What are the advantages and disadvantages of lithium-ion vs. lead-acid batteries?
Firefly is trying to drive into the wide gap that exists between battery extremes. On the one hand, people love lead-acid batteries because of their low cost and safety. Also, you can recycle and reuse these batteries easily, but people don’t like their heavy weight or poor life. On the other end of the extreme, people love lithium for its light weight, small size and run time, but hate its 3x cost penalty, compared to what a lead-acid battery costs. Also, we have concerns about safety challenges, as well as the operating temperature range of those batteries, both cold and hot, not being very good. We’re trying to drive into this gap that exists by overcoming lead acid’s drawbacks in terms of weight and life, but leveraging its innate goodness in terms of safety, cost and recyclability…the best of both worlds, if that helps. You were quoted as saying, with regard to fuel cells, that we are no closer than we were 10 years ago. Why, after all the money spent on R&D, are we no closer? The
