They are cheap (as far as I can see), because Hong Kong has an artificially low exchange rate to the US dollar. And they are not at the top end of the performance scale. And they do not have high marketing costs. I have used these batteries with no problems. I have even shorted them by accident :blush:. But they did not blow up and they charged fine after. And I’m sure there are other people out there who are using them on the weekends and have also found that they work perfectly fine. If I was running a model shop I would look into speaking to the manufacture or even one of the Hong Kong distributers and see if some sort of arrangement could be made with becoming the UK distributer for these cells, and see if we cannot bring down the cost of racing a bit.

The cost of batteries is vastly reduced for racers at club level and above from a few years ago, we used to carry 6 or more sets of 'factory' matched cells, we would use them once only at any meeting, that's 4 heats & a final or 3 finals if no one else turned up, these packs were over 50 quid each and needed attention between meetings, discharge, balance & charge. These days we can & do race on one lipo (second as backup in box) all day. Saving money & time.

The approval process also keeps the sport fair, you can assume now more than ever that other driver's don't have better batteries than you, we all have more power than we can handle.

ShaneyB seems to have this thread running twice so a bit off topic's not so bad.

but there is lots of good kit in the for sale section, problem when starting is knowing whats worth having & whats not. Visit to a few clubs will help.

Totally agree that the cost has been reduced. But cant we reduce it more? Realistically two sets of batteries I think is what you need to race. And if it is possible to obtain two sets for £30 rather than £80 - £100 why arent we doing it? When in essence they are the same batteries. Anything we can do to encourage more people into the sport has to be a good thing right?