Has anyone noticed the new shape of the yellow top Optima? It appears they are moving away from the rolled lead and AGM construction to the more conventional stacked plate design. Most don't know but the Optima was designed by the same folks that designed the Odyssey back when the equipment for manufacturing batteries was NOT good enough to deal with the very soft pure lead plates needed for high performance batteries. They could however, roll the lead and agm into the individual cells without damage so they came up with a rolled cell design and case.
As processes improved, they were able to stack the flat plates and agm to increase density in the same footprint. When they perfected the process and design, they approached Optima and told them they had a much better method for making a battery and it was a much better battery with higher power density in the same footprint simply due to moving away from the space inefficiency of cylinders stacked together and the dead spaces between them. Optima already had a lot invested in their marketing around the 6 pack design and declined.
They shopped around and were able to sell the design to a company called Black Panther who later went on to become Odyssey.
There is some paraphrasing in there since I had that conversation with the designer 17 years ago but that is about the gist of it.
As processes improved, they were able to stack the flat plates and agm to increase density in the same footprint. When they perfected the process and design, they approached Optima and told them they had a much better method for making a battery and it was a much better battery with higher power density in the same footprint simply due to moving away from the space inefficiency of cylinders stacked together and the dead spaces between them. Optima already had a lot invested in their marketing around the 6 pack design and declined.
They shopped around and were able to sell the design to a company called Black Panther who later went on to become Odyssey.
There is some paraphrasing in there since I had that conversation with the designer 17 years ago but that is about the gist of it.