For the trolls

Do you think that Jack is "a little" upset with mudder's review of the v3 prototype Na -Ion battery?

 

Let's not have another thread that goes all personal. (Haven't watched the video, so maybe it already had, I don't know.)

 

Watch the video. I think that Jack needs to learn about anger management. I can't believe that Jack posted the video on YouTube.

 

I think it would be disingenuous to call mudder a troll.

Mudder is doing a teardown and commentary about a product. These types of videos are kind of ubiquitous across the internet.

The commentary on these videos certainly can be helpful for decision making and for product improvement.

I commend Jack on his entrepreneurship and vision. I recognize the hard work he puts in every day on his product and business.

Hopefully mudder's videos have identified items that can be looked at as constructive criticism. Taking it too personally would make it easy to miss the knowledge that could be gleaned.

While mudder may be a new name in the Prius community, he is well known for his decade+ work in the Honda community.

Mudder already has shown his ability to create a viable lithium battery product. It is for the Honda Insight community to convert their cars to Lithium. He didn't design the batteries, but did design the integrating hardware. It can be readily bought from one of the big battery suppliers. Additionally it is open source for the public to copy, modify and iterate.

Much of the lessons learned from that product could be used in a Prius version of the product.

I am worried about this posted video by Jack. It doesn't quite address some of the concerns brought up about the product.

More importantly, to me, it doesn't put him in the best light. It doesn't feel like the usual quality of Jack's other videos.

It appears like Jack has been served a cease and desist relating to warning Jack to stop privately making false statements about mudder's professional reputation.

Watching a video like this makes me worried that Jack may (inadvertently?) cross the line and create even more problems for himself if he doesn't follow his own advice to "calm down"..

Trying to remain positive for future product improvements.

 

whoa that video was crazy, the guy went just "ahhhhh! dont buy my product!!! wah! wah! wah!, not really good marketing

 

It would be nice if Jack would share his background and qualifications to be designing a retrofit hybrid battery pack. Is he or one of his contractors a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) or even a degreed electrical engineer? Is there someone risking his PE license by stamping the design documents?

Jack’s representatives who argue and post with discount codes seem less qualified from a technical standpoint but I would love to hear their qualifications beyond sales.

“Mudder” (John Sullivan) is the reviewer in question and is an electrical engineer with experience developing a successful lithium hybrid battery retrofit and understands the role of a battery management system (BMS) to protect the battery, the car and the occupants. He is also a PE.

Jack in the video above is certainly in the same business but not as successful and certainly does not understand the role of a battery chemistry specific BMS. As a result many of his products have been recalled simply to replace a simple analog temperature sensor interface.

Years ago when Jacks products were introduced to the Priuschat community, I and others asked about the interface and safety features, typically incorporated into a BMS. In general terms I asked how they intended to safely interface to the Prius Battery ECU. Their response was “it’s confidential” but the results proved to be unreliable and simplistic without any electronic logic or safeguards. In fact a later revision actually used analog circuits to smooth out voltage difference between modules, effectively reducing the standard Toyota ecus ability to monitor the battery.

Until a stable, proven and well engineered Prius retrofit battery solution exists, I recommend staying with oem NiMH. Or buy a Toyota hybrid built with an advanced battery chemistry and a well engineered BMS designed for that battery type.

Jack NexPower YouTube
https://youtube.com/@hybridapp7158?si=8GXb-NKL5qbbeW2p

John Sullivan YouTube
https://youtube.com/@doppelhub?si=E_iTQtAzsYGeONSh

 

A couple quick and serious questions.

the Toyota ECU monitors, regulates and controls the power supplied to the HV battery
What chemistry was this control system designed for?

Remember not even the OEM modules have such a feature in them.
Correct; what chemistry are those OEM modules? Hybrids and EV's that use other chemistries...do they use those features? Certainly, with all the talk about how OEMs are tight with their wallet, they wouldn't spend money where it's not needed? Maybe they just haven't done as much research?

I'm also curious about the 'review' process. Apparently it's ok to do positive reviews of every useless product on the market, with no real tangible evidence other than feelings and butt-meters. Every product in America has people that think it's great and people that think it's not so great. Why should there NOT be space available for the other side of the review? If something is wrong, then point it out with evidence or real science or additional expert analysis. Having tantrums akin to a 6 year old does nothing but make it worse to observers.

Maybe Toyota Technical support, Panasonic or Primearth (?) can be persuaded to provide an expert third party opinion since they would be pretty familiar with potential problems if a NiMH control system is used with other than NiMH applications. Put some effort into finding a reputable 3rd party expert who is willing to put their name on the line. We're talking millions of dollars at risk, right? Imagine the number of orders that would come in with a good review. Right now, all you have is Jack (I'm not sure, but what are his qualifications again? I still remember when he first showed up on PC asking a bunch of questions about how to do his app) and "associates" that make a bit of money for every unit they help sell. Not sure of their qualifications either.

For the sake of transparency, what was the actual percentage of units that had failures? Or to make it easy, what percent needed warranty work? Not just ones that made official warranty claims, but even the 'helping you out' because I'm a nice guy, ones. Must be close to zero, considering how strongly it's being defended. But I also read that the business was almost lost due to the in-warranty failures. Which is it?

he is trying very hard to divert sales of Jack's HV battery because mudder wants to be a competitor
You keep saying this, but what product is he trying to divert customers to? You make no sense, because you also keep screaming that he doesn't even have a product. He wants people with failed batteries to chill out and wait around, maybe they can just walk everywhere? Do you think demand isn't high enough that 10 battery businesses couldn't thrive with a good product?

The general public knows even less about batteries than both you and I, believe it or not, so they really rely on buying a dependable product that will let them get in their car and just drive for at least 10 years. We KNOW for fact the OEM battery can do that and much more. Will you (Azusa) provide your personal 10 year written guarantee for a full refund on every battery for which you get a kickback? No replacement modules, just a refund if a battery fails and leaves the customer without a car to use?

This forum is being used to sell a product. Potential purchasers should have the right to know what they're actually buying. The world finds that out by having two sides to every story. Your 'team' is apparently putting every effort into silencing the other half of the story. Let's keep it clean and undiverted.

 

You have said that before, but the point you gloss over (that it does so according to safe control strategies for NiMH) you glossed over before, too.

And glossed over the same point.

as long as the cells in the module are NiMH.

I remember that about the OEM NiMH modules, because with NiMH you can get away with monitoring blocks of twelve cells.

Now, are you trying to tell us that when Toyota builds a non-NiMH battery that requires per-cell monitoring, they don't do per-cell monitoring?

We don't have to guess, because of course starting with gen 4 Toyota offered Prius models with non-NiMH batteries. Are you going to say that those OEM batteries don't do per-cell monitoring?

Unless we look.

 

Ummmmm....perhaps NONE, because those cars use an entirely different control system. Do you actually think the NiMH and Lithium versions of the Prius use the same control components? You cannot possibly, but that's basically what you wrote...

 

OMG, you do think the NiMH and Lithium versions use the same system. Holy fk.

 

Toyota's NiMH batteries since day one have had "the" voltage sense harness you are thinking of. As in, one.

And of course when you looked at the video of Toyota's non-NiMH Prius battery, you saw that one has four voltage sense harnesses.



Why so many more sense wires, d'ya think?

I'll help: because with NiMH it is safe to monitor every twelve cells (that's every pair of Toyota's six-cell modules).

The non-NiMH battery has so many more sense wires because it has to monitor each individual cell.

You could package it that way, or you could do what Toyota did and just use enough sense wires for a single BMS unit to see the voltage of every cell (not just every twelfth cell like the NiMH version).

Or just maybe, there already is such a video. Say, here's even you linking to the same video I linked for you in #13!

So you've already learned from it yourself, right? Right?

Here is the video you just linked showing the two Toyota lithium blade modules that make up the battery:



Toyota's packaging choice was for each Li module to be 28 Li cells, and the battery is two modules (a Prime battery is five modules). Each module has all the sense wires it needs for the BMS to see the voltage at every single cell.

Why is it like that, when their NiMH version just has one sense wire every two modules (twelve cells)?

Because Toyota knows with some chemistries (NiMH), you can safely get away with monitoring every twelve cells, and with some chemistries you can't.