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Two product categories that haven’t changed much in the last 10 years—batteries and chargers for lift trucks and mobile devices—are undergoing a transformation. If you’ve been operating under the assumption that the batteries and chargers you will use to power your forklifts and mobile devices a few years from now will be pretty much the same as the ones you’ve used for the past decade, you’d better sit down. We have news for you: This normally staid product category is on the verge of a revolution. Advances in technology are fostering a wave of innovation in chargers and batteries—both very large ones, such as those for electric lift trucks, and very small ones for mobile devices like bar-code scanners, RFID readers, and printers. There’s a lot going on, and we can’t cover every recent development in this short article. (We’ve left out lithium-ion batteries for forklifts, which we covered in a separate article last year , for example.) But we can offer a few examples of the capabilities that are turning old-school equipment into 21st century tools. Here are five that bear watching: 1. Alerting users to problems as they happen. Electronic monitors and diagnostics for forklift battery utilization, power usage and output, and water levels have been around for a few years. Earlier generations required technicians to connect the batteries to a computer or testing device during troubleshooting or scheduled maintenance. Now, thanks to wireless communication, it’s possible to transmit data in real time, alerting fleet managers when a problem first develops, not days or weeks after the fact. A number of companies offer wireless battery monitoring systems that continuously collect, log, and report information while the battery is operating, producing readouts and alerts in real time. These wireless battery monitoring systems continuously collect, log, and report information […]