Project Lithium Nexcell V2

OK, I understand balancing the pack. In an EV it takes a deep discharge and charge to 100% and leave it plugged in for the balancing.

As for EV mode, you are correct.
ALL the energy comes from gas in a hybrid.
Charge and discharge usage isn't 100% efficient. More like 70-80% between what goes in and what comes out.
Therefore EV mode in a Gen 3 uses more gas than just driving normal.
EV mode is nice in parking garages and such where you want to be nice to pedestrians and not make your gasser stink driving past them.

 

A phone battery is a much smaller investment than these…

I wonder what the V2 boards do? I don’t suppose you know better than the developer…

 

@ASRDogman China had a one child rule for quite a while. Pretty sure parents are NOT sending these precious children to child labor factories…

 

Nope, they government is taking them....
This has been known for decades.....

 

Read above.
It's not 'Breaking In'.
It's Equalizing and Balancing the cells/modules.

I know nothing about this after market system. I've owned a PHEV and two EV's. I know a few things....
I know my ancient NiMh pack is hanging in there at ~14 yrs / 130k miles.
Fingers crossed.
When it finally goes bad I'll probably go this route instead of buying a 'pieced together from other old packs' replacement.

 

Can anyone remind me the advantage of upgrading from V1. My V1 behaves fine and readouts on Dr. Prius look normal. How much work is involved and if it ain't broke should I fix it? Any input appreciated.

 

EV mode is nice in parking garages and such where you want to be nice to pedestrians and not make your gasser stink driving past them.[/QUOTE]

I hacked an EV mode button in my Gen 2. Pretty much just a courtesy thing, or when I'm working on something with car on and don't want the fumes it is handy. If I'm making a one mile trip home from walmart etc and battery full it does avoid the total waste of ICE coming on for the programmed time. Car is running on battery mostly in that case anyway so the ICE is a waste, but one forgets to look and after while just drives.

 

so wait.. who has a plugin with the v2 batteries and how many miles on a full charge do you get?

 

Upgraded to V2 this morning. Acceleration feels much faster and a full tank is reading 600+ mile range.

 

NIce! Are you saying this is a new installation of the latest offering from this company?

How did you get that Guess-o-meter / Range reading so quickly? How many miles on this new pack?

But, just like the GOM in EV's, it totally depends on how you have been driving the car recently.
A stock Gen3 could display that number if the driver always drove slow.

 

@Bill Norton this was a V1 to V2 upgrade…

 

I'm curious if it's still doing this, especially in in-town driving. The hybrid battery should be in a fairly constant rate of discharging and charging to low/high levels. If it's not it's telling me that the Prius system isn't using the battery enough, or am I interpreting the hybid system wrong?

 

Yes it is still doing this. Today was the lowest the battery has gotten so far. It went down to 3 bars while parked for 10 minutes with the ac on full blast.

 

@DirkAshburn Depends how you drive I guess I’m a slow and steady driver battery level doesn’t move unless need to stop and go…

 

There is no advantage to these batteries other than weight. These are generic chinese liFepo4 batteries capable of high discharge rates which have similar or typically worse cycle lifes than the nimh batteries that come in these cars. They aren't even close to the shining gem of reliability that the nmc batteries found in say a Tesla are. I wish we could use those but their low c rates aren't compatible with the Priuses series configuration. Toyota pretty much states the lipo battery in the 2016 prius is just to save weight. But at least their battery comes with a 10 year warranty.
Folks, don't let some random company you've never heard of trick you into giving away your hard earned money.
In the thread below the low e glass, rear wiper removal, spare tire removal, and lipo battery swap in the 2016 prius eco allowed them to game the epa number to get a 7.6% improvement on their EPA mpg rating, but in real life the difference is 1-2mpg.
You won't be getting any crazy mpg gains over a nimh replacement from say toyota themselves.

 

As I understand CARB emissions performance warranty pushes Toyota to provide a 10 yr warranty on high voltage batteries in hybrids/PHEVs. I am not aware that a replacement battery comes with a fresh 10 year warranty? I do not think anyone would buy anything else if this were true….

 

Yes it is the latest offering like the previous poster said it was a V1 to V2 upgrade. I have 21325 miles on the pack so far since July 2022 and 238 miles since I installed the V2. The 600 mile range just means the car recognizes the battery as more powerful with the new chip and a full tank of gas, nothing else is assumed. So far after driving it for a week I have noticed more torque so I believe this new chip increases fuel efficiency through torque which would make sense. (There is no comparison to tesla but the best way to describe this upgrade is calling my car a baby tesla. The car really feels more powerful. Faster?… not really, but it gives me the same great feeling, as when I installed the project lithium battery the first time, again, and couldn’t believe the results. Almost feels like I added another Quantum Solenoid as I am running the Track edition.) Recently I have been driving pedal to the metal and i’ve been getting 38mpg on short 2 mile trips around town which is expected with that kind of driving style and this heat in so cal. Today my car threw a bunch of random codes and check hybrid system. My 12v is a yellow top optima battery from April 2018 and not sure if the v2 pack had anything to do with the check hybrid system and needing a new 12v or if it is just coincidence but I am going to get a new 12v and update you guys tomorrow.

Today I installed another V2 conversion. If you are in southern california and have a V1 kit I would be willing to mobile install the V2 kit at your convenience, send me a message.

Jack the inventor has been great in all of the questions and conversations we’ve had through email. For my aging 2010 at 13 years old and 231k at the time this battery has been a great investment to prolong the life of my car. Before the upgrade my car would lose power up hills and only used the motor after the traction battery depleted going up long hills such as the grapevine in southern CA. For the price I was happy to get brand new cells with a 2 year unlimited mileage warranty and I have been much more impressed by the power and long time between charge cycles when parked using the ac and radio.

 

Do you have any experience with these specific batteries because how can you say this without actually using both batteries? I understand not wanting to spend the money to do this kind of modification but having this kind of hypothesis is absurd without real world experience. It seems like most project lithium owners love their battery (including myself) and they would not give it up if they had the choice between their project lithium and a brand new oem toyota traction battery. I would not want to drive my prius without it, it really is that great and I haven’t heard of any negative implications from installing a Project Lithium battery since they upgraded to the V2 chip.

 

Are you referring to the better self-discharge characteristics of LiFePO4 resulting in improved mileage? If so, the actual numbers matter when trying to estimate how much energy is saved.

NiMH loses about 1%/day, and LiFePO4 about 0.1%/day. Assuming you switched to lithium and the car is driven daily, you get 0.9% more energy in the battery at the beginning of the day—an extra 0.012 kWH—compared to the NiMH. If you only drove only as far as EV mode will allow, you'd get the maximum theoretical increase in fuel efficiency of 0.9%. The longer your commute becomes, the lesser the efficiency gains you see.