Lead-acid was the least expensive choice for electric vehicles in the past one hundred years. Lead-acid batteries are no longer the best choice for electric propulsion. Battery technology continues to improve. Although electric vehicles generally are thought of as much more energy efficient than gasoline powered vehicles. Batteries have been a barrier to high energy efficiency. In the past, batteries only stored 25% of their theoretical value. Now they have improved to 75% and more. The rest of an electric drive train is highly efficient. Both motors and voltage controllers are in the 90-95% efficient range. By contrast a gasoline fueled internal combustion engine is only 20-30% efficient and a diesel engine is 30-40%.

All battery technology continues to improve as does the safety of the lead acid batteries. The sealed lead acid gel cell battery is filled with a gel rather than a liquid, and it is not meant to be serviced by the user. Similarly, a "sealed" battery is filled with water and then closed so no water escapes during recharging and no water is added at any time. (It isn't really sealed, however. Valves on the cells allow gas to escape if the battery is overcharged. The gas cannot be replaced, and that cell remains weak for the rest of its life.) Both of these types of batteries have a tendency to dry up. Gas produced inside the battery during charging can shear the material, causing higher internal resistance.

The flooded lead-acid batteries are truly "deep cycle". Unlike the high peak discharge of the sealed starting batteries and gel cell lead acid batteries. The flooded deep cycle batteries have a long flat discharge curve and are designed to discharge to lower volts without permanent long term damage and shortening cycle life.

A battery's long term durability depends equally on two attributes: How it is built and how it is treated. The physical design chemical materials will have a great deal of effect on the product's long-term performance.

Equally important, however, is how the battery is used and maintained during its useful life. All batteries will last longer if it is not discharged fully between charges. Careful recharging and the using a charging system design for the battery chemistry used will also extend battery life.

Electric vehicle batteries now come in many chemical and cell volt packages. Cell voltage and chemistry should be the same when creating high volt battery packs. As we try to build high voltage battery systems in the hundreds of volts from two and three volt cells we are putting the cells in series one after another to create the higher voltage.

All cells are not created equal and this holds true to any chemistry or manufacture. During the life cycles the cells get weaker at different rates and the series is only as good as its weakest link or cell. As our technology has become better and our concern for more life cycles from our batteries. We are now using battery management systems to balance the strong and weak cells to optimize their power and life cycles.

It has been over ten years since Chevron Texaco bought the patents for the large format Nickel Hydride batteries. They sued Panasonic and stopped Toyota from producing electric powered cars using this advanced battery technology. The cars Toyota did produce are still running with over 100,000 miles on their batteries. All manufactures building hybrids us the smaller spiral nickel hydride batteries. This shows the quality and cost effectiveness of this chemistry. Lithium technology has arrived from China and we have seen a new interest in the electric vehicle market. China is doing a great job manufacturing and improving the technology.

The weight of lead acid batteries has always been the disadvantage to bringing additional range to electric vehicle concepts. Lithium batteries with the same energy density weigh less than 20% that of the lead acid battery. With the life cycles of lead batteries under 500 and the life cycles of lithium over 2000. The lithium batteries do not expel explosive hydrogen gasses and they are not filled with corrosive acid in unsealed cases as is true with lead batteries. These are the reasons E-V Concepts has stopped using lead acid batteries in all its battery propulsion conversions and new custom built vehicles.