That's excellent news and I think you'll get a lot of traction given all of the interest in electric conversions (regardless of what some people may think). I'm sure we'll be seeing production EP 1/8 scale kits in 2009.

News flash... my A123 batteries showed up yesterday!! After I put my son to bed I dismantled the DeWalt battery case, separated the pack and got started on building my 3S and 4S packs. I decided to add the balance adapters at the same time (for the Astro Blinky A123 - the good folks at Astro have created a blinky balancer for up to 6S A123 cells - brilliant!). Btw, A123's don't go out of balance very much so I only ordered one of the balancers. After I built my first 3S pack I charged it up and hit the small track near me. I couldn't believe how much speed I didn't lose (A123 cells have slightly lower voltage than LiPo cells). Again, the datalogger confirmed that I was drawing a max of ~36A - sweet.

Tonight I'm going to finish the pack builds and run 3S2P 4600mAh for a head-to-head comparison with my previous 3S2P 4400mAh LiPos. For me the biggest plus for using the slightly heavier A123 cells is that in 10-15 minutes they are fully charged up and running again. With 4 packs I can run 2 in parallel for 10-15 min, then take the other two off of the charger for a swap-out. I can do this all day long... Charge off of a Pb battery (or two or three) all day long... It just depends on how long you want to run around in the dirt!

In case you're wondering, here are the weight differences:
[ul][*] 3S LiPo - 170g[*] 3S A123 - 233g
[/ul]
For my helis the weight difference is more considerable, but for buggys/truggies it's not as intense.

Cheers,

j