[Kit Gerhart]

Imagine that we were allowed to use any lead-acid battery of the "size group" that we are now using and FIRST would simply find the cheapest place to buy two per kit, and include them in the kit. IMHO, this is what would probably happen.

A few teams would buy some batteries from various manufacturers including Exide, Yuasa, Varta, MK-12, or whoever else they could find, and do performance tests on them. They might, for example, measure voltage after 5 seconds into a 0.1 ohm load, voltage after 2 minutes into a 0.5 ohm load, or other electrical tests. They would probably find that they'd need several samples of each battery to come up with statistically significant results, and even then, results might be inconclusive. Still, a few teams with the resources might do it. Then, being gracious professionals that FIRSTers are, they would publish the results of their tests in the Chief Delphi White Pages. They would also list the weights of the batteries, for those who care.

Then armed with these test results provided by gracious professionals from other teams, most teams would still buy their extra batteries for practice and competition from whatever source they could find that was cheapest and/or most convenient. If, and it's a big "if" it turned out that one brand of battery was significantly better for "keeping the voltage up" when you have four stalled CIM motors, the more serious teams would go for the better batteries.