doubled ev range less then $2500 no car modifications

The add on battery that I just installed from plug in supply, gives me about 28 miles of total ev driving. Easy install, no special boards to trick the prius, no error codes, just hook up several wires, lay in the batteries, 86 lbs., charge up and drive up to 28 ev miles. The only board required is the battery management control board. By the way, after the ev miles are used up there is still some extra power left to help with ac or other current draws.

 

I have already installed the Plug in supply kit and it does not need a current limiter. You install it, and it just works, you know, like apple products that I use. Look at my post Installed kit from Plug in Supply getting 28 miles!

Read more: http://priuschat.com/f/toyota-prius-plug-in.105/#ixzz28ap0G9f9

 

Just to be clear, as far as I know the PIS kit does still have to "trick" the Prius/PiP using a variant of the SOC Spoofing approach. As I understand it the controller plugs in through the OBDII port in order to gain access to the CAN bus so it can talk to the various ECUs in the Prius, allowing it to monitor the state of the batteries and modify CAN messages to get the main hybrid controller to use the additional battery capacity.

If your understanding is that this is somehow different on the PiP I'd love to hear about it! As far as I can tell they have not had to develop a new PiP kit, but rather verified that their existing kit still works with the PiP perhaps with some minor software tweaks.

In the DIY kit component price list, the $1216 BMS is the battery management system for the add on pack, and the $1500 controller is the "computer" that talks to the Prius to do the SOC spoofing.

Though the system may have evolved since these pics were taken, this shows the "Rear Controller" which I believe is the BMS:
Installation Instructions | Rear Controller Install
and these show the front controller that talks to the OBDII port.
Installation Instructions | Front Controller Install

Rob

 

On the pip kit the front board which is what plugged into the OBDII port is not needed because toyota already designed the car to drive in ev mode. No front board, wiring or connection to OBDII are needed. I guess the car is being fooled, because it uses all the extra current and does not ask where it came from.

 

Ok, that's very interesting! I guess its not a surprise that we still have a lot to learn about how the PiP works. Its taken years of studying the existing Prius to get to where we are on PHEV conversions. It may well be that the PiP is a more significant variation to that understanding than has been recognized so far.

If the front board is not having to do SOC spoofing, that may mean a simplified/streamlined (and hence cheaper) version could be possible. It may also bode well for DIY add ons, as the controllers needed to trick the Prius into using the extra battery are usually the most complicated part of existing PHEV conversions.

I want to thank you both for spending the money to do this mod, and for sharing your observations with the community. It definitely takes people like you that are willing/able to take the plunge and invest in current solutions to move our collective understanding forward and help drive future improvements!

Rob

 

Basically they test the snot out of it The primary chemical reactions in the battery are generally very reversible. Its generally the unwanted secondary reactions that cause the battery to degrade over time. Understanding the conditions that promote those secondary reactions, and taking steps to minimize those situations will significantly increase the operational life of the battery. The tradeoff becomes cost/complexity/performance loss vs. cycle life, and those tradeoffs will vary significantly for different battery chemistries and applications. The stock Prius NimH is a good example. Toyota significantly extended the life of these batteries by implementing a fairly complex control scheme that throttles the available charge/discharge current as a function of a number of variable including temperature, SOC, etc. They added some basic thermal management in terms of the cabin air circulation, and gave up a substantial part of the batteries total capacity / SOC range. This becomes more difficult in a PHEV where economics require using more of the battery's capacity, even harder in a design like the Volt that tries pretty hard not to use the gas engine when its got battery charge left, and really, really hard in a pure EV.

Ultimately for the manufacturers its a question of risk and liability. If they have to warranty them for a specific period, they have to weight the potential costs (financial and reputation) of having to replace batteries under warranty vs. the costs (performance and production cost) of decreasing the chance of failures. Ultimately it comes down to a statistical model of expected failures, and where they center the distribution to balance those two costs.

Hope that helps, sorry didn't understand you were talking about the OEM batteries.

 

Nice mileage btw

 

wow....now you are someone who uses EV ONLY ALOT!!! nice MPG!!!

Is that entire 1000 miles ALL EV??? or do you have some HV miles in there too but still max to 999? Very cool


Dan

 

I forget the exact specs, but the battery only ranges between 24% and 84% to maximize the life. They don't expect much to be lost with this system.

 

i don't understand the question between battery cycles and warranty?

 

I think Nova was just noting that most Li batteries are spec'd to last a few thousand cycles, and that manufacturers of vehicles like the Volt, Leaf and PiP are required to warranty the batteries for 8-10 years and 100-150k miles. That could easily be many thousands of cycles, and even >10,000 if charging several times per day on average. So the question was how do they get the batteries to last that long?

 

but i don't think the warranty covers reduced ev range, just a (semi) total failure? number of cycles will slowly erode range, will it not?

 

That is a good point, it will be interesting to see. That's certainly the debate going on right now around the leaf's losing range here in AZ.

In general the batteries are rarely matched well enough that they will all degrade at exactly the same rate. The weakest cells get stressed harder accelerating their decline and eventually leading to a failure of the "whole pack." Or at least causing it to go out of balance far enough to trigger an error condition. One of the changes we seem to be seeing is a move away from treating the pack as a single replaceable part, and a move toward rebuilding packs by basically swapping out the weakest cells. It will be interesting to see how that goes as more plug-ins start reaching the point where failures start to occur beyond infant mortality issues and systemic issues like the AZ Leafs.

Rob

 

when i bought my 04, the salesman told me nothing ever happens to the battery except once in a while, one cell would go bad and they would have to replace it. no big deal. i'm not sure he knew what he was talking about back then, (since i've yet to hear of a dealer doing this) but it seems he was ahead of his time.

 

ev king!

 

ya, they called me 3 or four times. just ignore it. probably worse with the economy.