C8 Energy has been named North American master distributor for the SkelStart engine start module.
"Until now, U.S. fleets have been at the mercy of their maintenance practices and the weather when it comes to starter battery reliability," says Jean Labrie, CEO of C8 Energy. "Marketing ploys, like the term 'maintenance-free batteries,' confuse the issue further, because even premium batteries won't survive in really cold weather or without basic maintenance."
The SkelStart engine start module is a supercapacitor designed to take on the duties of starting the engine, replacing starter batteries and engineered to have a similar dimensional envelope as a standard commercial vehicle battery.
It will easily crank an 27-liter engine, C8 says, and four will start an 85-liter engine. It can deliver 2,000 cold-cranking amps for up to 1 million cycles, the company says, delivering power in temperatures as low as -40 degrees or as high as 149 degrees.
"A supercapacitor is not hindered by temperature, nor is its performance impacted by extremes of cold or heat," Labrie says. "One SkelStart can put out three times the amperage of an average lead-acid battery and the high amperage means less system-wide exposure to the low voltage associated with depleted lead-acid batteries."
