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Why the drone battery is more expensive than the common LiPos

Friends who are familiar with drones know that taking DJI as an example, the price of a drone battery with more than 5,000 mAh is nearly 200 dollars, and the price of the 10,000 mAh power bank we usually use is only around 20 dollars. Why is the difference so huge? Doesn't it last longer to use the 10,000 mAh power bank battery on the drone.





This is because the polymer lithium-ion battery used by the drone is different from the 18650 battery used by the power bank. The reason why the price is much more expensive is that compared with other smart tech equipment, the drone has stricter battery requirements, so the price must rise linearly.

The first factor is performance. The drone needs to overcome its gravity to work functionally. Therefore, the weight of the battery matters a lot. But increasing the battery capacity will lead to a weight increase, in this case, only lighter polymer lithium-ion batteries with the same capacity can meet the specific needs of the drone. On the other hand, drones have extremely high requirements for battery power. When the throttle is quickly increased from hovering to the top speed, the battery power will increase rapidly, and the power will be increased several times in a short time. The change can only be met by polymer lithium-ion batteries. In fact, 18650 batteries can also meet this requirement through series and parallel connections. Tesla’s batteries are more than 7000 pieces of 18650 batteries connected in series and parallel, which can handle the instantaneous high power demand, but that is obviously not suitable for drones. Therefore, in terms of performance, only polymer lithium-ion batteries can meet this demand.

Of course, even the polymer lithium-ion battery wears out very quickly on the drone. A 5800mah battery for DJI Phantom 4 can hold as much as 89Wh. A 20,000mah power bank can hold up to only 70Wh. Such a 5800mah battery can only support 30 minutes of flight time. It’s hard to imagine how much pressure is placed on the battery. Working in such an environment for a long time will make the polymer lithium-ion battery wear out very quickly, and the rapid electric discharge in a short time will also cause the battery temperature rises rapidly, all of which require further safety protection of the drone battery.

DJI's drone batteries are all called intelligent flight batteries because in addition to polymer lithium-ion batteries, there are more components on the battery. First of all, in order to protect the battery's long-term working safety, the power management system can protect the battery from charging and discharging, so that the battery can always work in a safe range. Secondly, if the battery is stored for a long time, it will affect the battery life. The smart battery has built-in battery storage self-discharge protection, which can automatically discharge when it is left for a long time, prolonging the battery life. This set of technologies is a bit like a streamlined version of Tesla's power management system.

Therefore, whether it is from a performance or safety point of view, the battery requirements for drones are higher than the 18650 batteries used by ordinary power banks, which also makes their prices high.

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