Grid Chargers, just a thought

Those sound like reasonable statements, although "my IMA light turned off!" is not the same thing as extended life. Or at least the burden of proof that it is should be on the vendor.

Insight1 owners know the signs and symptoms that predate battery death in an otherwise unmodified car. Is the pattern the same in a grid-charged car, just delayed ?

Are the causes of a battery death watch in an Insight the same as a Prius ? Seilert's work has shown that in NM, approaching Prius battery demise takes on one of two general patterns: either widespread loss of capacity in most of the modules or a few bad modules. What are the patterns in an Insight ?

FWIW, I am cautiously optimistic that grid balancing of the pack is a good idea in certain cases. Heck, maybe it is a good idea for everybody if started early enough. What I do not accept, and which causes my hackles to rise, is Jeff's sales tactics. Anecdotes are not proof, and ambiguous statements leave me less than impressed.

 

The Honda hybrid traction battery service life appears to be so bad, it doesn't surprise me that grid-charging might temporarily help. However I think it is necessary to determine whether the relatively short Honda hybrid traction battery service life is due to a bad battery module design, or poor charge/discharge algorithms that are programmed into the IMA logic and cause the battery to fail sooner than it otherwise might.

If the short service life is due to a bad battery module design, then grid-charging seems like a band-aid, providing temporary relief. If the poor service life is due to poor algorithms, then I can understand how the grid-charging would help.

Whether the problem with Honda traction batteries is one or the other, it is not obvious that grid-charging will necessarily help Toyota traction batteries.

 

The Toyota BMS is better than Honda, most notably with the reduced operating range of 80%-40% for the Toyota vs. 80%-20% for the Honda. The reduced cycle count alone has significantly increased the life of Prius packs relative to a Honda hybrid. However, NiMh battery technology is the same regardless of what vehicle it is installed into. It will have fundamentally the same self discharge and imbalance issues regardless of the vehicles manufacturers BMS sitting on top of it. NiMh cell imbalance and degradation is not a matter of if, but when. Ignore it long enough and polarity reversal and irreversible cell failure will occur.

The Honda community has dealt with these NiMh cell issues much earlier than the Toyota crowd, and the charger balancer solution has been proven viable hundreds of times over, not just by me personally. This is why it feels new and unproven to some readers of this thread and I can still feel confident representing the charger technology as a mature and tested solution to our Toyota's NiMh battery issues. The same NiMh cell degradation and imbalance issues that have been impacting the Honda community for many years already are impacting the Toyota community.

Sure, several readers of this thread will choose to save a few hundred dollars now and spend a few thousand later. That's fine, we can't please everyone. We are hoping to help those that want to spend a little now to save a lot later. The same charger balancer product that has been extending the life of Honda NiMh batteries for years can also be used to extend the life of Toyota NiMh batteries. In fact, they already are being used by several users of this forum with very positive results.

 

The failure pattern for NiMh battery cells are almost identical for both makes. The Honda begins to exhibit a loss of capacity, more rapidly draining or filling of the pack. Then recalibrations by the BMS occur, where suddenly the battery SOC will drop to empty and the vehicle will try to force charge the battery back to full (we see this identical behavior in my 2005 Prius on hot days). Then eventually the Honda will display an IMA code and 'failure' will have occurred. The Honda's also have specific cell failures, but much less frequently that the Toyota's. I suspect this is because the Honda BMS is less tolerant and declares a battery dead earlier in the failure process than the Toyota BMS.

I appreciate your cautious optimism. I get that this seems new to most members here. Having said that, I am passionately convinced that people can significantly extend the life of their Hybrid battery by using this product. If you wait long enough, the improvement might be only a week, a month, or a couple months. If you start using early enough, you can add multiple years to the life of the battery. This is not a sales tactic, it has already being done by scores of Insight and Civic Hybrid owners. They have already added years to the life of their battery - even batteries that have 'failed' and displayed check engine light fault codes. So forgive me if I seem overly confident in the products, it is because I know they work.

 

All of our products work equally well for a battery that is in the car vs. removed from the vehicle. When the battery is removed from the car, you can still use the car's battery cooling fan, as we provide all of the power and control needed to drive the fan. The Prolong Battery Reconditioning Package will allow for full charge & discharge reconditioning of the battery pack. This will deliver the best overall results

 

Here is a photo of an early version of our Patent Pending cooling fan control assembly, which is included with all of our charger systems (depending on vehicle needs of course):

Here is the full instructions that walk through the installation process:
2004 - 2009 Toyota Prius Installation Instructions - Hybrid Automotive

The 2004-2009 Prius Battery Reconditioning Package is available for $399:

Prolong™ Battery Reconditioning Package - 2004-2009 Prius - Hybrid Automotive