Here at Trucks Direct, we have available the new lithium ion battery brought to you by EP equipment. We all know that being cleaner, greener and more environmentally friendly has become increasingly prevalent in today’s era. This is no exception when it comes to electric forklifts. In this article, we will:
- Take you through the positive impacts these new forklifts can have for your company in terms of performance.
- Discuss how being more environmentally aware improves business performance and reaches your sustainability goals.
Below are the benefits we came up with as to why you should considering buying Lithium-Ion forklift batteries for your electric forklift uses:
Longer Lifespan
Lithium-Ion forklift batteries have a life cycle of roughly 3000 compared to just 500-1000 cycles in lead acid batteries leading to a longer effective lifespan for Lithium-Ion products. Cycles are also counted in ‘percentages of charge’ rather than ‘one cycle’ every time you connect the battery to the charger. This means that 10% charge is 1/10 of a cycle with a lithium forklift battery, while a 10% charge at a lead acid battery is 1 full cycle.
Opportunity Charging
While lead acid batteries always need a full charge cycle of 8-12 hours to keep the batteries’ chemistry in balance, Lithium forklift batteries excel with ‘opportunity charging’. This is the practice of charging a battery for short periods of time throughout the day, as opposed to charging it in full all at once.
They can also be plugged in the wall and charge for 10 minutes during a lunch break. This allows for reduced stress when thinking about planning your charging times as well as less time and labour involved by workers swapping out lead-acid batteries.
Faster Charging
Along with the benefit opportunity charging, higher efficiency batteries charge faster, improved efficiency means a higher effective battery capacity. Lithium batteries can take as little as 1 hour to charge but generally take around 2-3 hours to charge while lead-acid needs 8 hours. Lithium-ion forklift batteries charge significantly faster and don’t require a cool-down period and don’t need to fully charge to resume operations.
Lighter Weight/Higher Power Density
A li-ion battery uses “lithium salt” as electrolytes which, when mixed with other chemical elements, improves its power density (the amount of power per unit volume) thus, indicating that your forklift truck will perform better and longer than any other forklift truck available on the market.
In addition, Lithium-Ion forklift batteries are relatively small and light and are only one-third the weight of lead-acid batteries. This allows manufacturers of Lithium forklift trucks to gain higher standards of ergonomics, greater legroom and better performance due to the smaller size and weight of the batteries.
Higher Efficiency
Most Lithium-Ion batteries are at least 95 percent efficient, meaning that 95 percent or more of the energy stored in a Lithium-Ion forklift battery is actually able to be used. Conversely, lead acid batteries see efficiencies closer to 80 to 85 percent which will increase your productivity potential.
Furthermore, greater energy efficiency ultimately means lower costs and lower emissions. Lithium-Ion batteries provide a wide variety of efficiency advantages, from consistent power delivery to faster charging capabilities and helps you take that step further in reaching your sustainability objectives.
Productivity
Lithium-Ion batteries are an excellent choice for keeping the forklift truck downtime to a minimum. They generate less heat than alternative power options and improve the ability to deliver stable voltage no matter what level of charge they have. This allows an efficiency improvement of up to 30% over traditional lead-acid batteries.
Maintenance Free
Frequently having to maintain your lead acid battery can be time consuming and costly. However, Lithium-Ion batteries are virtually maintenance free and don’t require constant watering, equalisation charging, or cleaning to extend the batteries service life. This consequently eliminates the costs of battery upkeep and the need for adequate battery storage infrastructure.
More Environmentally Friendly
Lithium-Ion forklift batteries are relatively environmentally friendly as opposed to their fossil fuelled counterparts. They are non-toxic and greener because they do not emit CO2 gas and pose no risk of acid spills.
Lithium isn’t a toxic heavy metal like lead, and directly replacing internal combustion-engined vehicles with electric forklifts using Lithium-Ion batteries as a power source helps reduce emissions for warehousing and storage unit businesses.
Step Ahead of Competition
Lithium-Ion batteries are the most prolific battery technology in use today and greatly helped the explosion of sales in the personal electronics industry. As of current, they haven’t had the same impact on industrial equipment as of yet but with today’s narrative of being a cleaner and greener planet, swapping to Lithium-Ion battery forklifts now can be a profitable and wise investment in the future.
Not only will it mean you can reach your sustainability goals but you can further increase the longevity in which you operate for years to come and over your competitors.
We hope the above points regarding Lithium-Ion forklift batteries have given you a greater indication to the future of forklift operations. If you are interested in purchasing a lithium powered forklift truck, contact us on 0121 314 6107 or fill out an enquiry form on our website.