an internal-combustion-engine car that
spews several tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. If you want to save the
planet, ride a bicycle. Still, this could make in excess of a one percent
difference in fuel economy, which is significant, and will easily more than
pay for the battery. Say you spend 200 bucks on fuel per month. Get 3 of those
back thanks to the 6 pound battery, that's 36 over 12 months. If it holds up
for 10 years, 360 saved.

Easier on the lower back is a plus. For many people, this is a do not care;
only the DIY battery swappers who do it in the parking lot will be somewhat
relieved, as well as the people who swap batteries as part of their work
duties.

Poor capacity is a minus. People don't just run the stereo while parked;
sometimes they have the headlights on or use other accessories, not always
ones built-into the car. On a warm day you might listen to the stereo, _and_
have a fan circulating the air. How about emergencies? If you're stranded
somewhere with a dead engine, it's better to have more battery capacity than
less for whatever. Flashing your lights at another car, say.

> _They die without warning_

That is not entirely true: there are in fact warning signs which, combined
with age (being say > 5 years) add up to "change the battery". A lead-acid
batter that has given you five warnings will then die without an _additional_
warning, if five warnings is all which that battery has been blessed with.
Those who don't recognize the warnings of course curse the battery for dying
without a warning.

Who is to say this battery won't exhibit sudden failure modes? Suppose the
business takes off and millions of these that are actually sold to consumers
are made in sweatshops overseas, with all kinds of corners cut to save costs.
Will _those_ units still hold up? Let's compare prototype to prototype,
shipping product on the shelves with shipping product on the shelves.

~~~
fredkbloggs
> More FUD. The garbage materials are sealed, and batteries get recycled.
> Places that sell you the new one take back the old one, generally.

Not just generally, pretty much universally. You can't buy a starter battery
without paying a core charge any more; according to the EPA
([http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/battery.htm](http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/battery.htm)),
99% of all lead-acid batteries are recycled. Not even steel cans
([http://www.kab.org/site/PageServer?pagename=recycling_facts_...](http://www.kab.org/site/PageServer?pagename=recycling_facts_and_stats)),
the most recycled container type, come close.

You would not be far wrong in claiming that the lead-acid battery is the
world's most environmentally friendly manufactured product. I don't blame Ohm
directly for TC's hyperbole; TC is a known rag. But still... have the decency
to stand up for the facts.

------
bliti
@Founders: Any data comparing it to Optima batteries?

~~~
conjecTech
Coming in the near future! Anything in particular you want to see? I can make
sure it's included.

~~~
bliti
Knowing how it compares in terms of physical durability would be useful. Not
interested in your battery matching the optima, but more to see how it
compares. Do you plan to offer an off road version (for cars not street
legal)?

------
teekert
Perhaps it is time to start using CMSs that translate units into local units
as can already be done for timezones. Just a thought :)

------
frgewut
I have always wondered whether it would be possible to remove alternator from
ICE cars and substitute it with a chargeable battery.

------
legulere
I wonder how this will play with deposit refund systems for lead acid car
batteries like they exist for instance in Germany.

------
digitalneal
I could see this being an attractive solution for a battery to power electric
turbos but not as a main battery replacement.

------
walshemj
Is the weight/size of a battery really that important in the total mass of a
car - what's the USP here.

------
toddkazakov
> With that in mind, Ohm is focusing on the performance car market first.
> Those are the guys that’ll rip out their passenger seats to gain a tiny
> performance gain on the track

Give me a break. With 10 amp hours my car will probably not be able to make
through a single engine start.

------
gcb0
if it is so smaller inside the big case, why not pack twice the caps and have
double the running time/service life?

~~~
JshWright
I suspect the limiting factor is cost.

~~~
blueintegral
Yeah, the supercaps are our most expensive BOM item.

------
jchomali
This is great!

------
curiousjorge
so another inaccurate and unscientific claims that investors love throwing
their money at because it's a startup. Techcrunch is like the tabloids for
questionable startups and it's really hurt the perceived quality. I've built a
filter mechanism for TC since a few years ago when they just became a
dvertising platform rather than a serious journalism

~~~
conjecTech
What claims do you find dubious? I'd be more than happy to try to provide some
support for them.

------
kevin_thibedeau
>if it’s ever about to reach the point that it’ll no longer be able to start
your car, it’ll just turn itself off. Your lights will fade out and the radio
will go quiet

Hope you don't plan on selling in the US because this behavior is going to get
you sued into oblivion by the family of whoever ends up dead because the
lights turned off abruptly on a vehicle with a faulty charging system.

~~~
logicallee
This could be rephrased as:

"I do see a potential problem with lights turning off abruptly, for example if
an accident occurs as a result it could open up the company to a lawsuit, even
if it is the result of a faulty charging system."

I personally wouldn't agree (do normal battery makers get sued whenever a
battery dies?) but it would no longer be gratuitously negative.

