New PHEV kit on eBay. Any good?

Caveat Emptor. It always sends off warnings with me when I see small typos on a website like the eldrive.biz Alan...you are trying to sell people and gain their confidence to give them a high tech piece of equipment for $7500, at least get the grammar and typos correct!!
I don't know anything about this operation, but I am on the waitlist for a A123 hymotion L5 conversion, and from what I see this is no do it yourself task....high voltage! Even the hobbyist who have converted Prius prior to the mass market release this year of the A123-Hymotion kit claim that conversion requires some level of electrical knowledge way above 'joe average.'

 

smells fishy to me...8X battery capacity would require 8X larger Ah batteries. So let's examine that-

Prius has 6.5Ah batteries

so 8X capacity would be 52Ah batteries

That would be an impressive engineering feat to cram 80 each 50Ah Lithium batteries of any sort into the space of the existing NiMH pack..read impossible..

Oh and don't forget to return your old battery pack so you don't have to to pay the "core charge" too....

Hybrad
junglemotors dot com

 

Whaddaya think PeakOilGarage, could you fit 80 A123's in the stock Prius battery pack? Is A123 even selling the cells to anyone?

Hybrad

 

I'd run away, screaming if possible.

There's just not the data here to make me feel that this place is trustworthy. Their site is even thinner on the ground.

For a start, the photograph seems to just be of a stock OEM battery. It looks like there's a vent tube there, which of course the stock NiMH need and unless I'm wrong, the A123 cells they claim to use don't.

They don't mention how they plan to integrate the setup in a stock Prius. You can't just plug any battery configuration into the Prius and expect it to use the extra power without any probelms.

Technically, the website is very vaguge. You'd be better off going for something recognised and tested...

 

Reads like a scam. Note seller feedback - <10 positive as a seller, and all of it old, so no detailed info.

Their website claims they're getting batteries form A123 - if you're interested, you should call A123 and ask if they know them at all...

 

Sounds scam-tastic.

 

I love the shipping cost: $113 via Media Mail! :rofl:

 

In the movie The Castle, an Australian movie about a battling family getting by the best they could and fighting for their right to remain on their little piece of Australia, the dad of the family had a catch cry when his son saw something in the trading post he thought wasn't a good deal,

Tell 'em they're dreamin'!!

 

did they also throw in the set of Ginsu knives if you order now????



Hybrad
over 100+ mpg all the time

 

I asked them a question, I'll post the answer here later. If I get one.

In theory - it certainly makes sense, just change the battery pack, plug & play. Don't even bother with Plug-In, the ICE will eventually recharge it.

 

Actually, I'm going to have to disagree with you there.

The only way it would be a direct plug-in replacement would be if the kit included a new battery management unit. The existing one in the Prius carefully counts down how much energy goes in and comes out of the battery. If it detects more going in that it thinks the battery can hold there's a set of errors which can be set in motion by the car.

SOC reporting is an integral part of the PHEV mod - I've got a seperate box sitting on my car's CANBus to make sure my car doesn't freak out by the extra capacity batteries.

I'm still very skeptical of this ebay mod. I just don't see how they could produce the kit at that price and using that performance claims.

Nikki.

 

Unless they are really smart by building an interface to fool the ECU by translating or scaling the 5kWh capacity and SOC to the original battery.

 

hey, i am glad i read the forums. i was thinking of buying one. here is another shady thing they have going: charging $1000 extra for the core fee. why this amount when you can just buy the OEM battery for $500 off ebay. they claim that their battery/designs is to make it affordable to the public. (SCAM!).

 

Has anyone given/been shown one of these kits? Or is it vapourware? Perhaps the vendors would like to show the PriusChat group some evidence of how their kit performs... Then we'd be able to say for sure if it's a scam or not..