SO, 18650s huh? Lets take a quick look at some other options

dont hold your breath^^

Personally I’m against lipo on quality build.(with exception of hardcore mtb) as it’s life cycle is only 200 typical and 300 at the best. it looses range/weight quickly. and such hassle to work with as it drift the voltage a lot. for budget build, why not. it is cheap enough to toss after done. I haven’y used quality lipo yet like the Tatoo series so I can’t Quote on that tho

i still run my budget build after a year and they don’t get unbalanced at all. At the beginning they did because i used a RC ESC but since i have a Focbox they are balanced perfectly. Range still the same and i have abused these Zippy lipos, ran them down to 2.5v, had to revive them with Nickel charging method

It could be my particular lipo, mine is turnigy 5ah. 10s 2p Which started sag a lot and lost about 15km range now at about 300 cycle. which is time to go now. I do get drift in 4 cells total out of 20 I have. it’s always 2 group that sits at the front of negative wire that drifts 0.2-0.3 lower. I had to revive this thing 2 times. and It continues to lose range. I really abused these as far as I could. Pushing 100amp discharge, 3.3 cut off, 40amp recharge. 2 motors set at 100amp so I occasionally pull about 160amp

It really is at its limit.

Yeah… Li-ion hold it’s capacity and cell ballance a Lot better than lipo.

all depends on the setup is what i am saying, but yeah liion is better for a more serious build.

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So for Fun, most dense 18650 avaiable that I found is LG MJ1 comming at 3500mah 10amp discharge,

1.4970cm3/wh!

The new tesla 21700, comming at 1.225cm3/wh if the cells are rated for 6ah. if amp rate is 20amp or better we can all use this for 12s3p or 12s2p even. making it 2.3kg or 1.5kg that blows the range out of the question. but probably won’t happen for another 3 yrs

let me know if you guys have any better offer, this numbering thing is fun

Mmh i did compare the lg mj1 to the Samsung 30q. It may have the better Energydensity but it sags hard compared to the 30q.

yeap it’s only 10amp and samsung often under rate their amp as their testing is few degrees c lower temp. I found 30q is very good balance with price range amp and size/weight. kinda crazy. I just wish we can have higher mah but same to less price. even 30q there is no competition at the moment tho

I looked at your numbers for energydensity, how did you calculate them? Did you just take the volume for the cells or did you calculate the lost space in between the cells into account?

Oh it won’t work if you calculate cylindrical volume. Like I stated first I calculated based on 12s4p form. so it would be cube. I did this way because it is applicable to esk8, rather than exact battery number.

For example you can calculated how much volume you want to accommodate or how much energy u want in given volume etc. So yeah I know it is not the actual density

NCR18650GA

My favorite cell… but I run a 12S18P pack, ~1Kwh

Or a 13S2P pouch cell pack made from EV batts, but it’s only .7kwh