A123?

[alpinehyperlite]

Has anyone heard of A123 batteries? I'm doing a trade on another forum: my rustler for a kyosho mini inferno.. (Good idea or not?)

And he said that it comes with a couple of A123 2300mah packs. What are these things? Are they lipo, nicad, or nimh?

 

[CharliesTheMan]

They're like a LiPo battery, but they're Lithium Ion. More expensive and you have to have a special charger but people say they are a lil safer. However, with the new LiPo batteries you don't really have any safety issues to worry about unless you use them or charge them improperly. I talked to some people about them for my crawler, and they all told me to go with LiPo, and I think the A123 cells are bigger and heavier. I haven't weighed them myself, but some other guys that were into crawling pretty serious told me that I could get less weight and a smaller footprint with regular LiPo.

Just for the record I'm in no way an expert on these batteries, I'm just passing on the info that I gathered when trying to choose a battery for my crawler. I just don't want to portray myself as some guru that I'm not.

 

[SMaxxin]

Charlie pretty much got it..IMO the real benefit to a123's is if you have a charger that can charge a123's at 10 amps you can put a full charge on them in about 15 minutes!

 

[alpinehyperlite]

Thanks, what do yall think about that trade? Worth it?

 

[Cupooterluvr]

Lithium ion batteries have a volatile electrolyte inside of them that makes them much less suitable for RC use, because if the pack gets punctured or damaged it will explode. LiPo batteries are safer because they use a polymer (plastic) instead of a volatile electrolyte.

I don't know the specifics of charging them, other than that LiPo's require a special charger.

The trade is mostly up to you. I guess if you're tired of the rustler you can expand your RC horizons by trying out the Kyosho.