Long term (4 year) A123 26650 findings.

That's a nice post :)

A few months ago I was also looking at A123 cells, but the thing that I don't like is that they have such a stupid size. I would really like to use them in some of my cars, but they just won't fit. My second idea was to use them in an E-Bike I wanted (and still want) to make, but as these cells only have a capacity of 2300mAh I needed to buy a LOT of them to solder some in parallel. I'm not sure, but I thought I would have needed 48 of these cells to have a reasonable runtime. At that time they costed about $7/piece, which would be $336 for all.
Anyway, my finding was that I could better go with LiPo's as they are a lot cheaper, and I could also use them in my cars. After some research I saw that I could buy these A123 cells for I thought $4/piece, which is very cheap, but they were directly from China and I didn't know anything about the quality of those A123 China cells. Then the idea "died"...
After reading your post I'm really considering buying a DeWalt pack, and some cheap A123 cells from China, to compare them and to get my first experience with A123 cells.

Could someone post a link of those 10Ah cells? That sounds very interesting!

[zeropointbug]

Yeah, you are better off for sure getting the latest lipo packs for your R/C's. However I don't see why you think lipo's are cheaper for an ebike? Do you mean Turnigy/Flightmaxx packs? If so, IMO, I would not go that route, too risky... those packs aren't quality built, you will most likely run into problems in a 2 years or less. I know Metallover is using them, but I can't see them being a long term investment, no offense metallover! Building A123 packs is surprisingly easy and fun actually, you just have to be careful not to short them out...

You are right, 48 cells is the number of cells I would be using if my brother goes the A123 route, 12s4p pack, split wired for charging. I have calculated that would give a bike a conservative ~18 miles range at a decent pace, say 35- 40km/h.

If not A123's, the the Headway 38120 10Ah cells.

HERE is the A123 10Ah cells, not much info, the 10Ah cells specs are on the bottom. Go to A123 Systems website for a pic of the cell, not much to look at though.

I am hesitant on those cheap ~$4.5/cell A123's from eBay (China) as well. We don't really know if they are genuine or not, if some cells could be dead upon arrival, whether they are used, so I don't know yet, still trying to find to people who have used them.