The Battery is a Lie!

Overheal

http://consumerist.com/5345986/are-energizer-rechargeable-d-batteries-aas-in-disguise

Gizmodo/Consumerist wrote:

Ever notice how rechargeable batteries seem weak and barely hold a charge? Mike Adams, a blogger for Natural News made an interesting discovery about his Energizer Rechargeable "D" batteries. The "stated capacity of the battery is just 2500 mAh - the same capacity as typical AA batteries." So if they seem weak, it's because they are weak.

But let's give Energizer the benefit of the doubt: perhaps there are technical reasons that reasons that rechargeables are weaker. In fact, at 1800 mAh, Rayovac D batteries are even weaker than Energizers.
But that can't be it. A number of rechargeable D batteries are available online at comparable costs with up to 10,000 mAh.


Adams discovered that if you take the Energizer "D" battery apart, you'll find a surprise:


"The Energizer "D" battery is actually just a cheap plastic shell surrounding a much smaller, low-capacity battery similar in size and capacity to an "AA" battery."


Batteries with the higher capacity are, unsurprisingly, significantly heavier than the Energizers.
So there you go. Adams sees this ploy as a concerted effort by battery manufacturers to dampen consumer interest in the rechargeable market, thus maintaining profits from a lucrative throwaway product. But whether you buy into the planned obsolescence theory or not, it's probably a good idea to shop around for your rechargeables, and to compare stated capacities.

wolfric

Deceptive but is it illegal? from my understanding the A-AA-AAA were sizes not capacities

Greenmachine

Interesting never heard of 10,000mAh AA's etc.
Remember taking 9v apart as a kid and they had 2 but type cells in them. Newer one apperently have 6 AAA in them. From what I can remeber of the bigger batteries D's etc they tended to have much lower rating than D's can't think of anything that takes D batteries these days some toys maybe.

dudara

Not a consumer issue. Moved to Physics & Chemistry.

dudara

Marvinthefish

Huh? I'm confused.

perhaps there are technical reasons that reasons that rechargeables are weaker. [sic]

Perhaps the reason this guy Mike (link to his Natural News article. The third page is just funny.) saw differences between "normal" batteries and rechargeable batteries is that they are completely different in terms of the science behind them! After reading his three page article (linked above) it seems he opened one rechargeable D-size Energizer (he was very insistent it was Energizer), looked inside, and said "That looks like a small battery inside the bigger D battery. This must be a conspiracy."

Perhaps Energizer decided that that capacity made the most sense economically? Perhaps a larger capacity led to much longer charging times which customers didn't want?

Anyway, "normal" batteries and rechargeable batteries are best suited to doing different things. You don't put a rechargeable battery in your fire alarm, because it eventually goes down to zero. You put it in your phone or laptop that's left running all day and night. On the other hand, you don't put "normal" batteries in an electric car, you put them in a torch or gameboy that you use only intermittently, but expect the battery to still have the same amount of juice in it.

Finally, I don't think this is meant for the Physics and Chemistry forum OR the Consumer forum. Might I suggest Conspiracy Theories? The guy who wrote the original article obviously has a chip on his shoulder with Energizer. It might have been science if he had opened up a number(at least 10) of "normal" and rechargeable batteries and looked inside, but he opened one rechargeable battery and wrote an article on the internet!

SOL

I have no idea where this belongs, but I don't see it going very far so we might just leave sleeping dogs lie...

Capt'n Midnight

When NiCAD's came out first only AA and AAA were full cells, C and D just had smaller cell inside them.

LIDL / ADLI were about the first in this part of the world where you could buy a full D cell. Most brand names still cheat.

Not a technical issue, since most batteries have the mAh written on the side, it's just the marketing gimps at it again.

A consumer issue , Like oranges you should buy batteries by weight.