[terry.sc]

Originally Posted by LongRat

Yes. The fact is that performance-competitive 2S packs have been available for over 5 years at less than £20, but they aren't BRCA legal. A good example is the Loong-Max Tipple 4000 - I have run them in touring cars for years, without failure, and they have compared (very) favourably with others running packs costing 4 times as much. I agree that now, the Gens Ace packs are good value. The cells of this quality have been around for years but not with a hard case. The car scene is ALWAYS the last to catch up.

The car scene has usually been at the forefront of technology but cars have much higher requirements than aircraft, we needed to see lipos capable of supplying currents and capacity that were never needed in aircraft before they were suitable for widespread car use. Whether you or I think soft packs are safe is irrelevant, you've got to think that adding a hard case has to be an improvement in general safety considering the impacts r/c cars take in normal use compared to planes, so it makes sense to only allow lipos when they started making them in suitable hard cases.

Sure the Loong-Max Tipple 4000 is cheaper than a BRCA legal pack, but then there are requirements that cheap packs don't meet before they are race legal and that they must be widely available in the UK and have proper product support, I'm sure product insurance isn't particularly cheap for a lipo supplier. One supplier importing and selling direct isn't classed as widely available, and it also means the importer doesn't have to allow the cost and profit margin for any retailer in the final price so they can sell them cheaper. If they were to be BRCA legal the retail price of these cheap cells would end up being the trade price, with the model shops profit margin and vat added on.
I'm not justifying the high price of legal batteries here, I think the prices are pretty ridiculous myself but I can see the reasons behind them.

I have not run a touring car where the battery overhangs the chassis side. But I have folded packs like a banana without failure.

Just because it has not happened to you with the particular packs you use doesn't mean soft packs are inherently safe in a crash, just look through the plane and helicopter forums for tales for lipos going up after an accident.
I've raced with nicad and nimh cells for 32 years now and never had one pop or explode, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

It just annoys me that 'racing' hard cased packs are so much more costly than the equivalent battery without the case that I use in planes etc.

It depends what you mean by "equivalent battery".

If you want a Team Orion 4000mah 35C aircraft soft pack it will cost you £65, all of Team Orions car packs of similar capacity, even with much higher current rating, are cheaper than their aircraft pack. At the other end of the scale the Gens Ace hard and soft lipos are also pretty comparable in price between their hard and soft packs as well.

Claiming that a race legal pack from an R/C car specific company is more costly than a Chinese manufacturers relatively mass produced soft pack just because they have the same capacity and C rating isn't really a direct comparison. Batteries for racing are a tiny minority of the r/c car market, only around 5% of all r/c cars sold are raced and having gone through the necessary procedures to make them race legal a supplier might end up only selling a few thousand worldwide as bashers will stick to nimhs or cheap lipos. This means race legal batteries are never going to be as cheap as mass produced soft packs that are used in planes, helicopters, airsoft guns, power tools, etc.