battle born when they first camp out was one of a small number of importers/assemblers in the US targiting the rv market. they went with the smaller cilindrical cells, why I am not sure but I can only speculate becayse they were cheep and that system was being used in ev's at the time, and prismatic cells were fairly new and more expensive. now days you can get a cell compatable with what they use for 1.49/cell (Cdn) and there are 120 cells in a 100AH battery so that works out to just under 130US for the cells. now there is more labour as they have to make thoes batteries into serries parralel situation, basicly building 4 cells and assembling it into a battery. so you basicly have to spot weld all thoes batteries togeather into cell groups making over 240 points of failure, in my opinion.
when I build a battery out of prismatic cells I have to screw down 8 termanals, and I use a torque wrench. so I have much less chance of failure in a vibration atmosphere. some cheeper batteries that use prismatic cells do use laser welding to joint the batteries directly to a busbar, but thats far to pricy for me, who just builds stuff for family and friends, for free mind you 🤔 they do supply what I need to build it though, its more of a hobby for me.
now I digress, to get back on topick when they went to the market there were only a small handfull of compettitors, I think dakota and iconic who were using prismatic cells and they are all about 1000 bucks for a 100Ah. as lithium dropped in price more people got into the game starting the price drop that went on for the last 10-12 years. a good example of this is 3 years ago I bought the urrent cells I am using for 160.00US/Cell so by the time I got them shipped and such to canada, I made the mistake of ordering them from a US company instead of direct from china as I was in a hurry so all in all it was 900 (cdn) bucks to my door with exchange shipping taxes and the cross boarder charges. today I can order the new version of the same sized cell that is 314Ah instead of 304 for about 55US each to my door. so 220US plus say another 200US you can have a 300AH battery if you build it yourself saving about 180 ovewr buying a watt cycle 314Ah. dragonfly energy (battleborn's parent company) is still asking over 3400cdn for a 270AH battery at the rv dealerships.
so what it boiles down to is battle born had an exceptional markiting and pr department and managed to convince people that they were worth the extra money and never dropped their pricing as the market dropped. in any world except the consumers thats a win, the problem as we see now they made some design choices that were suspect and instead of changing it years ago and redesigning it when they started having issues, they blamed it on abuse. it worked because no one ever opened them up till now. now they have to stick to that design feature and deny there is any issues or they can open them up to a lot of recalls, like every battery they ever made for the most part. no company could withstand that so it is understandable why they are digging in and fighting so hard.
I have a feeling it is going to come down to a class action suit, which is to bad as people will probably get pennies on the dollar for a settlement.
