I wonder if they still sell to vendors that don't really have the association with vaping... ...how do they feel about the flashlight guys?
Vaping is probably going to evolve to a point where the current demands placed on the batteries will be lower. High voltage seems to be the way to go when it comes to safety and power efficiency. Sub-ohming way down is still popular (I still do it occasionally, myself,) but as viable batteries become scarcer, we may see a decline there. Who knows? Could be interesting.
It's hard to know whether or not to take Sony seriously on things like this. They've pulled these stunts before... ...even lied and said there were no genuine VTC's on the market, when measurements of stock from many vendors suggested otherwise. Or maybe they were old stock and Sony didn't know about it. But if the latter was the case, then that raises an interesting question...
...what I wonder about is how much oversight they have over their own supply once it enters the market. I mean, how many vendors that we buy from buy directly from Sony? I just figure most of them go through a third party wholesaler, who no doubt supplies many vendors and manufacturers. Maybe they can get through to those guys, but how do you tell a wholesaler who moves a ton of your product who not to do business with? Can Sony really afford to take these measures? I just see there being a lot of strained relationships all the way down the chain. Sony's a big company, but I reckon most people who run successful operations would say that intentionally restricting the market posthumously is a bad idea. They would have to come up with a more elegant solution than the one I'm presenting. And perhaps in their time spent biding, they have. For all I know, these things happen all of the time.
Unfortunately what I see happening is that legitimate vendors with respect for the industry will stop selling Sonys, leaving shady ones to pick up the demand. And with them, you really never know what you're getting. There would be a good chance that they would be real, but do they publish measurements? Do they even have the equipment?
I dunno, I'm not an inside guy, so this is all hearsay. Maybe a sprinkle of wishful thinking. I'm trying to be realistic here. Cataclysmic events are rare by definition.
Maybe they will just start selling them only to manufacturers. That would suck. But honestly, for most applications, there have been better batteries than VTC4's (and especially VTC5's) for quite some time now. They have excellent capacity for upper-limit drain, but that's about it. The majority of vapers don't really benefit from this.
I understand that they are excellent on the technicalities (truly the benchmark battery,) but in real-life applications, most would not be able to tell the difference unless it was pointed out to them. Sometimes, I think that they continue to be common only for their legacy and reputation for reliability. I frequently see people running their VTC4's in mid to lower-drain applications... ...just because.
I doubt they'll completely vanish just like that, but the prices would jump. Counterfeits would be super easy to get a hold of. Probably a good time to start looking at replacing your Sonys if they're your workhorses. Maybe even look at changing your whole setup to work with 20A batteries. There are plenty of top-performing 20A cells out there... ...many more than there are decent 30's, most of which are fairly new, application specific, and not quite up to the demands that our methods place on them. Better to run a very good 20A cell up towards its limits than it is to run an average 30A cell up past 25A.
It's a matter of efficacy. Current is not the one true path to power. A happier battery gives you a better vape. If anything, the goal should always be to minimize current draw as much as possible without sacrificing performance. It's a simple matter of tuning your setup to your battery choice - and it can easily be done.
High voltage is getting more popular these days. There's always good old fashioned parallel unregulated, too. Nobody needs 30A cells for their ADV. It's just one of several ways to approach higher power levels. Maybe the loss of the venerable VTC4 would be just the push that the industry needs to reach more towards higher-voltage, lower-current, high-wattage vapes.
Super-low sub-ohming, I think, took hold because of its simplicity. It's easy to put together a tube mod or a parallel box, drop some high drain cells in, and vape away on a .15. Anybody can do it. In the grassroots, boutique climate of the past, that was the way to go. The hardware was simpler and the functionality more streamlined. Easier to mass-manufacture and operate.
But now, with more intricate, intuitive and capable rigs becoming commonplace, it is slowly becoming obsolete. As a mech user myself, this is a little upsetting, but like I said before, it would be interesting to see how manufacturers would evolve in light of a scarcity of viable 30A cells.
Honestly, since moving on to series, I don't even want to go back to the .1-.2 range anymore. I used to vape .16's on tube mods all day, every day. Now, I'm happier to vape anywhere from .5-.8 in series. Don't really need 30A cells for that, but the performance between the two methods is comparable. The latter just happens to be significantly easier on the batteries.
And now we have 12v, 3-battery mods in the spotlight. That voltage will get a lot done for less. A triple-cell regulated device with fresh batteries generates 220w for 17A. A single-battery or parallel device needs 52A going to a .08 to accomplish that.
There's something lower-current for everyone. It's just a matter of how willing people are to adapt. Maybe it's about time. The tech is there.
