Which warranty questions should you ask before buying a lithium forklift battery?

Direct answer: Ask for the full warranty text and put the answers in the contract: what term and cycle limit applies and which comes first, what capacity or state-of-health level counts as a failure, which operating conditions are required, what data you must keep, what is excluded, who pays freight and labour, and how a claim is made. A headline “5 years” is not a warranty.

What the pages show: the spec tables of the 48V 280Ah, 48V 420Ah and 24V 230Ah pages list “5 years or 3500 cycles (DOD 70% 0.25C)” against cycle life. Some forklift pages also state “Warranty: 5 years” in a comparison chart. Other sections of the same pages give different cycle figures (for example “3,000–5,000+” on the 48V 420Ah page, and more than 4,000 cycles at 80% DOD in the FAQ of the 24V 50Ah page). A contract has to say which statement governs.

Term and limits: is it 5 years or 3,500 cycles, whichever comes first, or either? How is a cycle counted: full-equivalent cycles, charge starts, or throughput in kWh? Is the cycle limit defined at the test conditions on the page (70% DOD, 0.25C), and what happens if your duty is harder, with opportunity charging or deeper discharge?

Failure definition: ask what capacity or state-of-health threshold triggers a claim, how it is measured, who measures it and with what equipment. The pages list state-of-health on the larger models, but do not say whether it is used for warranty decisions. Ask for the threshold as a number.

Conditions and data: ask which charger and settings are approved, what temperature limits apply (the pages list charging at 0–55 °C), whether the cloud monitoring data is the evidence in a claim, and how long you must keep logs. Ask what is excluded: misuse, unapproved chargers, physical damage, water ingress above the IP rating, unauthorised repair.

Remedy and process: repair or replacement, who pays freight and labour, response time, whether a loan battery is offered during repair, whether the warranty transfers if you sell the truck, and where claims are filed. Warranty terms beyond the figures above are not published for the forklift models, so treat everything on this list as open until Redway answers in writing.