I am on the fence about buying a second SP140 battery. Anyone know if there is a battery update in the near future, i.e. higher density cells, bms, etc.?
If your wanting a higher output current
Ie last longer use Lipos life04 batteries
Higher current lighter etc
Rumor has it that there might be an upgrade to the some Amprius 500 Wh/kg cellsš¤£
Cheers
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Hey Jeff,
No news to share on batteries. Of course weāre always keeping an eye on how we can provide more powerful, cost effective, and easy to use batteries.
So far weāve really only changed the connectors since the original (and have adapters) but other that we still like a lot of things with the battery.
Iāve still been regularly flying my original for the last few years and plan to get many more out of it. It sounds like youāre safe to get another one for your SP140.
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The large 3.7kwh battery pack is out of stock and is being redesigned for a new version this is what I was asking about. If new battery is lighter/better with same capacity I will be a little disapointed for not waiting
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Curious on this as well, especially as the electric conversion kit mentions ānew 4.8kwh batteryā.
All new orders that have the large battery will ship with the new larger battery, it does weigh around 4 lbs more. Will have more details coming as production gets finalized as stuff can still change now. Its still a few months out.
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Thatās great news! What would be the expected flight time with this new bigger battery?
Weāre still in the testing phases but weāre expecting a fairly linear increase in flight time based on the capacity bump.
Remember, flight time is only one thing weāre optimizing for.
Weāre also looking at safety, cost, size & weight, longevity & ruggedness, in addition to improving everything the BMS handles 
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Thanks for the reply! Talking about flight timeā¦ Iāve been following Scoutās āvariomatic propā development, and Iām curious if something like that can/will be implemented for SP140, considering it can boost efficiency and flight time considerably?
I just looked those up. Holy cow - that was be sick. I doubt theyāre coming to PPG anytime soon, but over double the energy density and 3x the discharge rate? Dammmmnnnn.
Check out that thread linked, I wish it was that magical but remember there is a big difference already in efficiency of electric vs ICE. To summarize ICE has an optimum āpower bandā aka an āoptimum RPMā which is why many ICE cars have 8 gears but Tesla has 1. Think of a variomatic prop as the equivalent to having a gear transmission and youāll understand that the benefits are limited for ePPGs.
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Thank you very much! I get it now.
So hereās another one for you if you donāt mind (iām new here and just catching upā¦), are you considering something like a modular battery? I mean as a stock option. Would love to have the new big battery as default and being able to add the smaller battery for longer flights. I believe I could handle the extra weight!
It is already pretty āmodularā in the sense that you can get either the larger or smaller battery and easily swap them out.
Having an XL battery like you said is mostly a weight consideration but certainly doable. On trikes like we did here weāve flown with 2 batteries in parallel. If/when we have the time to focus on trikes weāll likely build off of that concept.
I think what youāre getting at is, could you do an equivalent to what ICE offers today where if you can tailor your exact amount of gasoline to your flight and have more fuel & weight for longer flight time and vice versa depending on the day? Because of the overhead of battery management systems, cells with different voltages and discharge rates etc, unfortunately electric will never be quite as flexible. Could you get close and do something like electric lawn mowers do to use a number of tool batteries? (see below pic) Sure, but youād be sacrificing a lot in weight, and complexity aka. cost overhead to handle more than a couple battery packs.
