Question about Batteries

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Tiamat
Batteries in terms of like Energizer and Duracell - they dont really make any money. Both companies break even with their battery business. Its the shaving part of their business that rakes in the real bucks.

As far as "AA, AAA, 9V" getting better. That ain't happening. Whats happening is a move to more rechargeables and other souces like compact hydrogen cells.

If you didnt know, Energizer owns Schick and Gillette owns Duracell.

I'd love to see some data that says they don't make money... in a world of corporate takeovers and sell-offs, any company would be quick to jetison non-profit making subsidiaries. Darn it, I can't think of the name of the battery company that I had never heard of before AT Hot Deals, but which is the (3rd?) largest battery manufacturer in the world... listed in hot deals occasionally for some smoking hot deals on rechargeable batteries... a fraction of the cost of duracell and energizer... Duracell and energizer have to be making a decent profit...

 

[DrPizza]

Multi-product provider Gillette reported a 5 percent increase in fourth quarter sales for its Duracell-brand battery business, coming in at $685 million, while profit in the battery segment climbed 35 percent, to $149 million.

what was that again about not making profits?

 

[fishmonger12]

Originally posted by: Tiamat
Batteries in terms of like Energizer and Duracell - they dont really make any money. Both companies break even with their battery business. Its the shaving part of their business that rakes in the real bucks.

As far as "AA, AAA, 9V" getting better. That ain't happening. Whats happening is a move to more rechargeables and other souces like compact hydrogen cells.

If you didnt know, Energizer owns Schick and Gillette owns Duracell.

if a company doesn't make money on a product, they either increase prices or drop the item altogether. and as expensive as batteries are today, i'd say they definitely took the increase prices route .

 

[darktides]

One of the engineers from some battery company stated that if batts had progressed as fast as CPU's that an average AA would have a life span of several years and unlimted voltage ratings, basically he said a AA would have as much energy stored as a 1 megaton tactical nuke

 

[Howard]

Carbon aerogel is used in ultracapacitors. Multi-farad capacitance in unbelievably small packages.

 

[harrkev]

Originally posted by: Calin
My Ericsson T10s had a battery twice the size of the battery on my new T230, and talk time is at 4 hours on both. I think it is safe to say that rechargable batteries are getting better and better.
I'm not sure about non-rechargable batteries

Actually, I think that it is safe to say that newer cell phones need less and less power.

I read that a lithium battery has about the same energy density as some explosives. Right now, lithium batteries are as dense as you can get for a chemical cell. We went from lithium-ion to lithium-polymer in the last couple of years. The difference between the two is NOT power, but simply that lithium-polymer can come in other shapes than cylindrical cells -- which means that batteries can be the shape of a thin piece of cardboard. So the energy/volume has pretty much peaked right now.

 

[gsellis]

Off/On Topic - I read a quote in Autoweek in the 80's that applies. "There are liars, damn lairs, and battery engineers." This was when they were promising the sun and moon for electric cars with batteries that would weigh less and be able to run all day long. Most EVs can do 100 miles today. Guess the quote was dead on

 

[deveraux]

I was under the impression that capacitors always lose at least half of the power used to charge them up. In all the energy equations for capacitors, charging it is always without the 1/2 coefficient whilst the energy stored within it is always 1/2 of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.