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Comment by jbl0ndie | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused why your value proposition is that you can replace individual cells but your website also says it's recommended to replace all cells at once. Isn't that the same as the current situation where we have to buy a new battery assembly rather than replace the failed cells?

> When an E-bike battery fails, 90% of the time, its just 1 or 2 cells that are dead inside or a single electronic component. But since traditional batteries are spot welded and glued, there is no chance to replace the faulty part and you need to replace the complete battery.The infinite battery is different. It uses a technology that makes it easy and safe to replace any parts, including lithium-ion cells. It doesn't require any specific tools nor knowledge. It takes less than 10 minutes.

> For safety and durability, it is recommended to change all cells at once.

https://infinite-battery.com/products/infinite-battery?_pos=...

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You should definitely replace all cells together - a new cell will have a different capacity and could "charge" an adjacent older cell to rebalance, causing a fire (but a good BMS won't allow that - on the other hand you'll be limited by your weakest cells despite having put some new ones in)

For me the value proposition would be to avoid what happened with my previous ebike: after 3 years I wanted a new battery as the old one was on its last legs, and it wasn't produced anymore. Or what's happening with my current ebike: to avoid the same story with the battery, I am thinking of buying an extra one now while it's still produced, and it's outrageously expensive (550EUR for roughly 500Wh, which is about 7..10x the price of the cells if you are a careful buyer).

(You can fit a new battery to any bike with (sometimes lots of) extra work, but esp. my previous one had a weird solution where it slid into a rail above the rear wheel and it would have been a PITA to reengineer.)

So yeah if their thing works I'd consider a bike using it, on economical grounds mainly.

Exactly! That's precisely why we designed the battery, to let people be in control of their own stuff!

Our batteries have now be running for close to 3 years on shared mobility ebikes, so they are well-tested indeed! If you want more infos, send us an email at contact@gouach.com :)

At 199EUR without the cells, I'm _almost_ tempted to go for it. It's a bit steep but the savings on the cells would already make the whole thing overall viable. If it had the ability to charge from USB-C as a contingency solution, it would be an impulse buy.

Indeed! We've been asked for the USB-C quite a bit so we might do that in a future version, but it increases the BOM price for our shared mobility fleet customers which are quite price sensitive!

Indeed it's 199 eur, but it's high-quality, certified, comes with a waterproof and fireproof casing, connected, with real-time safety alerts, and when you'll eventually need to change the cells, you'll only pay 50 eur to refill your battery!

Compared to that, an equivalent Bosch battery goes for 500 to 700 eur (for the same quality). We're even compatible with Bosch gen 2/3/4 (non-smart)

Thanks for your message!

So the value prop are multiple things:

- you can indeed change the cells! When the industry matures, we might have a "second-life cell cycling" path where old cells are re-tested and matched so you could switch individual cells, but for now, as those "matched cells" aren't widely available we recommend you switch everything to new cells (this would cost an end-user about $50 rather than buying a new battery for $200/$300)

- our battery is also very high quality (passes all certifications, waterproof, fireproof, connected, with safety alerts)

- even if you need to change all the cells sometimes, getting back "pristine cells" rather than "damaged, welded and unwelded cells" will allow for multiple things: putting them in a second-life cycle for eg. energy storage batteries, and even better recycling (since you can get cells out of the casing, the recycling process is even more efficient)

- now the cells are perhaps 1/3rd the cost of a battery, so all things being equal, you'd rather be able to change all cells than throw in the trash the old battery

- we also have seen some batteries fail because of broken electronics, etc, which are just $30 to replace, and our battery makes it extremely simple to do so

Ahh, I get it now. Maybe you can improve the wording around this to make it less suggestive that your value proposition is I can change one cell when it fails. That's not safe. The value prop is I can change for a new set of cells cheaply when I get a failure in my current set.

You're going from when one cell fails, change the entire battery assembly, including any management electronics, case etc

When one cell fails, just get a fresh set of cells, at a fraction of the cost of a new battery assembly.

In the future, you also expect working cells to be circulated back into second-life use. Your casing makes this much more likely.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

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