Brands, manufacturer, country of origin, etc yadda yadda....

[JohnRoberts]

I recently needed to buy a new battery for my '97 stang..... not bad only the second battery replacement in some 17 years of use.

Last time I bought a sears die hard  as a well known car battery brand, but these days the die hard only has an 18 month warranty which does not sound like they even trust them.

I did some WWW research and it looks like most of these are made in USA by a handful of domestic companies to keep shipping costs down.

So I did comparisons from the usual car parts suspects and all the different brand's model for my car had identical cold cranking amp specs, etc, which made me suspicious that they are all the same battery, so then I googled consumer reports about battery brands and they essentially said that brands should not be trusted since some of the highest rated and lowest rated batteries come from the same brands. This makes sense if all the brands share common designs and some battery models just happen to be more successful designs than others.

Prices for these otherwise identical batteries varied between the lowest (walmart) at $103 and as high as $129.00 from one of the car parts chains, but the more expensive brand website offered special coupons to get  that price down into the ballpark of the others $110 net or so.  Most offered free testing and free installation, with a core charge for the old battery $12-19.

Then I started looking at warranties and the longest was Ford, some 70 something months but i didn't bother to check their price (I don't trust the ford service department 25 miles away). To my surprise Walmart had a 5 year warranty. 3 year full replacement , and an additional 2 years with a pro-rated replacement benefit.

Since Walmart was the cheapest by a bunch, and had close to the longest warranty I decided to give them the sale. Apparently the free installation is only at the large Walmarts and I bought mine at the much closer mini-Walmart, but I am a grown man and can swap a battery all by myself.

The new battery is sweet and the car now starts like a champ even on cold days... After I got the battery in place I noticed a small sticker on top of the battery, actually a couple stickers, one said 10/14 so battery was all of about 1 month old when I bought it. The other sticker said distributed by "Johnson Controls"... cough....  Johnson controls is not distributing Walmart's "Ever-start Maxx" brand. The reality is that Johnson controls is a real deal battery company that manufactures batteries for numerous different merchants, and Ever-start Maxx is just the brand that Walmart stuck on the Johnson controls battery. Besides coming up with a cute battery brand name, the retailer decides how much warranty to provide. I noticed from looking at other Walmart batteries that some only had a 2 year warranty, while mine had the longer 3-5 year warranty. Perhaps this is based on their experience with different battery models or it's a subtle marketing thing. Clearly Sear's only 18 months  discouraged me from giving them the repeat sale even though I was pleased with my last Sears battery.

So long story short, most brands are made by the same small handful of battery makers so brands do not really matter that much. I was pleasantly surprised to find that these were made in the good old USA but that is probably a logistical thing. batteries have a shelf life (do not buy one that has been on a retailers shelf for 6 months) so if manufactured in China a several week boat ride away these batteries could be around  1.5-2 months old by the time they reach the dealers shelf. Then shipping cost is not insignificant, not to mention closing the loop for recycling the old batteries so domestic factories makes some sense. 

Probably TMI but not exactly what I expected.

JR

 

[Spiritworks]

At one time, Sears was my go-to place for just about everything. About twenty years ago the local store closed and the closest one is in a giant mall about an hour away. As such, I simply found smaller, more local alternatives for my auto and tool needs. And, like many others, I do a lot of online shopping.
Interestingly, yesterday I was doing some electrical work at a huge warehouse a part of which is used as an Amazon fulfillment center. Rows and rows of pallets stacked with goods from everywhere except USA. The one that made the least sense to me  were from Vietnam.

 

[Andy Peters]

If only I could replace the batteries in my cars twice in 17 years. The desert kills batteries. I'm on my fourth battery in the S2000 after 9.5 years, and I had to replace the battery in the Jetta SW TDI after 2.5 years.

The good news is that I bought the S2000 battery at chain store around the corner, and it died a month before the full-replacement warranty expired. Got a new free battery.

It turns out that the VW dealer was the cheapest for TDI battery, by far. I guess because the glow plugs need extra juice at start-up, as the required battery sources a lot more juice than required by the gasoline engine. Hence the extra cost.

-a

 

[JohnRoberts]

Yup, I would have expected cold climates to be harder on batteries but the dominant aging mechanism is losing the working fluid (acid) to evaporation. The chemical reaction is modulated by temperature so my battery revealed it's age related decline on cold days by almost not starting. I waited for a warm day to go buy the replacement.  8)

The battery compartment has a little thermal insulation around it to protect the battery somewhat from engine temperature.  I worry about driving it only once a week, and not many miles at that but that's life for an old car, could be worse.

JR

 

[PRR]

> distributed by "Johnson Controls"... cough.... 

Probably Johnson now owns the Exide(?) lead-batt plant in Pennsylvania. Been there for decades (maybe a century) under a couple factory-names, and producing (and re-buying) about half of the car batteries in the US and maybe Canada.

And that battery-plant probably does "distribute", has trucks that run the road to WalMart and O'Reilly Auto and Tractor Supply, dropping-off the appropriately-branded lumps at each store. i.e. in general the batts don't go from Pennsy to Arkansas to Maine, factory-direct. (As suggested by the date-code you got.)

FWIW, AFAICT, Johnson Controls also makes at least half of the higher-efficiency gas furnaces on the market. I have a couple dozen furnace manuals here. Half of them use the exact same illustrations and essentially identical parts. Some have "Brand Logo Here", some do not bother; but several say Johnson Controls on the back of the bottom page.

I bought one of these burners. The brand name was not on the furnace, but taped to the outside of the packaging. I bet the burners are assembled as commodity items, the various brand-names contract certain series, and the factory throws the branded manual and the brand-sticker in at the last minute.

There is also a One Source operation which has nearly all parts for nearly all furnaces, and that is related to Johnson.

Our 1991 Miata just got its 3rd batt. Batt is in the trunk, so the original was a glass-mat from Panasonic which musta been super well built, lasted nearly 20 years. I tried very hard to bring it back to good health, but no. There's many opinions on replacement Miata batts, but they all (except a high-price job) start to look very much the same after a while. And a LOT like the batt in my lawn tractor. I swear the case size is *identical*. The weight is a hair different but lawn-tract batts come in two ratings in the same case so maybe the "over 10HP" batt is also the one sold for Miata, except the terminals. (And in that teeny trunk, I think I'd be happier with the tractor terminals.)

5-year full-cost no-fault batteries were never common, and usually gimmicks.

Around here all batteries are 5 year pro-rated.

Sears should still have a 5-year battery, but pro-rated. I figure the 5-year batts had a 4.5 year timer, so you "had" to go back to Sears to get your few-buck credit.

I figured we were just renting on a 5-year cycle.

In fact we are, because 90+ of car batteries DO get recycled back into new batteries, and most new batts are built of re-processed lead.

You probably should not be paying any "disposal fee". The pollution from chucking your deader behind the shed or out in the woods is very real, the battery industry gets a bad rap, and domestic lead on a truck is cheaper than pulling it out of the ground in Malaysia or WTF fresh lead comes from.

(You used to be able to forensically ID the source of a lead object by checking the trace of tin and silver against a list of mines. No more.)

> cold climates to be harder on batteries but

If you read the CR reports, most brands offer different part numbers North or South. You might think we get more real CCA up north and you get more anti-oxidants in the south. But who knows what game they are really playing?

> brands do not really matter

Well, the brand-name buyer may have a choice of 11-plate or 13-plate construction. Maybe a choice of chemistry. Of course this "choice" is also guided by the prices charged by other retailers, and bottom-line greed.

If you are worried about battery performance, buy WEIGHT.

My "small low-power" (3 cylinder 66HP-- far shy of your Fours and Eights) backhoe tractor takes a battery #4DLT which is 20"L 8-3/16"W 7-15/16"H, 80 pounds. It is clearly sulphated from sitting idle while the previous owner played with his new backhoe. Yet it cranks the old Diesel vigorously, and when it fails I could probably put it in my plow-truck and get more use out of it. On this lump, AFAICT they *want* your old batt as part of the deal. 50+ pounds of lead in one place is not to be sneezed at.

 

[JohnRoberts]

> distributed by "Johnson Controls"... cough.... 

Probably Johnson now owns the Exide(?) lead-batt plant in Pennsylvania. Been there for decades (maybe a century) under a couple factory-names, and producing (and re-buying) about half of the car batteries in the US and maybe Canada.

And that battery-plant probably does "distribute", has trucks that run the road to WalMart and O'Reilly Auto and Tractor Supply, dropping-off the appropriately-branded lumps at each store. i.e. in general the batts don't go from Pennsy to Arkansas to Maine, factory-direct. (As suggested by the date-code you got.)
---clip---
Our 1991 Miata just got its 3rd batt. Batt is in the trunk, so the original was a glass-mat from Panasonic which musta been super well built, lasted nearly 20 years. I tried very hard to bring it back to good health, but no. There's many opinions on replacement Miata batts, but they all (except a high-price job) start to look very much the same after a while. And a LOT like the batt in my lawn tractor. I swear the case size is *identical*. The weight is a hair different but lawn-tract batts come in two ratings in the same case so maybe the "over 10HP" batt is also the one sold for Miata, except the terminals. (And in that teeny trunk, I think I'd be happier with the tractor terminals.)

5-year full-cost no-fault batteries were never common, and usually gimmicks.

I don't recall the deal on the longer ford warranty, but Walmart for my battery was 3 year full replacement, 2 years prorated after that. 

Around here all batteries are 5 year pro-rated.

Sears should still have a 5-year battery, but pro-rated. I figure the 5-year batts had a 4.5 year timer, so you "had" to go back to Sears to get your few-buck credit.

I checked and sears was only 18 months... It was not what I expected since they used to be proud of their battery brand/business.

I figured we were just renting on a 5-year cycle.

In fact we are, because 90+ of car batteries DO get recycled back into new batteries, and most new batts are built of re-processed lead.

You probably should not be paying any "disposal fee". The pollution from chucking your deader behind the shed or out in the woods is very real, the battery industry gets a bad rap, and domestic lead on a truck is cheaper than pulling it out of the ground in Malaysia or WTF fresh lead comes from.

No disposal fee, a core charge if I do not return the old battery. So dead battery was worth $12 to Walmart.  Other dealers had a few dollars higher core charges but I suspect this is all factored into their higher gross price.

(You used to be able to forensically ID the source of a lead object by checking the trace of tin and silver against a list of mines. No more.)

> cold climates to be harder on batteries but

If you read the CR reports, most brands offer different part numbers North or South. You might think we get more real CCA up north and you get more anti-oxidants in the south. But who knows what game they are really playing?

I did not see that in local marketing... There was a similar sized battery (58 vs. stock 59 model) that supposedly fits in my car and had a little more CCA (610 vs 590), but i didn't want to mess with a bad fit for only 20 amps...  As it was I had to add an  1/8" shim to get the battery clamp (wedge) to firm up my stock sized battery in place.

> brands do not really matter

Well, the brand-name buyer may have a choice of 11-plate or 13-plate construction. Maybe a choice of chemistry. Of course this "choice" is also guided by the prices charged by other retailers, and bottom-line greed.

If you are worried about battery performance, buy WEIGHT.

33 pounds...  I looked at the weight for the different brands available locally and they all weighed the same making me suppose  they probably were the same.

My "small low-power" (3 cylinder 66HP-- far shy of your Fours and Eights) backhoe tractor takes a battery #4DLT which is 20"L 8-3/16"W 7-15/16"H, 80 pounds. It is clearly sulphated from sitting idle while the previous owner played with his new backhoe. Yet it cranks the old Diesel vigorously, and when it fails I could probably put it in my plow-truck and get more use out of it. On this lump, AFAICT they *want* your old batt as part of the deal. 50+ pounds of lead in one place is not to be sneezed at.

I wonder about the economics of shipping 33# of dead battery back across country, but most states have laws against dumping or casual disposal of old car batteries (probably to prevent lead contaminating ground water), so recycling on a large scale gets a healthy nudge from the state governments. I suspect the battery makers can recycle a lot of the raw material. The day I returned my battery to Wally world they had about a half dozen old soldiers in the same shopping cart  where I deposited mine, but it was early in the day.

JR

 

[PRR]

There's more about Johnson Controls' battery (and other operations) on their Products Page:

http://www.johnsoncontrols.com/content/us/en/products.html

There's a short low-IQ film clip about the recycling process. Sad skids of old batts are put in grinders and flames and make raw stock for new batts.

Johnson owns several famous brands (Optima, Varta) and obviously supplies many other brands.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Wow I didn't expect them to make 1/3 of the world's auto batteries.

JR