A finance manager wants a fair cost comparison between lead-acid and lithium forklift batteries. Supplier brochures quote savings, but the manager prefers to build the comparison from the company’s own records.
Collect inputs in seven groups before building any model: purchase cost, energy, labour, changeovers and spare batteries, charging infrastructure, battery life and replacement timing, and downtime. Use your own records for each line, state the source, and run base, low and high cases. Our payback article shows how to turn the inputs into a result; this one lists what to gather.
The input list
- Purchase and installation. Battery price, charger changes, cables and fitting, for each option.
- Energy. Measured kWh per shift at the charger, the electricity price you pay, and any demand charges.
- Labour. Time for watering, cleaning, equalising and battery changes for lead-acid, and the time lithium needs for checks.
- Changeovers and spares. Spare batteries, changing equipment and the space they use.
- Charging area. Ventilation, floor space and electrical supply for each option. Redway’s battery rooms page gives background.
- Life. Expected years or cycles for each option, taken from written terms. Redway’s forklift specification tables show about 4000 cycles and a 5-year design life; the after-sales technical support period is 3 years. Use contract terms for your base case.
- Downtime and risk. Minutes lost per change, truck availability, and the cost of an unplanned stop.
Using the list
Give each line an owner and a source, such as the maintenance log, the energy meter or a supplier quote. Then follow the method in our payback model article. Redway’s cost and TCO guide and lithium versus lead-acid page give more context.
Presenting the result
Show the base, low and high cases side by side, and list the assumptions in plain words. Decision makers trust a model more when the inputs can be traced to records, and when the weakest assumption is named. Revisit the model after a year of operation and replace estimates with measured values.
Risk limits
No savings figure is quoted here because results depend on your fleet, shifts and local costs. Avoid counting the same saving twice, and pilot on a few trucks to check the model against measured data. This article is general guidance, not financial advice.
Additional perspectives
Agree the evaluation period and discount rate first, then collect inputs. It keeps the discussion on the data and stops the model being adjusted to reach a target.
Redway Tech Editorial Team – Finance perspective
Pull twelve months of battery-related work orders, including watering, repairs and changeovers. Real hours are more convincing than estimates, and they reveal costs nobody had counted.
Redway Tech Editorial Team – Maintenance manager perspective
Record how long a battery change really takes and how often it happens. Include walking, waiting and the trucks that sit idle while the change is made.
Redway Tech Editorial Team – Operations perspective
Specifications are taken from Redway product pages as of October 2026. Where a figure isn’t published, this article says so. Confirm current specifications for your model with Redway before ordering. This article is general guidance, not a site-specific engineering assessment.
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