Engineer PHEV kit

A 12 pack of beer and a cool garage..

 

To the comment about it "stressing" the battery. If anything, I would think the Enginer kit would actually reduce the stress on the OEM battery pack. After all, it keeps it charged more, rather than allowing it to cycle more.

 

Partially wrong, having the NiMH cycling in between their normal electrical parameters is beneficial for their chemistry construction.
What it is NOT, is having the original HS batteries at the top extreme voltage, said 240V and some times above coming out of the Enginer DC-DC converter, leading to a constant over temperature and hence early life span.

 

Hi mrbigh,
The Enginer spec for setting the converter was originally 240v +/-5v. Many have opted for maximum performance at 245v.

It sounds like you would advise a little lower setting for maximum life on the Prius HV battery.

My understanding is that the Prius system does a calibration for safety at 242v. So I would think that a setting anywhere below 242v would not cause the reduction in life as you have described.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Normally the HSD made by Toyota including its NiMH battery pack and the Battery Electronic Control Module will balance the modules for discrepancies at top charge of > 242VDC when the HV- Batt ECU detects a dangerous voltage.
In the normal operation of the vehicle, the HV Batt. does NEVER reach that value. The only exception to this rule is by extreme regen power ( a long down hill drive) applied back to the HV batteries.
Then MG1 and/or MG2 will take over to waste that extra energy in order to prevent an overcharge damage to their HV pack.
- I do not know what type of monitoring you do with your equipment while driving, but let me tell you that in the last 4 years of PHEVing with the state of the art CANview equipment, I'm aware at all times of any value changes that can harm my vehicle thanks to the CAN interface interpreter.
Scangauge is a simple toy for me with up to 4 (four) simultaneous readings in a tiny display.
- I'm assuming that the Enginer set-up voltage spec's are over rated for best momentum performance of their equipment, but with disregards of long term operation and reliability of the expensive Toyota HSD system built into the Prius.
The good part is that I DO own and operate an equipment other than yours.

 

So if an Enginer system user were to buy a CAN View and BMS+ then everything would be ok? Don't get me wrong, I like the BMS+ PHEV system and seriously considered using it rather than the Enginer but I think it is too DIY for most people and ultimately more expensive.

 

The Enginer and BMS+ wont work together. At least not well together. The Enginer system is too under powered to take full advantage of the BMS+. The CAN-View on the other hand can provide an Ah count down which might be useful if you want to see when your about to run out of juice in the battery. That is really the only useful feature of the CAN-View for us that cant use the full features of the CAN-View to control the battery.

 

Just the new batteries, and maybe a new wiring harness if the existing one isn't quite long enough. The new cells are wired in parallel (Enginer describe this as "buddy cells") with the existing ones, so the pack voltage remains the same and you still use the same 16 channel balancer.

 

I sent an email to Jack on this and he quoted me $1000 (plus S&H) for my 2kwh system (don't know if this would apply to yours). He said the upgrade would involve a trade-in of my system and replace with the 4kwh one.

The 2kwh system uses the Thundersky batteries while the 4kwh system uses the MOTT cells. Can't mix them and can't just add more Thundersky cells because they're larger than the Mott cells.

 

I still think that for business purposes and technical information you should present your questions to the "manufacturer"/DISTRIBUTOR of the equipment if you want any relevant answers.

 

Where do I post my MPG?

 

Just let me know here and i'll calculate it.

 

Jack hasn't given me a date for my 4kwh kit, and i'm waiting on a response about some questions i asked on email - difficult for me to phone because of the time difference and cost.