PHEV mod under way, Bristol, UK.

That would be awesome, but I don't think they're interested. I did make contact with them about a year ago. Maybe I should try again...

 

Flying,

I'm certainly not going that low - because I only use the Auto-Part mode I'm not sure what SOC that is though, but figure it's somewhere around 30%... :/ Although I may be wrong, of course.

Do you use Auto-Full?

What's your EV range?

Nikki.

 

Mark,

I will indeed do a better video when it's all finished!

Fuel economy as of just now has reached 88.1 mpg (UK).



It's really nice to pull up at home at plug in... Even if I haven't yet made a plug in port and I'm having to sneak the cable through the boot...




Mark, I'll be bringing Velma to the BEVOB meet on Friday night. 7pm at the Beaufort arms (By Parkway Station). You're welcome to join us!

 

On Mondays and Tuesdays I make short trips, so fuel economy is at it's best. Wednesdays I go to Wells, which is about a 50 mile round trip. My mileage is completely hammered at the end of the trip. I would estimate the ideal EV range to be 10-15 miles (15 if I drive in EV mode and only go sub 30 mph, 10 ish if I use stealth mode). The ideal PHEV extended range I think is about 25 -30 miles with careful driving.

With longer drives I can use regen much more effectively. There's a huge set of hills on a Friday that I drive down. Even if my pack is near empty I can regen enough power to then drive around Bath. previously to the conversion I could only make it about half-way down the hills before the engine came on and the prius desperately started to loose the excess power.

I'll see you at some point hopefully and I'll let you have a drive!

Nikki.

P.S. I'm now up to 91.2 mpg! Yay!

 

Bad news folks,

One of my battery packs (the one out of the flood damaged prius) went bang this evening.

I was just about to head out and noticed that one of the packs in my car wasn't looking right. It had battery cells spread over the floor!

It looks intially as if the pack failed due to a short in the pack caused by previous damage to the pack prior to me installing it. The scrap yard I'd purchased it from had assured me the pack hadn't been submerged but looking at it in retrospect I suspect it had been water damaged and that had caused a short in a few cells - causing the whole thing to overheat suddenly.

The other two packs, the second additional one and the original OEM one, show no sign of overheating or overcharging and were just at the right temperature and voltage (20 degree C or under).

I've got my eye on a replacement pack and hope to be back on the road to PHEV goodness soon. I've got the bug and hope to fix everything soon. I spent most of the evening feeling really lousy and stupid, wondering what I'd done to cause it - but then when I realised which battery had blown and why - well things felt better.

For the time being the car is back to being a regular hybrid - I don't want to jeapordise the other battery by asking it to do extra work.


Watch this space!

Nikki.

 

Another update.

I'm home sick today but spent a few minutes outside to look at the destroyed battery. The two cells which hadn't expanded were shorted out (I suspect an internal short as they had 0V at their ends) I will measure cell resistance at some point too.

Obviously, with this failure there's absolutely no reason why the battery would have behaved normally. The moral? Check EACH battery voltage and resistance before starting your conversion!

I've got another battery which is being looked at at the moment. Hopefully I'll have a replacement pretty soon.

The second battery is fine - it looks great and each cell pack is happily at 8V, giving a total pack voltage of 224V volts.

The pack in the Prius (the original one) is functioning fine and isn't hot. I'll be back to normal Prius operation for a few weeks until I've had a chance to fix the battery situation. But I hope to not give up. I felt a right fool last night, but decided that I'd got so far that it would be silly to give up!

Nikki.

 

Thanks Mark.

It really was a tough decision to keep with the project. I felt very disheartened last night. I am only a musician, not an electrical engineer. However, I've always been someone who HAS to understand how things work and I've always had a really avid interest in all things electrical. So I hope I can dust myself off and keep going.

I had a conversation today with a scapyard who wanted to charge me £500 for a pack - I told them I'd buy it for no more than £300 if they threw in a few extras I needed. Either that, or shove the battery on their shelves and watch it deteriorate and loose shape...

Nikki.

 

Hi Ken,

The description of what the BMS + does is here: blank

It does not replace the OEM BMS functionality, but of course the only pack with the original BMS is the original battery. The aux packs did not have them.

I wonder if a future plan would be to monitor each pack pair voltage more closely?

I am certainly going to implement some forced air cooling on the packs.

Regards,

Nikki

 

Ken,

Norm has done a fantastic job designing and building the BMS+ and I'm one very happy customer.
The failure I suffered was NOT due to his device - it worked perfectly! The failure was down to my own stupidity and insufficient checking of the state of the battery before adding it to the car. I also failed to provide adequate cooling - I shall not be making the same mistake again!

But let's not say nasty things about Norm's stuff eh? I think his kit is excellent and does exactly what it's meant to do!

Nikki.