NexPower V3 hybrid battery unveil - Sodium-ion battery

Yikes, so instead of a proper BMS that is made for Li-Ion, it 'averages' modules...
What about balancing the differences in cells, like a proper BMS?

- Do Sodium packs need balancing?
- Are there any current consumer items using Sodium cells?
- What is the Self-Discharge Rate? That is important data for some. You don't want to come back to a bricked Prius after a 2 month vaca...

Thanks for the informative reply!

I've always been an early adopter, driving EV since '14 and nothing but the most fuel efficient Gassers before that.
I'm not replacing my original pack in my '10 Gen3 until it's begging for it.
Not like the guy above swapping out many packs for no good reason, other than 'Research'.
But I'm now aware of this Sodium chemistry. But not enough to do research. I'll 'Wait and See'.

 

I don't think that using lithium has to be an ethical issue. It can be recycled almost indefinitely, and lithium can be obtained ethically, unlike something like cobalt, currently.

 

Sadly, humans these days have been so disconnected with their planet's living systems that folks like yourself see no loss in destroying those living systems that our very lives depend on. Y'all have all kinds of silly ways to excuse any and all destruction of the planet simply because of a lack of education and information:

There's huge ecosystems, especially rare plant communities threatened with extinction because of lithium mines! Every country in the world started targeting their lithium resources once the transition from fossil fuels to Electric battery storage got robust enough. And Sodium-Ion has the potential to destroy those investments before many of those ecosystems get destroyed.

 

An electrical engineer that blew the whistle on the soother scam and had direct experience creating custom lithium bms systems for Hondas had his expert posts erased from Priuschat by management.

 

mmmm wonder why that was....

 

I don't remember anything quite so dramatic. I don't remember whether even some of his posts got deleted for one reason or another, but certainly the key ones are still around for anyone to review, and that was how we first were able to learn what the soother actually did.

Anyone reviewing those threads will also see that part of the story was that he wasn't a very disciplined presenter. He gave the answer to "what does this soother thing do?" but only in the form of a 41-minute video where the technical details were all mixed in with his judgements on how good or bad an idea it was. Not that he wasn't qualified to offer judgements too, but if he had taken the time to write an outline first, it could have been a better-organized presentation where the commentary came after the tech details, and I wouldn't have had to write that "here's what I think you're saying it does, did I get that right?" post.

His judgements that he mixed in with the details were objected to by some other members, who discovered they could bait him by going personal and he had trouble resisting that and keeping his head. The threads devolved into puerile names and belligerent legal posturing, and it was around then that the mods stepped in.

The mods put a temporary (I'm remembering seven days?) posting ban on him, and not on the other members who had engaged in the baiting. That might have been a debatable choice, but it was what it was, and I don't remember much deleting of his posts or any further restriction on his posting beyond the temporary ban. He hasn't been around here much since, but that probably just goes more to the taste the whole experience left in his mouth.

 

His posts are still available on here and he was banned for 30 days due to other behavior violations and he choose not to return after his ban.

As for the "signal soother scam" it was never a product that was sold. It was something developed in the early first weeks solely to study low temp starts that created warning lights for a moment. Less than a half-dozen of these were made until it was decided to shift to Sodium-Ion which is far more robust and without issue in cold temperatures.

If someone wants to professionally evaluate a commercial product that's fine. But the person in question was illicitly acquiring test products and proto-types to do overly negative analysis because they plan to introduce their own product that's similar, so there's a credibility issue with his work.

More to the point, Jack's battery packs have to go through rigorous testing by international battery certification groups, as well as testing from Chinese government where they're manufactured as well as in the US to where they ship, as well as to other countries to where they ship.

It's odd that all those tests don't exist / are made invalid by an internet troll that wants to be Jack's competitor and that dishonest effort of his led to a flood of charge backs that's now threatening the very survival of Jack's small business.

 

So the biggest argument against this experienced lithium battery retrofit engineer was his presentation style?

No concerns over a sales machine working Priuschat members who were called liars, incompetent and even non customers when they complained about short retrofit battery lifespans, fires and constant denials of problems. Complete with lawsuit threats from the company toward their customers. Later there was acknowledgement but only when there was another product to sell.

Great.

 

Well, I think the comments on presentation style came from me, and I wouldn't characterize myself as arguing against him. I was more hoping he would get the hang of presenting in a less self-defeating way, and especially that he could avoid responding in kind to puerile baiting by others. It was hard watching his valuable technical contributions getting lost in all that.

 

California is pretty tough on aftermarket car components. Since these hybrid batteries are a different chemistry from the OEM and apparently change how the car performs, were they required to go through CARB to get an exemption number? Is this somehow different from components manufactured by other aftermarket companies?

 

CARB is exclusive to OEM... There's no such thing as aftermarket modifications from the CARB state perspective.

 

what?

why do aftermarket manufacturers have to have a carb eo number for every model of an aftermarket part that affects car performance/emissions, etc?

isn't that why only some catalytic converters are available for use in CA? They have to go through rigorous (ie expensive) testing to get an executive order number from CARB to allow selling in California, etc?

I guess it's kind of interesting since hybrids are a different animal. The batteries aren't part of emissions systems, don't exactly affect emissions, yet they do affect mpg, right? therefore affecting engine performance. CARB doesn't differentiate between making emissions better or worse, and better mpg doesn't always result in better emissions. I don't know enough about it, honestly, but would like to read up on it from a reliable source. The CARB website has a phone number to contact with regard to work on hybrid vehicles, but no real website info.

 

So that's at the very least 4 separate testing orgs, which hopefully publish test data for the consumers to read.

My question is: Are they testing "Jack's battery packs", as in, ready to install in the car 'Packs'?

Or are they testing generic Sodium cells, which are then assembled into modules, which then get assembled into 'Packs'?
Or are these direct replacements for the OEM Ni-Mh packs as removed from a Prius?

Is there more than one manufacturer of Sodium Cells capable of doing the work of a Prius battery pack?