Lidl battery packs.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Some years ago, I bought the Lidl 18v combi drill, jigsaw and circular saw, all which use the same 18V 1.5 A/hr battery pack. And bought a couple of spare batteries from their mail order source. They're just fine - although battery capacity on the circular saw a bit marginal. But not really an issue with the spare batteries. The spares cost about 30 quid.

Their current range is 20v, and notice they do spare 4 A/hr batteries for

25 quid. The standard 2 A/hr ones being 13 quid.

Quite a reduction in a few years. Why have Li-Ion batteries come down in price so much?

[Bob Minchin]

LiPo batteries are in widespread use now and as a mature technology there are more manufacturers and the prices drop

[Theo]

Volume. Electric cars, energy storage systems, higher volume of sales of battery production machinery, more production of it (and batteries) in China. The target for cars is $100/kWh and we're below $200 at the moment.

However the price of a specific aftermarket component doesn't correlate well with the commodity pricing - it's more a case of the volume they sell of replacement batteries and how much they can price-gouge for (often cheaper to buy a new drill in Lidl than a replacement battery from the service centre).

If you are being gouged, worth noting that there are third party batteries available from China:

I wouldn't be surprised if the Lidl one is a standard size and replacements are available from there. (I'm looking at this for a 10.8v battery and there are some that look like they will fit)

Theo

[Andy Burns]

That seems to be a European manufacturer vs American Manufacturer difference, what they sell as 18V nominal here, they sell as 20V charged to the eyeballs there ...

[Tricky Dicky]

When Lidl brought out the 20V range of power tools unlike previously the tools were bare and you purchased batteries and chargers separately. I think the reason behind that move was the 3 year guarantee on the tools, someone realised that batteries are the cause of most failures. So the tools still have a 3 year guarantee but the batteries just the normal 12 months. The first time they had the new tools on sale someone underestimated how many chargers and batteries to have on sale with people doubling up on battery purchases they ended up with loads of useless tools. Second time round they supplied a lot more batteries which I took full advantage of by buying 4 and 2 chargers to go with the impact driver.

Richard

[Brian Gaff]

I'd have thought it was due to mass usage. Brian