Karl Townsend writes:

Anyone know of a "Batteries R Us" for huge batteries?

Sam's Club golf cart batteries.

A few years back I bought a 48VDC electric Hyster at auction for nothing,
because everyone wants propane for indoor use, and it had no charger, the
charger having been sold with the 1st of 2 trucks. Now 48 volts also is
what the phone company central office backup batteries used, and I found a
surplus regulated 48VDC telecom power supply that could be adjusted up a
bit to get a good charging voltage for the batteries. Plugged into a 120
VAC outlet this only provided about 20 amps at 48VDC, so it took days to
charge that ton of lead, but since we used it only for short periods in the
day, it worked fine. Sometimes you need zero emissions for indoor
applications, but otherwise electric forklifts are like any electric
vehicle, utterly uneconomical.

That ton of lead equaled a fuel tank for a few pints of hydrocarbon fuel,
took hours to fill, wore out in a few years, and cost $1000s to replace.
The only peculiar thing about the forklift application is that you like to
have something that massive on the back of your chassis.