Well that sort of begs the question. If East Penn makes Trojan Gels do they make them "better" than their own or other brands? Or are purchasers of Trojan Gel Batteries simply buying a more expensive Deka battery
Yes this is often the case. Same could be said for any retailer or "sticker shop" who simply applies stickers to East Penn, Superior, Crown, JCI etc. batteries. Heck just look at West Marine and then compare prices of the same batteries wearing a different sticker at Sam's Club....
Seeing as East Penn builds one of the best GEL batteries, far superior to their AGM product, why would Trojan change the spec other than the case color, there's really no need.. A top quality GEL battery fits into Trojan's line up perfectly.
I do know that Trojan just finished a new factory to finally build their own AGM batteries (Reliant AGM) but I suspect they will continue using East Penn for their GEL product for a while. If you look closely you can see that the Ah ratings are ever so slightly different but I suspect this is the difference between doing the capacity testing at 69F as East Penn does with their GEL product (originally licensed technology by German GEL maker Sonnenschein) vs. Trojan running the same test at 77F.
This is not unique to Trojan and there is a lot of "
sharing" in the industry. For a while the East Penn GC-12 (12V Golf Cart Battery) was US Battery blue because USB was making that particular 12V golf cart battery for East Penn. The old Walmart Max Marine G-31 was built by US Battery, then sold to Johnson Controls and then finally to Wal*Mart... You won't find this sort of stuff on the MSDS. Heck Even Rolls battery is having their AGM's now made in China.
When it all comes down to it you are still usually better off buying a battery with a trusted name brand on it, Trojan, Lifeline, Odyssey, US Battery, Deka, Crown. Prevailer etc. vs. one you don't know like , A-Best Battery, Magnum Power, Power Stride, Pep Boys, UltraPower etc.....
Also big retailers like Sears may often have better prices on some batteries than the brand themselves. Take for example the old Die Hard Platinum marine battery. This was a
premium Odyssey TPPL AGM made by EnerSys. One of the best AGM batteries made and it was nearly $80.00 less than my cost, at my wholesaler, for the Odyssey. I bought a lot of those from Sears. Sadly things change and Die Hard builds its brand up using quality products then often pulls a fast one as they just did. For nearly 10 years the marine Die Hard AGM product was the Odyssey TPPL AGM. Last year they switched it to an East Penn AGM, a real POS battery in comparison. Still they earned a reputation among bass boaters, RVer's etc. then pulled a fast one on them and slid in a crappy product...
