Arnold-- habitues of this list, who like flagellating themselves by owning booming growth stocks like ECD, have deduced that I am a bit part player at Harding Energy as well as a Lucky ECD Holder(tm). End of true confessions.
I, too, am a Real Goods customer and enthusiast who marvels at them pushing such TOXIC metals so blithely. Why, I even sent them 4 Harding Quest cells and a charger, at my own expense. The response you posted sounds like it might come from RG's Dr. Doug, who is a fine fellow and EV driver, but who has been stung big time by inferior Asian product from yesteryear. The product they used to carry was so bad it had to be graded before it could be sold. They were way south of 1000maH/cell and had all the failures mentioned in your post. From my personal experience with about a hundred Harding AA cells wandering around our house and being torture tested by our kids (dead shorts, immersion in the pool, always run till the flashlight doesn't even glimmer, put in the charger backwards, left in the remote controlled sailboat completely discharged all winter, etc. etc.) I can say I have never had a cell fail and I'm getting on about believing the claims on cycle life. For that matter, I think most of the Asian liscensees of Ovonic are also improving their quality.
Real Goods ain't gonna be selling NiCads for long. Corporate risk managers won't allow them. Hospitals and other large users are finding that NiMh, with better density and no toxicity, is a better buy. Golly, they run longer and can be recharged as many times. NiCads cannot be sold in Switzerland. We have 50 state manadatory recycling, and woe be it the large user who doesn't. So we should tell our hospitals, employers, and friends about the wonderful NiMh. And we should educate John Schaefer, Dr. Doug, and the Real Goods folks. And, oh yes, we should use them ourselves. Harding has a nice chart that shows that one AA Nimh cell saves about $300 in one shot cells over its life-- attractive no? Does this mean my 100 Harding cells (if I could find them all in my kids flashlights and gizmos) are gonna same me $30,000? I think so. Great, honey lets go invest that money in ECD stock....... |
