With the continuous enhancement of social environmental protection awareness, the demand for battery forklifts is increasing year by year. At present, the number of lead-acid battery differential forklifts in China has reached 65,000 each year, accounting for about 30% of the total market demand. With reference to the development history of forklifts in Europe, the United States, and other countries, it is an inevitable trend to increase the proportion of domestic battery forklifts from 30% to 50%-70% in the future.
While experiencing the various environmental advantages of battery forklifts, customers have gradually discovered some limitations of lead-acid batteries, such as flammable hydrogen gas is generated when charging and has a pungent odor; battery life is often not satisfactory, and the battery life is not satisfactory. The increase in the number of charging decays rapidly. Generally, domestic batteries are about 800 times, and imported lead-acid batteries are about 1200 times; the charging time of lead-acid batteries is longer than the battery life after charging. Customers with heavy workloads need to configure multiple sets of batteries. The battery needs to be replaced frequently; the daily maintenance of lead-acid batteries is cumbersome and the labor cost is high. These limitations often become a problem for customers who use lead-acid batteries in daily use.
To solve the limitations of lead-acid batteries, United Forklift Leasing withdrew from the business of lithium-ion battery leasing. Compared with lead-acid batteries, lithium batteries have the following further advantages:
The lithium battery is fully enclosed, does not produce gas when charging, it is a daily maintenance-free battery.
The lithium battery has a fast charging function, and the full charging time is 1-2 hours. Customers can use the lunch break or other work breaks to recharge at any time, which can greatly reduce the ratio of spare batteries.
Lithium battery decays slowly, with a lifespan of 3500-4000 cycles of charging. When it reaches 4000 cycles of charging, the discharge rate can still reach 80%. The lead-acid battery maintains an 80% discharge rate, the domestic battery is charged 800 times, and the imported battery is charged 1000-1200 times.
The charging efficiency of lithium batteries is 95%, compared with the charging efficiency of lead-acid batteries of 75%, which means that when a battery of the same capacity is charged, the power required to charge a lithium battery is more than 20% less than that of a lead-acid battery. For large-volume customers, the savings in electricity bills is a very substantial cost reduction.
As a new energy battery, although lithium batteries have unique technical advantages that lead-acid batteries do not have, on the other hand, lithium batteries also have their price disadvantages. Lithium batteries of equal capacity are generally 3 to 5 times the price of lead-acid batteries. The rental price of batteries is basically 3-5 times that of lead-acid batteries. Combining the advantages and disadvantages of lithium batteries, the use of lithium batteries is especially suitable for the following customers' working conditions, where the battery consumption is large, each electric forklift is equipped with 2-3 sets of lead-acid batteries, and customers who need to replace the batteries frequently, such as the logistics industry. There are strict requirements for the charging environment for customers who do not allow flammable gas and pungent odors, such as the food and beverage industry, medicine, and chemical industries. For customers with fine management of overall operating costs, consider that the cost of electricity saving is sufficient to offset the increase in the rental cost of the lithium battery body customer.
