Ron Ananian The Car Doctor Sep 7, 2025

Ron Ananian, The Car Doctor Interview - The Future Of Battery Technology - Optima Batteries & Daryl Brockman - Aug 30, 2025

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You know, it's getting to be that time of year.

Well, actually, that time of year for batteries is probably year-round now, because as we've

said for a long time, right, we see more batteries fail, I think in summer than we do in winter,

but it's always a good time to talk about batteries.

And I thought it would be appropriate.

We reached out to Darryl Brockman.

He is product planning over at Optima Battery, and we're excited to have Darryl with us and

talk about all the new things that Optima is doing.

Darryl, welcome to the car, doctor.

Thanks so much for having me.

Great to be here.

I need to put a battery in my car.

Let's start the simple conversation here, right?

I need to put a battery in my car.

I've got a 2020 Toyota Camry.

It's got auto start.

It's an automatic.

It's got all the bells and whistles.

Help me put a battery in my car, Darryl.

What am I looking for?

I mean, usually what you would recommend is an AGM battery, especially if you have start

stop in your vehicle.

That is much harder on the battery.

The battery is going to be, instead of starting the battery, you know, once when you leave

for work and another time when you're coming back for work, you might be starting the

car 20 or 30 times.

And the AGM battery is what's going to give you the longest life, you know, in today's

modern vehicles.

The electrical loads on vehicles over the last 10 years has grown exponentially and it's not

expected to decrease.

And the old flooded batteries just don't have the life and they're not designed to meet

those kinds of, you know, much higher electrical requirements that today's vehicles have.

Is it a safe assumption, dangerous word on family radio, but is it a safe assumption

to assume that, well, if I've got an AGM battery, I don't have a secondary battery for start

stop or, you know, and I guess the other part of that question becomes, if I do have

that second smaller battery, if I'm changing my main battery, I should change my second

battery too, correct?

I mean, vehicles can have two and three batteries.

In an EV, there's the motive battery, the one that makes the vehicle move.

There'll be a 12 volt battery that's usually powering the cabin functions or some, you know,

some of the core functionality.

And then in an, even in an internal combustion engine vehicle, you know, a normal vehicle,

those often have two batteries now where they'll have the starting battery and then they'll

have a small auxiliary battery that's providing some backup power for some other critical

systems.

How Optima would make a battery for my Camry, wouldn't they?

We do.

We have actually, so we have our AGM line.

We have red top and yellow top AGM batteries that your Camry probably takes a group 35 battery.

We make that in both red and yellow top.

Our red top batteries are what would be used in a vehicle that has more typical electrical

loads where the battery is used to start the vehicle.

And then the all charging system has enough power to keep the, to maintain electrical equilibrium.

Right.

A yellow top battery, if you had a big audio system in your car or something with exceptional

electrical demands, we'd suggest one of our yellow top batteries.

That's a dual purpose battery that has great starting power in addition to the ability

to be cycled more deeply and have long, long cycle life.

So you've got them, you've got the batteries from my car, right?

But then you get into what they call power sport vehicles.

Like a power sport, like why do power sport vehicles like ATV, snowmobiles, wave runners,

they need a specific type of battery, right?

As opposed to the batteries that I might use in my Camry or is that, can I take my Camry

battery and put it into a power, into a power sport vehicle if it fits?

Sure.

And the biggest difference between a power sports battery and an automotive battery

is that those power sports batteries are much smaller.

Optima actually introduced a line of lithium power sports batteries about two years ago.

And they have a lot of great features.

Lithium batteries, one of the advantages is they're very lightweight.

A lot of people, you know, if you have a bike that's, or a power sports vehicle

that's more performance oriented, a lithium battery is much lighter than the lead acid

battery it replaces.

So the, you know, the vehicle handle better.

And again, those batteries have great cycle life.

One of the features that our lithium power sports batteries have that really people really

like is our Optima CPR function.

And that's what we call our built in jump starter.

Basically when the battery gets, if the battery gets discharged down to 35% state of charge,

if you leave the heated grips on on your motorcycle, or if you leave the whip lights

on on your side by side overnight, once that battery gets down to 35%, the battery automatically

will go into sleep mode.

It'll shut down in that 35% that it holds in reserve.

It acts like a built in jump starter.

You just have to press the button on the power link that's included with the battery.

It wakes the battery up and you can start it up and be on your way.

Wow, that's kind of cool.

That's neat.

Now, is that, is that part of lithium technology?

Because my other question was, you know, you have, and when you talk about your lithium technology,

is that hypercore lithium, because is, or is hypercore lithium technology an optimum battery

something specific also?

So there's, there are a lot of different lithium chemistries in the market.

The lithium chemistry that's used in cell phones is different than the lithium chemistry

that's commonly used in electric vehicles.

And the lithium chemistry that is used in our batteries is different than both of

those.

Optima uses a lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which is known for having excellent capabilities

to deliver a burst of power for starting.

But it's also widely considered the safest and the most abuse-powering lithium chemistry.

And then even within a given chemistry type, our hypercore technology with, for a different,

for a given cell chemistry, you can tune the performance attributes of it.

And that's where our hypercore chemistry comes in.

For example, our Q86 automotive starting, lithium automotive starting battery, it can crank down

to minus 20 Fahrenheit.

And if you check other lithium batteries that are on the market, they generally recommend

that they're not used, certainly below zero Fahrenheit and sometimes even 10 or 20 degrees

Fahrenheit.

So I'm in Milwaukee and I can even use one of those batteries here.

So you're saying a PowerSport vehicle, an ATV, a snowmobile, a waverunner, that can take

a lithium battery.

But you're also saying you have lithium technology available for cars, for my Camry, for my pickup

truck, for my whatever.

We have a full line of lithium batteries.

We have six different PowerSports batteries, different sizes to cover over 95 percent

of the PowerSports vehicles on the road.

Starting from a little 50cc scooter up to a big, big V-Twin touring bike, side by sides

and everything in between.

We also have a couple of lithium batteries for marine and RV applications.

And we have a auto and truck lithium starting battery as well.

So if you make a Group 35 lithium battery for my Camry, right?

I'm not saying you do.

If you do, and I want to put it in, is it a bolt in or do I need to do something

special?

Do I change something because my battery was originally AGM or lead acid or whatever it

might have been?

Is there a difference to the way it's going to charge or work?

So the physical size of the battery, we don't actually make the battery that would

a lithium battery for your Camry.

The lithium automotive battery we make, it's an H6.

It's the most common size used in vehicles in the US.

It's a direct drop-in for those, drop-in replacement for those vehicles.

And the reason that's possible is both lead acid batteries and lithium batteries, the ideal

charging voltage is very close to 14.4 volts.

That's also the output, the power output level of the vehicle charging system.

So that's what enables you to be able to put a lithium battery into a vehicle that

originally had a lead acid battery without having to change anything with the charging

system or anything else.

And that lithium battery gives me the advantage that I'll have more reliable starting power

in colder weather and more durability longer lasting.

And that and because the lithium batteries, they have a basically, they have a battery

management system.

It's basically a computer inside and that enables a bunch of really cool features

for our lithium automotive battery.

I was talking about that built-in jumpstart function.

So if you go to the airport, leave your dome light on and jump on the plane, you come back

a couple of days later and your battery's dead.

Our lithium automotive batteries have that same Optima CPR function.

The cool thing about the automotive batteries is you just need to, all you have to do

is open up the Optima Bluetooth app on your phone and it reactivates, automatically

turns the battery on.

You don't have to open the hood.

You don't have to tear up all your trunk, even start the battery, but vehicle up

again.

Open up the app from your driver's seat and away you go.

You're making it way too easy, Darryl.

Darryl, stay put.

Take a pause on the side.

I'm Ron Anani and the car doctor.

Let's normally come back and want to talk a little bit about the power link system

and some of the other things you've got going on over there at Optima batteries.

We're here with Darryl Brockman from Optima Batteries.

I'm Ron Anani and the car doctor.

I'll be back right after this.

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Hey, look, we came back.

Ronanini in the car doctor.

I'm here with Daryl Brockman.

He is the in product planning over there at Optima batteries.

Daryl, when we pulled away, I wanted to jump in real quick to about the power link system.

Can you talk about that real quick?

Sure.

So power link is a proprietary system with multiple patents for battery communication,

control and charging.

It's a it's a corded dongle that's connected to the battery and it allows you to know

the battery status as multicolored LED.

So for example, the LED will flash green if the battery is fully charged.

It'll flash red if the battery needs to be charged.

There's a button on it.

It allows you to shut the battery down for off season storage or if you're trailing

your side by side to the trails and you want to don't want to have to worry about it

being powered up, you can just press the button for three seconds.

It puts the battery to sleep.

I mentioned Optima CPR previously, our built in jump start function.

Just using that button on the power link is how you'd wake the battery up again.

And then finally, there's a plug on the end that enables you to directly plug one of Optima's

lithium enabled chargers in for easy maintenance of your battery, power sports vehicles and

motorcycles.

The battery is usually not very convenient to get to it can take a half hour of wrenching

to even get to the point where you can see the battery.

So this corded dongle allows you to basically like an extension cord so that you can

charge your battery conveniently without having to break out your wrenching.

It's sort of like that remote access cord you see sticking out of the grill of like a diesel

plow truck when they want to get to the block heater or something, you're just making an

access point easy to get to.

Very similar.

And we combine that charging capability with the LEDs to know battery status and

the ability to control the batteries.

And then is that what feeds back to the app on the phone if we're doing that?

So the power sports batteries, they have the power link.

Our group 31 batteries that are used for boats and RVs, our QH6 batteries that is would be

used in a number of cars and trucks.

Those all have a Bluetooth app and that Bluetooth app is not only, you know, first

question is why do I need an app for my battery?

I don't care what my battery is doing.

Probably the most useful feature that it has that people really have been, you know, really

very interested in is if that battery gets discharged down to 35%, it will automatically

go to sleep that their Optima CPR function I was talking about.

Just opening up, you just have to open up the app and by doing that and connecting

to the battery, it activates the battery and wakes it back up again when that built-in

jump start function has been activated.

You don't even have to open up the hood of the vehicle.

You don't have to make physical contact with the, you know, dig up your trunk.

I want to talk about safety certifications.

Why are they so important?

The safety certifications, I mean, there's a lot of lithium battery manufacturers and

brands on the market.

Agency and safety certifications are one way to know that the battery has undergone

rigorous testing to ensure safe operation and there's both cell and battery level

certifications.

It has both, not only for the US standards, but for international standards as well.

So you know, when people are using lithium and we hear lithium in the news all the

time, right, we know Optima's done the research and that's where the safety certifications

are so important that we're dealing with the cream of the crop, so to speak.

You guys are it, that we're dealing with a good quality of lithium battery and

technology behind it.

Clarios is engineering team, Clarios is the world's largest battery manufacturer.

The engineering team that supported development of these Optima batteries.

Their normal, their normal role is developing low voltage energy storage systems for

major audio automakers.

Clarios is the world's largest supplier of low voltage energy storage systems for

automakers.

That same engineering team with that, with their, you know, robust product

knowledge and experience with the technology and battery management system

development.

That's the team that supported development of these Optima batteries and it's

really what enabled us to have such high performance, such a unique and

proprietary feature set and again to have that long list of agency and safety

certifications.

Yep.

Darrell, work on the listeners, go get more information.

OptimaBatteries.com or our tech support line at 888-8Optima.

Perfect.

Darrell, we'll get together again.

I'm Ron Ananey in the car doctor.

We'll be back right after this.

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About this episode

Darryl Brockman from Optima Batteries joins Ron Ananian to discuss the future of battery technology, focusing on AGM and lithium batteries. They explore how modern vehicles, especially those with start-stop systems, require advanced batteries to handle increased electrical demands. The conversation highlights Optima's innovative features, such as the CPR function for jump-starting and the Power Link system for easy battery management. Listeners will gain insights into choosing the right battery for their vehicles and the safety certifications that ensure reliability.

Chrysler New Yorker Ford Bronco Porsche Cayman Toyota Camry

Original notes

Ron Ananian, The Car Doctor - Interview Summary – Optima Batteries with Daryl Brockman

Ron talks with Daryl Brockman from Optima Batteries about how today’s vehicles demand more from their batteries. With start/stop systems and heavy electronics, AGM batteries are the go-to for reliability and long life. Optima offers RedTop for standard loads, YellowTop for high-demand systems, and new lithium options for cars, trucks, powersports, RVs, and marine use.

Highlights include Optima’s CPR built-in jumpstart reserve, the PowerLink dongle for easy monitoring and charging, and a Bluetooth app that can wake a battery without popping the hood. Backed by Clarios, the world’s largest battery maker, Optima’s products carry top safety certifications and advanced lithium iron phosphate chemistry for cold-weather performance and long cycle life.

Find out more at www.optimabatteries.com

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