Luscious Garage PHEV system REPLACES Prius Pack

thanks for taking the risk to car and wallet. a lot of great ideas fall by the wayside due to ineffective presentation of the product and/or no one willing to risk anything on something with an unproven track record.

please keep us updated. would be great to see you start a thread with your mileage stats. its great you are getting 20 miles EV. with my 7 mile commute plus ability to plug in at work, i would have it made.

 

i think going for the NIMH is a good one.
its relaible and proven chemistry

 

Plus, the solution uses Toyota's own battery management system. A proven system with years of development and in the field use. This is possible because the number of cells in the replacement pack matches that of the original, they are just have almost 5 (actually 4.65) times the capacity.

 

when i look at the pictures ( wel a video from the first build system that you can see on youtube and posted here on PC before ) i see a new BMS box. and not the origional.

 

It is a new box--the place that the original battery was is where the charger is now. What I think he meant was that it preserves the OEM BMS housing (a small part of the OEM compartment) and has the same number of cells such that it is compatible with the OEM BMS.

Andrew

 

The FAQ said the new pack is 6.1 kWh. The OEM pack is 1.31 kWh. That makes out to 4.7 times more energy. If this conversion is using OEM battery management unit, the usable SOC range would be the same. Is this assumption correct?

If the bigger pack can capture more braking energy, by how much?What's the max amps it can charge? Does anyone know?

 

The SOC is altered before it reaches the vehicle to provide 70% usage of the pack (once the battery depletes it will assume the standard 1.31 kWh simulated SOC range--until then it aggressively uses the battery as much as possible).

As for charging, the battery is capable of charging at 125 amps just like the OEM battery was. I routinely see over 100 amp regen at around 230-240v so that would be about 23 to 25KW.

I think he was more getting at the fact that if you are regenning down a long hill or something you would capture more energy than in a stock Prius because the battery is bigger. Conversions that use an auxiliary battery pack to charge the OEM battery would waste this energy because the energy can't flow back into the aux pack.

Andrew

 

i guess also there is a lower resistance? so maybe you can capture more of that 100+ amps that go into the pack.

 

Thanks for the great information! These high power GP cells seem to be as good as the PEVE cells. Do you know if the internal resistance is about the same as well?

The warranty is 3 years. What is the expected life (# of cycles) out of this pack?

 

PEVE cells?

 

Found the spec of the cell. It said more than 1,500 cycles but it did not state DOD.

http://www.evbtech.com/Data Sheet/TDS 10GP30EVH.pdf

 

Panasonic EV Energy (OEM HV pack).

Plastic Case Prismatic Module | Panasonic EV Energy Co., Ltd.

 

It should be 80%, though for all practical purposes it's more like 70% DOD. Once you get below a certain voltage it becomes pretty sluggish.

Andrew

 

so it are 30ah cells?
i expected the 78ah cells that i have.

 

1,500 cycles should be at 90% DOD. 70% DOD should give about 5,000 cycles. 25 miles per cycle would give 125k miles.

Graph Source: http://ovonic.com/PDFs/ovonic-materials/Ovonic-Fetcenko-2009-Wolsky-Seminar.pdf

 

Each 78 Ah cell weights 20 kg. 168 cells would give about 16kWh; the same as the Volt but it would also weight 3,360 kg (7,407 lbs)!!

 

2 kilo not 20.
the info is for 12 volt so 10 cells of 2kilo is 20kilo your talking about ( look at Nominal Voltage : 12V )

i already have had these cells in my hand.. so i know what i am talking about
and those 12 volt ( 10 cells in series ) did not weight more then 20 let alone 10 x 20 kilo haha
it would be inposible for me to lift them haha

 

My bad, the pack would weight 741 lbs.

 

batt pack weight makes me wonder. does anyone know what the casing weighs? and could we significantly reduce weight if larger modules were available?

would there be any drawbacks to larger individual cells? or are we simply screwed by the patent that mobile (or whoever) holds on the larger cell design?

and, does anyone know when that patent might be expiring?

 

Assuming we are keeping the same capacity (1.31kWh).... If the cell is larger, there will be less cells. This will lower the voltage of the pack. More amp will need to be drawn to get the same power.

In order to keep OEM BMS, you'll need exactly 168 cells, grouped in 28 modules (6 cells per module). Making each cells bigger will just increase the capacity (longer range). To increase the power the pack can output, the cells needs to be able drawn at higher amp. This requires lower internal resistance to prevent thermal issues.

In the case with the Gen 2 plug-in demo car (link provided by Ken), they double the cells in parallel. This kept the same voltage and increased the available energy and power.

I think the casing can save weight. Gen 2 Prius (Iconic) used plastic module casing to save weight. For Camry, Highlander hybrid and Lexus hybrids, they changed it to metal casing for better cooling; with additional weight. Or 5Wh less per kg. Less cells would cut down the weight on the cases for sure.

OEM pack is rated at 21kW but it should be able to output 38kW. Each module is rated at 1.35 kW so all 28 modules would give 37.8kW. If we reduce the pack to contain only 16 larger modules, it can still discharge 21.6 kW. This does not leave room for peak power demands like ICE starting for example. The capacity has to be increased from 6.5 Ah to 11.4 Ah. Anything larger than 8 Ah is considered "large format".

I believe the large format NiMH patent expires on 2014. Some speculate that Toyota can start building it in July 2010 as part of the lawsuit settlement.

Large format NiMH may not benefit non-plugin hybrids. It may make sense for a low range plugin hybrids.