In 2025, we team 5516 will be participating in Canadian Pacific Regional in Vancover BC. As we are an international team we have to purchase battery at Vancover. We need 4 battery about a week before the competition as we need to assembly the robot back in hotel and do some testing. We CAN NOT rely on spare part or borrow battery from other teams AT the competition.
Here are some of our options:
Option 1: This was our path in 2024. Using our Andymark or REV coupon and buy battery from the US and have it shipped to our hotel or one of our alumni in Vancover. These battery are a bit expensive after tax and shipping and it is a bit waste of coupons. Also if there is COD for import tax (specifically for REV), it would add some extra trouble but it is manageable.
Option 2: Buy MK battery from Canadian Tire and pickup upon arrival. However the availability could be uncertain in February. If I order them in Dec or Jan I am not sure how long CT could hold them. Our alumni in Van is a bit far from CT and don’t have a car.
Option 3: Buy from batterysuperstore.ca or some other online retailer. Their price and shipping seems reasonable. However have anyone used them before?
Option 4: Use Generic replacement from Amazon. Such as AJC Battery or Mighty Max. I do see horror stories about these battery so I would like to avoid this path but I want some opinions.
Option 5: Asking help from local teams in Vancover. Unfortunately I don’t have any contact. If someone in Vancover BC can help we would much appreciated.
Please give me some advice about which route to choose.
Note for this that REV does have a warehouse in Canada that stocks FRC batteries. You could possibly look at purchasing batteries from revrobotics.ca to avoid the tax and duties of shipping from the states. Looks like they’re out of stock currently, but I’d imagine they’ll be restocked at some point between now and competitions. If you still want to use your REV vouchers, you can also contact REV to transfer the voucher over to their Canadian website.
All of the above also applies to Studica (Andymarks distributor in Canada), tho they seem to be a little more expensive than REV’s offering.
We personally buy our batteries from UPS Battery Center. Been running these for the last 3 years and haven’t had any complaints so far. They work out to about $80 Canadian per battery after sales tax and shipping (after a quick glance, shipping to Vancouver seems to be about the same as it costs us to ship them to London ON).
Going on memory, they tend to run out of stock regularly throughout the season. If going through REV Canada, you’d definitely need to sign up for email notifications and order them whenever they restock to have them shipped to your alumni located in Vancouver.
All this being said, if REV is the way you want to go, it may be worthwhile reaching out to their customer service team and seeing if they can help out in any way…
while we are not from Canada we are going to Vancouver this year for the competition! We might be able to help yall out! We are going up on the Wednesday before the Competition. It is not as early as you may like but we could probably save you a decent amount of money.
First, thank you so much for the help offering. However Wednesday is a bit too late. Our robot will have to be taken apart to serval checked luggage sized crate in order to get it onto the airplane. We don’t have the luxary of drive the robot to our regional so we really need the extra time in hotel to put the robot back and test it. I will DM you if I need some help. Thanks a lot.
There’s ~24 fly-in teams at BCVI this year. Some enterprising FRC vendor could figure out a pallet delivery…
Our school can be the local shipping destination if required (if the there isn’t an official one.)
I believe 1622 went the Canadian Tire route last year. The North Vancouver Canadian Tire is 1 highway exit away from the arena.
Option 5 isn’t an option. I have not formally checked battery date stamps, but gut feel is the average local battery is 2+ years old, and everyone will be using them that weekend. The best system would probably be to partner with a local team to split cost and leave the battery with them at the end of the weekend.
My personal preference would also be Canadian Tire as price wise it’s the best option. The only worry is if I could get the amount I need in Feb.
No. Many of them are from the USA and could drive their robot over. Any teams from Asia would have to ship or fly their robot.
I am very into this option. In 2024 we ordered 4 battery and had to give all of them away at the end of the competition. Can I DM you later tomorrow after discussing this matter with one of our other mentor today (as they are in a different time zone)?
We got 8 interstate batteries in 2023. They were all 11 pounds (roughly 2 pounds less than the mk 13) and even after breaking them in, they were not able to last a full match before browning out.
We’re still investigating our options for getting up to the event but will likely either be shipping or hauling our pits and robot up. We just bought batteries from MK for the season and got them for $57/ea, tax inclusive and delivered. We could probably work something out to get you batteries for competing with.
Though, as was brought up earlier, we won’t be getting there until Wednesday like many other teams. I would recommend trying to find a local team in Vancouver to borrow a battery or two from to test with and potentially waiting on another team to help get you enough batteries to compete with. You might even find a nice team that would let you work out of their shop so you don’t have to build and test in your hotel room.
As far as finding someone from Vancouver to help, you might want to just start hitting teams up on their social media. We’ve connected with international teams attending the San Diego regional who reached out to us that way in the past.
We went to Canadian Pacific last year, ordered batteries from here and had them shipped to our hotel (we just emailed the hotel in advance to confirm they would hold them for us).
thanks for the info. these are not MK. do you have any brown out issue with them? Also, I am interested in how you deal with the battery after finish the competition. Did you just give them away? We ended up with this.
also @Garrison Thank you for the help I would be needing to discuss this with the team to figure out a solution. But it is likely that we prefer all our battery upon arrival. Order from the US using our coupon is our last resort if no other solution work out.