Plug-In Supply DIY

He's pretty busy. I'm not sure he'll be able to have one built up by next week. To me that seems like short notice, but maybe I'm wrong.

Would you be doing your own install, then?

Or do you need someone to install it for you?

 

Actually, the more I think about it, if I were going to build up a battery pack for someone for a kit, I'd want to be paid in advance. No way would I want to build the whole thing up, only to have the customer change their mind after I had spent all that time in labor.

 

I disagree. If he is so busy he must be getting plenty of customers. I am sure there are a lot of potential customers out there who have read this thread and how long it takes to receive the parts and are put off by it, lost trust and hence decided against buying the DIY kit.

 

No if i would drive up to get a ready to install kit i would also have them install it. Im not to comfortable with doing it myself.

 

OK. It is no longer a DIY kit you are buying. Might be a different story.

 

He wrote me back asap told me would be like beginning of october, but never answered about payment first or cod. I would be willing to do half at start and half after installation. Would makr me feel safer. Your right lopez this thread does make people a bit nervous.

 

What kit? I never got one.

 

My mistake. It was Chonnyton who was trying to sell his kit.

 

I'm reading "parts you need" in the installation instruction and there is no ECM (if there is at all) for gen 3 Prius. There is also no DC-DC converter, so the question is how are the batteries connected to stock battery? There was some talk about current mismatch if you would use an ad-on battery in parallel to stock battery, does this mean that power from PIS battery is limited to something like 5 kW or less? How can you control current or voltage that is send to the car without DC-DC converter?

 

The ECM mentioned does not go between the batteries in the Gen 2, its an add on to extend the functionality of the "controller". Basically it gets around some of the high speed EV restrictions of the Gen 2 system. Most PHEV conversions do not use any sort of converter between the batteries, they are directly connected. Usually there are high power relays (contactors) that can be opened by the controller when the car is off, or if a problem is sensed. The Li pack has to be designed to operate over an appropriate Voltage range to play nice with the stock battery and rest of the hybrid system. The secret sauce is basically in the controllers that communicate with the rest of the hybrid system in such a way as to get the max benefit out of the energy stored in the Li battery.

You don't have to control how much power is delivered by the Li pack, that's the inverters job. When first connected, the Voltages of the NimH battery and Li battery will quickly equalize. This usually means a small amount of current out of the freshly charged Li battery is delivered to the NimH battery to bring up its state of charge and Voltage. Once driving the stock hybrid ECU takes requests from the gas pedal and uses a variety of data on load, battery state of charge, temperatures, speed, rpms, etc to decide how much power to tell the ICE to deliver, and how much power for the electric motor/inverter to deliver. Based on the power the ECU commands it to make, the inverter draws current from the batteries and generates the pulsed AC waveforms needed to get the MG to produce the desired amount of torque. The inverter also manages the regen current going back the other way.

The PHEV controller communicates with the hybrid ECU in order to try and convince it to use as little power from the ICE, and as much power from the battery as possible under normal conditions. PHEV controllers generally do this by intercepting and modifying the CAN Bus messages sent out by the stock battery ECU, as this ECU just keeps doing its thing unaware that there is this whole other big battery sitting out there. The PIS ECM add on to the controller appears to do something more complicated than this, to convince the hybrid ECU to continue to use electric drive exclusively at speeds higher than it would normally allow. Some people have gotten some of this capability by running in whats called "out of gas mode", basically interrupting power to the fuel system to make the Hybrid ECU think the car is out of gas. This works, but requires a restart of the car to get the ICE to start back up. The PIS solution appears to be more elegant, requiring no restart and operation at even higher speeds.

Rob

 

Anyone know what the PIS DIY site is talking about with the Gen III "airbag" upgrade? It mentions this under the suspension section but no where else. Is this talking about an actual air bag, or is this something else involving the rear suspension? The DIY instructions show how to upgrade the suspension but doesn't describe anything.

I attempted to sell my kit because PIS never sent me the suspension upgrade, but it never sold so I decided to keep it. It works great except the vehicle hangs lower in the back.

Dave

 

Assuming its something like these Air helper springs that are supposed to fit the Gen 3.

2011 Toyota Prius Suspension Enhancement | etrailer.com

 

It's always great to learn about new things. Thanks for the quick response. Was quite confused there for a minute.

 

The reason I asked is because of this posts concerning gen3:
Building 240v-250v battery to charge HV battery | PriusChat
Plug in Supply Questions | Page 2 | PriusChat

 

GasperG

There is no ECM for the Gen III and the batteries are connected in parallel with the OEM batteries. My understanding is, everything is handled via software through the ODB-II connection. I was first confused about this because I thought only information is downloaded from the ODB-II, but it appears that info is uploaded as well. I can confirm this because whenever I flip the switch on the front controller, I can hear the OEM battery fan blowing air through the rear seat vent even if the lithium batteries are not engaged yet.

I'm a bit worried about the current mismatch you mention as well. When it gets hot outside (100+ degrees), the air conditioner draws quite a hefty load from the system and causes my "Check Hybrid System" light to come on. I had to simply disconnect the 12v auxiliary battery from the car for a minute to reset this warning. It would do this for a good couple weeks, but now that it's cooler outside, it hasn't come on anymore. There is no damage to my OEM batteries because it resumes normal operation when the conversion system is removed. My guess is that the OEM batteries has a safety temp sensor that is momentarily breached but not long enough to damage anything.

Hope this answers any questions!

Dave

 

Great find, I was looking for this type of solution 5 years ago

 

Forcing a fan for OEM battery is a simple thing and well known, can be done with Torque app and custom PID.

This A/C thing is interesting, because even if it's on full power it draws something like 10 A, where EV mode will draw 80-100 A and normal car operation when SOC is >60% will draw 40-60 A.

Does the in car battery indicator always show full when extra battery is connected and has some charge left? Does it fluctuate if you do heavy EV driving?

 

Is PIS just never going to provide the suspension upgrade to you? You paid for this upgrade right?

 

Chonnyton,

I have a 8kWh Engineer kit in a Gen3 prius and use the Firestone Air-Helpers. You can google it and find them. Here is a link to a post I made on Prius Chat a while ago. The Airbags are working for me but need to monitor for weather changes.

Wondering on how many 8KWh 2010 Prius?? | PriusChat

 

This is due to the two fundamentally different ways of feeding the PHEV current into the Prius HV system. One retains full operation of the stock battery controller, but is limited to about 16A. The other allows basically unlimited current, but requires a dedicated controller to "trick" the stock system into using the extra charge stored in the PHEV battery.

I wrote up a fairly detailed description of the different approaches in the following thread not long ago. Hope it helps make things a little clearer!

Simple Add on Battery?? | PriusChat

Rob