Lithium batteries age even just sitting on the shelf. I fly RC planes and we store our batteries at 3.8V to lengthen their life, but they still deteriorate even when not used. Like anything else, I guess.

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nubinetwork an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Can confirm, I bought some Panasonic cells roughly 10 years ago for a battery pack, and have ~12 cells that didn't make it into the pack.

They've been sitting unused, in their original packaging, never opened... They're still sitting at the charge they shipped at, but the capacity is so diminished that one can't even run an esp32 for a day. I've tried cycling them to see if I can get the capacity back up, but I think they're toast already.

	▲	stavros an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, and those come at 3.8V (storage voltage) already, so it's not like they were sitting fully charged.

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defrost 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The article specifically talks about how this has changed with the evolution of chemistry in Li based car batteries.

I suspect the RC plane batteries you've been using for five years are not the same chemically as the EV car batteries in use in the UK for five years.

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stavros an hour ago | parent [-]

I can't read the article, as it's paywalled, but they're all LiPo/Li-Ion batteries, what's the difference? Hell, most cars just use the same 18650 cells we use, just a lot more of them.

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defrost an hour ago | parent [-]

> but they're all LiPo/Li-Ion batteries, what's the difference?

As I mentioned, the article specifically mentions that the battery chemistry has been changed and improved.

It neglects to dive into the chemical engineering specifics of such changes, as would be expected for press such as the WSJ.

I dare say there is as much variation in the attributes of the LiPo/Li-Ion battery family as there is within the borosilicate glass or soda–lime glass families (ie heaps).

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stavros 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

Sure, but why are you assuming RC planes don't use the chemistry improvements as they come out?

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JumpCrisscross 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

It’s a niche, small-volume market. I would be shocked if novel industrial battery chemistries are reaching it within even years of the frontier. (Less surprising would be small-batch novel chemistries. But these aren’t really comparable to the industrially-produced thing.)

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stavros 10 minutes ago | parent [-]

We mostly use the same 18650 cells everyone else uses for everything, it's not like we're waiting for custom batteries.

	▲	defrost 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Again, the article specifically talks about improvements in car battery life since changes were made to tweak the chemistry (very likely in small dope ways). The fact that the article states that this appears to result in longer life and the fact that you talk about your RC plane batteries not having a longer life would suggest that the fine specifics of the two batteries may well differ.

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avidiax an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Put them in the vegetable bin in the fridge, too. Should make them last much longer.