# what does anybody know about Bestgo LiFePO4 cells?



## MemphisPapa (Feb 16, 2012)

Buyer BEWARE! I ordered some BestGo batteries in Feb with 10% down. I paid the remainder of the balance when I was told they were ready to ship in mid March. After I was paid in full, I was informed that they didn't pass quality checks. I'm still waiting for batteries to ship and I have no idea what I will get. All communication with BestGo ends in "so sorry". I am really sorry. $6k sorry. I've gotten every excuse under the sun including that the engineer was hospitalized. This is the most dishonest company I have ever come across. They have strung me along by promising additional Ah units, but now it appears those were all lies. 
I also bought a 2000W charger from BestGo, but it came with no markings and no documentation. I was told to install it and check the charge time.
The Electric Car Company has offered to make the battery order right and order HiPower batteries of the same Ah.
I suggest to stay away from BestGo.


----------



## kimpaw (Feb 8, 2009)

MemphisPapa said:


> Buyer BEWARE! I ordered some BestGo batteries in Feb with 10% down. I paid the remainder of the balance when I was told they were ready to ship in mid March. After I was paid in full, I was informed that they didn't pass quality checks. I'm still waiting for batteries to ship and I have no idea what I will get. All communication with BestGo ends in "so sorry". I am really sorry. $6k sorry. I've gotten every excuse under the sun including that the engineer was hospitalized. This is the most dishonest company I have ever come across. They have strung me along by promising additional Ah units, but now it appears those were all lies.
> I also bought a 2000W charger from BestGo, but it came with no markings and no documentation. I was told to install it and check the charge time.
> The Electric Car Company has offered to make the battery order right and order HiPower batteries of the same Ah.
> I suggest to stay away from BestGo.




Thanks for the reply , Having been burned by EV components on cells has left me fairly cautious. I will pay attention to your warning. Maybe it wiil save some others also.


----------



## Tedktis (Jan 20, 2012)

I talked to Carl at electric car parts co. today. Said he could ship the 100ah batteries asap, but the 200 ah take a while. Free shipping with 2 year warranty he said....etc. Hoped this 77 yr old man wasn't pulling my leg... anyone else deal with them?


----------



## ricklearned (Mar 3, 2012)

A short term life insurance policy might be important. LOL


----------



## Tedktis (Jan 20, 2012)

ricklearned said:


> A short term life insurance policy might be important. LOL


haaa! good one. LOL.


----------



## ricklearned (Mar 3, 2012)

I am approaching 70 myself, so sometimes I think I want to baby my Lifepo's to get 10 years out of them. However, there are moments, when I feel the fire of my youth, the whine of my AC35, and I just want to stomp on my pedal and see what that baby will put out.


----------



## Tedktis (Jan 20, 2012)

ricklearned said:


> I am approaching 70 myself, so sometimes I think I want to baby my Lifepo's to get 10 years out of them. However, there are moments, when I feel the fire of my youth, the whine of my AC35, and I just want to stomp on my pedal and see what that baby will put out.


Hope I feel the same way.... pretty sure I will. Nice VW!


----------



## Tedktis (Jan 20, 2012)

Was just thinking today (smoke out the ears), that if lithiums become main stream, China takes the place of big oil. I understand that we will be using American powerplants to charge them (another topic for debate), but ALL these lithiums are coming from .... China! I don't know what everyones reasons were for getting into electric vehicles, but I for one wanted to be free of foreign oil. Now it appears we are inundated with foreign batteries and pther components. What are we doing here in states? Please don't try to sugar coat it or say but the electricity is made here. Listen to what I am saying. Big oil. Big battery. Big Government. We all know that even the oil companies are buying battery patents. It's a shell game, everything gets moved around. I am sure they get a big kick out of us fighting amongst ourselves about lead or lithium, Bms or no Bms, AC or DC. I think we need to put our differrences aside and reconsider the whys and hows instead of the tech battles. This country has stood because people stood together. Look at the two World Wars, people came together, sacrificed, even their lives for us to be where we are today. Fighting each other at times and under the oppression of a big gov't and big oil. Now, big batteries.

Does anyone know how much $ China has lemded us? Trillions?


----------



## butkus1801 (Jun 10, 2011)

Tedktis said:


> Was just thinking today (smoke out the ears), that if lithiums become main stream, China takes the place of big oil. I understand that we will be using American powerplants to charge them (another topic for debate), but ALL these lithiums are coming from .... China! I don't know what everyones reasons were for getting into electric vehicles, but I for one wanted to be free of foreign oil. Now it appears we are inundated with foreign batteries and pther components. What are we doing here in states? Please don't try to sugar coat it or say but the electricity is made here. Listen to what I am saying. Big oil. Big battery. Big Government. We all know that even the oil companies are buying battery patents. It's a shell game, everything gets moved around. I am sure they get a big kick out of us fighting amongst ourselves about lead or lithium, Bms or no Bms, AC or DC. I think we need to put our differrences aside and reconsider the whys and hows instead of the tech battles. This country has stood because people stood together. Look at the two World Wars, people came together, sacrificed, even their lives for us to be where we are today. Fighting each other at times and under the oppression of a big gov't and big oil. Now, big batteries.
> 
> Does anyone know how much $ China has lemded us? Trillions?


Good point. Trying to save too much money is killing us. Maybe, selling our souls to save a buck. If manufacturing is outsourced to other countries where labor is cheaper, we "save money" on an individual consumer level, but on a larger scale, a good portion of the money has left US hands, we sent it to another country. This might be understanable if there were some balance or reciprocity of manufacturing between nations, but we outsource too much. And all this seems to be unregulated. So, following this back to batteries, does A123 (US company) make anything comparable to BestGo or HiPower?


----------



## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

butkus1801 said:


> So, following this back to batteries, does A123 (US company) make anything comparable to BestGo or HiPower?


Sure...they have factories in China or Korea making cylindrical or pouch cells...

Their primary customer was Fisker Automotive (US company) with their Karma (Finland). Both have had enough recalls that no one is sure of their future.


----------



## StanSimmons (Sep 3, 2011)

It is kind of hard to "Buy American" cells when the only American companies that are making LiFePO4 cells refuse to sell, and won't even TALK to individuals who want to buy.


----------



## Tedktis (Jan 20, 2012)

StanSimmons said:


> It is kind of hard to "Buy American" cells when the only American companies that are making LiFePO4 cells refuse to sell, and won't even TALK to individuals who want to buy.


Very true, which still leaves us, and many companies, buying from China. There is the battery for the volt, which is going into an American car, but we've paid for that and then some; Gov't Motors. Btw-Nice ST1100 build!


----------



## butkus1801 (Jun 10, 2011)

StanSimmons said:


> It is kind of hard to "Buy American" cells when the only American companies that are making LiFePO4 cells refuse to sell, and won't even TALK to individuals who want to buy.


Which explains why I can't find any, and then why I threw in the question here. How hard could it be to start an American LiFePO4 company that sells to individuals? Anyone want to try?


----------



## StanSimmons (Sep 3, 2011)

butkus1801 said:


> Which explains why I can't find any, and then why I threw in the question here. How hard could it be to start an American LiFePO4 company that sells to individuals? Anyone want to try?


It could be done, but it ain't gonna be cheap. First, find someone that will license you the patents needed. Second, find a US source for components... most of the powdered material the Chinese manufacturers use apparently comes from Taiwan. Third find labor cheap enough to manufacture the cells so that you can sell them at no more than double the price the Chinese are selling.


----------



## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

4th. US business red tape
5th. US Hazardous materials handling red tape
6th. US Hazardous materials shipping red tape
7th. US mandatory health care red tape
...
...
...


----------



## Tedktis (Jan 20, 2012)

butkus1801 said:


> Which explains why I can't find any, and then why I threw in the question here. How hard could it be to start an American LiFePO4 company that sells to individuals? Anyone want to try?


I'm in!...............


----------



## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Looking through the DIY garage the majority of the cars I see are foreign. Even the Fords and S10’s have foreign parts in them. There are also quite a few Zivan chargers as well as other foreign makes. It is a good bet that the guts of the American made chargers and controllers for that matter come from good old China. So we are going just have to say our foreign made vehicles have foreign made full tanks that at this time in history we fill with American made electricity.


----------



## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

That works if you keep your car coal fired...if it's running on wind or solar it's probably Chinese made 

I think it's really a losing battle. All I can say is my EV was assembled in America...that's more than I can say for my wife's Canadian Dodge Grand Caravan.


----------



## Tedktis (Jan 20, 2012)

The fact is we are in a globally based economy, but I feel very proud when I buy something that says, and is(mostly) made in America. I'm all for foreign and domestic merchandise, but lets face it we have allowed it to reach an unbalanced level. Look what this country accomplished in the last 100 years, and yes a lot of it was immigrants, and still is! Don't ever just give up, that's the reason most of us are here; we have a great vision for the future of our country. Proud to be American, still. 

Sorry to have hijacked the thread back to the Bestgo battery; $1.25 per ah? Free shipping on 100ah and over? Free bus bars? Two year warranty? too good to be true, but I am really torn on these Bestgo batteries. Part of me wants to take that risk, then there is my bank account. lol. I just can't find enough reviews to justify the risk at this point. Anybody up for hijacking some Volt batteries? lol.


----------



## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

I see a trend with batteries and ev’s that I saw in S. Calif. back in the seventies with chopper motorcycles. Some of you might remember the seventies. Choppers were all the rage. Just about every guy in my age bracket had to have one. As the market grew custom motorcycle shops sprang up everywhere. Many of them were out for the fast buck and I met more than a couple of guys that got burned. I see the same patterns with ev’s. As the market grows so do the businesses that cater to that market. Fortunately we have the internet that allows more people to communicate these business discrepancies to one another. Maybe there could be a category in this forum for us the potential customer to read and give feed back of our experience in dealing with businesses under the company name much like EBay.


----------



## MemphisPapa (Feb 16, 2012)

So I bought BestGo (160Ah) with a 2kW BestGo Charger. I installed them in my car. I stand by my original comment. First charge is proving to be as much of a challenge as getting the cells in the first place. Nothing is marked or labeled to show model or type. I would not repeat this experience to save a few bucks. IMHO.


----------



## JerryBattery (Sep 8, 2012)

Tedktis said:


> Was just thinking today (smoke out the ears), that if lithiums become main stream, China takes the place of big oil. I understand that we will be using American powerplants to charge them (another topic for debate), but ALL these lithiums are coming from .... China! I don't know what everyones reasons were for getting into electric vehicles, but I for one wanted to be free of foreign oil. Now it appears we are inundated with foreign batteries and pther components. What are we doing here in states? Please don't try to sugar coat it or say but the electricity is made here. Listen to what I am saying. Big oil. Big battery. Big Government. We all know that even the oil companies are buying battery patents. It's a shell game, everything gets moved around. I am sure they get a big kick out of us fighting amongst ourselves about lead or lithium, Bms or no Bms, AC or DC. I think we need to put our differrences aside and reconsider the whys and hows instead of the tech battles. This country has stood because people stood together. Look at the two World Wars, people came together, sacrificed, even their lives for us to be where we are today. Fighting each other at times and under the oppression of a big gov't and big oil. Now, big batteries.
> 
> Does anyone know how much $ China has lemded us? Trillions?


Personally, most of Chinese people like American people than any other foreign people. We eat KFC, we love NBA, we like Hollywood films, we drive GM cars, we use microsoft windows, we use Iphones, .... 

I'm sure that the annual profit of a KFC store is sure to be more than that of a midium sized Chinese battery manufacturer. There're more than 3000 KFC stores in China now. So, no worry about the big batteries.


----------



## WarpedOne (Jun 26, 2009)

> Fighting each other at times and under the oppression of a big gov't and big oil. Now, big batteries.


Not really, dependancy on foreign oil is at least twice bigger than dependancy on batteries. You buy batteries once and run them for what, 10 years if need be or longer. If they don't fail they just get weaker unitl unacceptably weak for you. If current battery prices peak too high you can squize the teeth some more and defere replacement. You must buy new oil every few days at current prices or you are stranded.

Looking through $$$ ... a 50kWh battery pack at 2Wh/$ goes for $25k. Oil now costs me around 2$/l. Those $25k can thus buy me 12.500l of fuel. At 7l/100km this suffices for around 180k km.

And there is no other reason as of cost not to buld our own factories. If Chineese get to greedy/mean we can show them one finger salute.


----------



## ricklearned (Mar 3, 2012)

Don't we have a US battery company (A123)? They did make a stupid investment in Fisker, and that may put them out of business.

Kind of hard to blame the Chinese for that one.


----------



## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

WarpedOne said:


> Not really, dependancy on foreign oil is at least twice bigger than dependancy on batteries. You buy batteries once and run them for what, 10 years if need be or longer. If they don't fail they just get weaker unitl unacceptably weak for you. If current battery prices peak too high you can squize the teeth some more and defere replacement. You must buy new oil every few days at current prices or you are stranded.


Good points. You can buy batteries when the supply is there and the cost is good. Unless you have your own refinery that's not an option with gasoline. 



ricklearned said:


> Don't we have a US battery company (A123)? They did make a stupid investment in Fisker, and that may put them out of business.
> 
> Kind of hard to blame the Chinese for that one.


You mean had. Thie Chinese bought it out, just like the Russians took EnerDel. 

With noone making a practical EV, there's no US market for any battery company, just us.


----------



## Elithion (Oct 6, 2009)

Carl Clark of Electric Car Parts came to visit us (Elithion) last month (before becoming an authorized reseller of the Lithiumate Lite).

Carl may be of advanced years, but he is sharp as a tack, and seems to live by business ethics that may not be as common now days. I am really not concerned about his age.

I understand that Electric Car Parts does not stock cells. Instead, cells are air shipped from China: significantly faster than the usual shipping by boat, and long time through customs, but also more expensive. Compare that to companies that stock cells in the US (Evolve, Calib, ...), who went through the shipping hassles for you, so they can offer low prices.

My understanding is that BestGo was founded by the people who abandoned Shandong HiPower due to its poor product quality; supposedly, these people know how to make good cells, with good quality standards.
Strangely, there is no mention on BestGo's website about prismatic cells. However, you can find their spec sheets on the list of Li-ion cells on the Li-ion BMS website.


----------



## MN Driver (Sep 29, 2009)

Elithion said:


> My understanding is that BestGo was founded by the people who abandoned Shandong HiPower due to its poor product quality; supposedly, these people know how to make good cells, with good quality standards.
> Strangely, there is no mention on BestGo's website about prismatic cells. However, you can find their spec sheets on the list of Li-ion cells on the Li-ion BMS website.


The cells shown in your pictures are the old version that HiPower hasn't sold in years. It appears that Shandong HiPower New Energy Group Co Ltd. is still selling. http://www.hipowergroup.com/Company/ Not many have used the new HiPower cells but it appears that EV Blue(Wayne Alexander) just recently used HiPower cells in a Saturn conversion I just saw earlier this year, the owners are happy with the cells. The BestGo company is 11.5 hours drive away from Shandong in Zhejiang and their products aren't really even the same form factor. Not to say it isn't an offshoot but it seems HiPower is still operating for what I can tell. FWIW, the offers we've gotten from even smaller orders of HiPower cells have been extremely competitive. I just haven't had that much interest in pursuing it because a single order from China is not something I'm too interested in doing when I'm about as far from an oceanic port as I can get.


----------

