Maybe I *CAN* get a Green Battery...

IIRC, Yuasa's are the stock batteries for motorcycles (at least for my Honda).

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Yeah, they are, but they only sell motorcycle batteries in the US. I believe it has ALWAYS been that way. Even if you needed a replacement battery for a Toyota, they would replace it with something else. The ONLY way to get one of those batteries was to buy a new Toyota.

Buy a Bosch one. Ive had them on my cars and never had a problem with them even with extended drained periods and lots of cold starting. My latest one was =A340 from costco and came with a 4 year guarantee! Cant go wrong at that rate, =A310 per year!

The company I work for has batteries labelled with their brand, and I was told their main supplier is Exide. I've had good luck with them.

Delco batteries also seem to be pretty good, as do Die Hard ones. I also had good luck with a Champion battery I bought at Sam's Club.

I remember seeing once in a review in Consumer's Reports that what mattered the most was the age of the battery when you bought it and how it had been stored.

Slightly off-topic (or maybe not), but I was reading an article this morning about the NanoSafe battery. They were talking about using these in UPSes in Datacenters, but they're also evidently starting to use them in electric cars. They operate well from -58 to +170 degrees F, can be recharged tens of thousands of times, recharge in minutes instead of hours, and are about half the weight and volume of equivalent lead-acid batteries.

I also recently saw some fuel cells intended to replace generators for backup power for datacenters. Pretty nifty, and they're evidently working out quite well. The one I saw was 19" wide, about 30" tall, and about 24" deep. (The 19" wide is so it can fit inside a standard rack.)

A more general statement about electricity was:

I took a tour of Hoover Dam while in Nevada. Very impressive. They're also taking a lot of anti-terrorist measures, including banning almost all commercial vehicles from crossing the dam. So you people in AZ and CA can sleep better knowing that. On the other hand, water levels in Lake Mead are extremely low due to droughts and increased demand for water downstream, so power generation is down. On the third hand, you fishermen better get over there. I've never seen so many bass and such large ones.

I got EIGHT YEARS of service from my last Die Hard! :-o

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If you read what I posted, Yuasa merged with Exide in this country!

Yes, but they're still using the Exide brand and technologies as far as I know, and I was also just saying that they make good batteries. :-)

Costco near me only has Kirkland batteries made by Johnson. I know that, because I just had to replace the OEM battery in my 1996 Ford.

sdb

Curious. Costco US (?) must be different from UK.

No, Costco is the same company in the US, UK &c. They may carry a different range of products in each country, though.