James,
I'm on your side on this one, all of this stuff should be cheaper.
But you're comparing the cost of materials against the cost of the finished product. The $25 dress shirt that I'm wearing doesn't have $6 of materials in it. And it's not marked up by any crazy amount.
If you factor in your time and initial cash outlay, what would you sell your battery for?
Now add in a factory, workers, engineering, advertising, distribution deals, shipping, engineering, financing for inventory etc. The manufacturer/factory may only be looking at a 30% profit margin, then the distributor throws another 30-50% on top of that. It seems excessive, but each step isn't unreasonable.
How many of your batteries do you think you could sell in a month?
So realistically, do you think that this is a huge market segment today? Maybe eventually, but this is still pretty exotic technology for our purposes and they're competing with golf cart batteries from Sam's Club.
If I thought that this was truly a business opportunity, I might invest in it. (And yes, I did start negotiations with Chinese suppliers, it just didn't work out) For now, I'll keep my day job...
Fair winds,
Eric
PS: And like you, I built my own. The finished products are still too rich for my blood...
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, James Sizemore <james@...> wrote:
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> Built a bank from on market cells add balancer, over/under charge protection. Total cost for 90AH 24v would be around $1000.
> I like the mastervolt batteries I have never priced them, Again I would love to buy already made, and would even pay a 50%-70% markup if it came with a two year or better warranty. But alas to much greed in the world if the below is true, I find a 300% markup rather shameful.
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