Note: This Bosch UK or EU product is not available in the USA.
Over in Europe, Bosch announced that they will be coming out with a new 18V 6.0Ah Li-ion battery pack. That’s right, 6.0Ah.
Advertisement
The new high capacity battery packs will deliver about 100% longer runtime than 3.0Ah batteries, 50% longer runtime than 4.0Ah batteries, and 20% longer runtime than 5.0Ah batteries.
The new Bosch 18V 6.0Ah battery pack will be the same size and almost the same weight as the brand’s existing 3.0Ah, 4.0Ah, and 5.0Ah battery packs. It will feature a built-in battery fuel gauge.
Bosch has made the new battery pack compatible with all of their 18V power tools and chargers.
Bosch has also come out with a new multi-voltage charger that works with 14.4V, 18V, and even their 36V battery packs. It’s twice as fast and half the size as Bosch’s previous 36V charger.
The charging rate of the new GAL 3680 CV charger is just 35 minutes for an 18V 4.0Ah battery, and 50 minutes for the new 6.0Ah battery.
Advertisement
It looks like the new charger has active cooling to help keep battery cell temperatures down during the faster charging cycle.
Prices: 185 Euros per battery, or 299 Euros for a rapid charger and (2) battery set
ETA: January 2015 in Europe
At the time of this posting, the conversion rate was $1.26 per €1.
We have not heard any news about a USA release.
Other battery announcement news: Bosch 5.0Ah, Dewalt 5.0Ah, Makita 5.0Ah, Milwaukee 5.0Ah.
First Thoughts
I really thought there would be more time until power tool brands made the jump from 5.0Ah to 6.0Ah. It looks like there’s a premium built into the price, probably because the 3.0Ah cells used to build these battery packs are so new.
Based on the pricing, I don’t think that the 6.0Ah batteries will be replacing lower-capacity high capacity battery packs anytime soon. Instead, they will likely be marketed as an extreme runtime solution for users who tend to use very power-hungry tools all the time, such as cordless saws or grinders.
What I find even more exciting than the jump to 6.0Ah is that Bosch is coming out with a rapid charger. One of the downsides to higher capacity batteries is that they take proportionally longer to recharge. If a 3.0Ah battery takes about an hour to recharge, that means that a 6.0Ah battery on the same charger would take about two hours.
The new rapid charger has appeal as a multi-voltage charger as well, but I am much more interested in its speedier 18V charging feature. A little over half an hour to charge a 4.0Ah battery, and less than an hour to recharge a 6.0Ah battery? Sounds good to me!
Tyler
So in about 2 years we”ll have 10 ah batts????? When will they stop?
Toolfreak
No, in about 2 years we’ll have the 6.0Ah batts, and Europe will get the 10Ah ones.
I guess they’ll stop when humanity ceases to exist, or nuclear winter forces Bosch to worry about things other than improving batteries for cordless tools.
Nate
I’m not going to go in depth, there are others who can explain it better than I on the web, but higher amp hour batteries can be charged at higher currents thereby reducing charge times if the manufacture used the right algorithms in their chargers. So that means if the charger is so equipped, double the battery size does not equal double the charge time.
Stuart
Higher amp-hour batteries of similar specs can often be charged at higher rates than lower amp-hour batteries.
BUT, power tool battery chargers typically deliver constant charging rate. In other words, the way the chargers work, higher amp-hour batteries take proportionally longer to charge.
Now, just because higher capacity battery cells can be charged at higher rates in theory, that doesn’t mean the charging rate can be bumped up in practice.
Higher capacity battery packs are built with (10) battery cells in tight formation. The charging rate is thus also dependent on thermal considerations.
Additionally, some users are going to recharge batteries straight off the tool instead of letting them cool down. All these things affect the charging rate ceiling.
Hang Fire
I haven’t checked the Bosch 18V charger, but most chargers provide 110V to the battery and let the battery’s internal charging circuit takes care of things from there. This is a versatile system for future compatibility, but it pushes a lot of the cost to the batteries instead of the charging platform. As a result the consumer pays for charging circuits multiple times. On the upside, one charger can withstand many generations of battery upgrades, if the manufacturer so chooses. Slower rate chargers are created artificially by blocking one pin.
Phil
I don’t know of any major brand cordless battery platform that has the bulk of the charger circuit built into the battery itself. All of the current Bosch/Makita/Milwaukee/DeWalt/B&D/Ryobi/Hilti/etc. chargers use some manner of switching power supply coupled with a processor and a means of measuring charging voltage and current, cell temp and in the case of multi-voltage systems, some means to identify the cell chemistry and pack nominal voltage before beginning the charging process. Because LiIon technology requires some fairly sophisticates safety measures when charging and discharging, it’s this circuitry that can be incorporated in the pack or in the tool and charger. In the case of Bosch 18V systems, very little circuitry is actually contained in the pack itself. There is only the cells themselves, a thermister for measuring cell temperatures inside the pack, and a set of resistors that are used in combinations to identify the cell voltage and capacity to both the tool and charger. The sophisticated cell voltage balance circuits, the voltage and current limiting as well as overload and over/undertemp protection circuits are contained in the charger and the tool. In the case of Milwaukee, the packs have more of the protection circuitry as well as a clever little “odometer” that tracks the number of charging cycles, the number of days since the pack was first charged, any overloading occurrences as well as an electronic serial number stored in the pack as well. This adds quite a bit to the cost of the packs. Makita and Dewalt have some of the cell protection in the packs. In the case of the DeWalt 18V LiIon retrofit packs, a large amount of cell overload/overdischarge protection circuity is built into the pack, since none of this was ever built into (or needed) with the original NiCd packs. This is also why you needed a special LiIon/NiCd combo charger to charge the the retrofit packs, since the NiCd charger doesn’t have any of the charge protection that LiIon needs, and the three pin pack connection can’t convey the same information between the two different types of chargers. The NiCd packs use the third pin to communicate cell temp only (via a thermistor) to the charger, to prevent charging a hot pack or stop charging if the pack overheats. The third pin on LiIon packs becomes a serial interface for the dual chemistry charger in order to properly charge and control the charger according to the needs of the pack. A magnet in the retrofit pack trips a Hall switch in the charger to let it know which chemistry of pack it is handling. A neat and sophisticated system, but all that smarts in the pack adds to the cost compared to the new 20V LiIon system.
In the case of these new, high-speed Bosch chargers, most likely the big difference is just a higher output current that gets turned up with a new style high power pack is attached. The new smaller form factor of the charger is nice, these days the components are smaller and more efficient than when the platform first came out, so making the smaller charger is just making use of what is available in the way of manufacturing. Bosch had two chargers, a BAT660 one-hour charger often bundled with the compact tools, and the BAT630 high speed charger used more with the fat packs and higher power tools. The latter has a fan inside that pushes air through the pack while it’s charging to keep the cells happy. Other than the fan, the only functional difference between the two chargers is a doubling of output current. Even the 30-minute BAT630 “fast” charger, which was rated for the charging time for the original 1.3AH slim packs, would take probably take around 2.5 hours to charge one of these 6AH packs, so a redesign was sorely needed.
Chris
At least with NiCD or NiMH, there is a theoretical “good” charge rate, for both fast and slow charging. That charge rate is based on the cell size….1C, 1.5C, etc.
Since manufacturers dont come up with a separate charger for each size battery, to be safe they almost need to design to the lowest common denominator. Which means 6Ah packs will be charging at the same rate as 1.5Ah packs….aka a long time.
Now they could make a higher charge rate charger for the 6Ah battery, as long as you cant accidentally snap a 1.5Ah battery onto it. But that makes backward compatibility an issue.
In the RC car/truck world, you can get (and I have) a charger that allows you to tune the charge rate. Obviously you can get into trouble if you overdo it, but with some brains you can charge different size packs at rates most optimal for their runtime and overall life. I cant see a tool manufacturer giving that ability, though. On the flipside, I suppose one could buy an RC charger that charges lithion packs and also allows charge rate control…..but it becomes really dangerous with lithion (instead of just kinda dangerous with NiCD or NiMH)….we’ve all seen the videos of what happens to lithion packs if they arent charged at just the right rate.
Bikerdad
I can see the tool companies adding such “smart charge” to their chargers, I suspect they’ve already started. The circuitry exists within the batteries now to assess the charge, which likely means it has to “know” both the minimum and maximum charge levels. Communicating this (i.e. the battery pack profile) in some fashion to the charger should be a piece of cake, given that embedding a digital signal into a power stream is has been done for more than a decade in model railroading.
tool lvr
These might not be able to come to the U.S. for a few years because of U.S. product safety regulators. This is a common cause of products not being able to cross the pond for our use.
The batteries are probably not too much of an issue, its the charger that may cause some issues with product safety companies. Remember, to keep in mind these operate on 220V over in Europe, so they would have to do some modification to make it work on 110V.
Dan
Except that we have to have 110v for site use for health and safety regs so all the major players sell 110v chargers here as well, they cost a little more though usually.
Javier
This is great news and it also means we can have 3.0 compact slimpack batteries finally!
Stuart
Not necessarily. Many brands that now offer 5.0Ah haven’t come out with 2.5Ah batteries.
There’s a cost consideration. While users might be willing to pay top dollar for the latest and greatest high capacity battery packs, they might not be willing to pay a premium for compact batteries packs built with the same cells.
Aellynh
Funny you say that, it is the opposite way around for most contractors I know of.. I see almost nothing but 1.3 and 1.5 packs laying around at job sites, with contractors complaining about short run times everywhere. If the pricing of 5 cell and 10 cell batteries actually scaled per cell, it would make perfect sense to buy the 5 cell batteries for folks that are extremely weight conscious for their tools.
Phil
The big problem is these 2.5-3.0AH cells aren’t rated for as high discharge currents than the 1.3/1.5/2.0AH cells are. Cells are available at 3.5AH now, but these won’t find their way into power tools at their present discharge rate, the current draw of a typical drill or saw when being bogged down hard or stalled can well exceed the maximum intermittent rate of the cell, causing damage. The reason you are seeing them in the large packs is that the cells are paralleled in pairs, then these pairs are connected five in series. The discharge rates of the individual cells is halved, with each cell in the pairs sharing the load. It is possible to create five cell packs from the 2.5-3.0AH cells, but there would need to be some means to either keep them from being plugged into high-draw tools, or, in the case of Milwaukee’s “REDLINK” technology, adjust the maximum power draw from the small packs to keep them in the safe area of operation at a reduced tool power output. The former would cause confusion and aggravation among tools users (Makita has this keyed exclusion system going on for some tools), the latter ends up cheating the user out of available power. In this case, the user can be aware of the compromise but still want to use the lighter packs for extended overhead use of the tool with less fatigue from weight. In my collections of LiIon tools, I have assortments of big and small packs for just this reason.
jerry
Phil, No mention of Metabo with the worlds first 5.2AH battery long before all the other players received 4.0ah batteries. shame on you, shame on you all.
regards Jerry
Stuart
Out of sight, out of mind.
Pablo
It’d be interesting to see if any of these new hi capacity batteries suffer under load, but it’s hard to say without knowing the chemistry.
For example, all the lithium flashlight guys know that LiMn2O4 batteries sag the least under load and can put out a whopping 30-35A/cell, but lag behind the LiCoO2 cells in total capacity (which have been 3Ah+/cell for quite a while now). The more resourceful ones have been making graphs of these batteries, which is really helpful for the end users (maybe too much info for the average tool user though).
Something like this: http://lygte-info.dk/pic/Batteries2012/Sanyo%2018650%202600mAh%20(Red)/Sanyo%2018650%202600mAh%20(Red)-Energy.png
Tjorven
These are going to be released in January in Scandinavia. Prices are said to be the same as 5,0 are today. Aprx 350$ for 2 batteries and rapid charger, and 300$ for two batteries
OnTheWeb
What is that red grid area near the contacts on the charger? That’s going to get jammed with sawdust and drywall dust.
Stuart
I’m guessing an air cooling fan grill.
Leon Akselrad
What role do super capacitors play in high Ah battery packs ???????
Stuart
Where did you see a power tool battery pack with a super capacitor?