dr prius lithuim modules problems

Don't have a Prius FB group and don't belong to one. Love to see the links with details here or wherever. It is a safety and reliability concern for a massive power source in the passenger compartment. Love the idea just wish there was transparency before known issues have a solution.

 

Several times. But that is over a LONG period of time.
Maybe 8 to 10 %.

 

For 12V car batteries I'm at roughly 10% too. One bad out of around 10, over 45 years. The one that dropped dead almost immediately was a Bosch from Pep Boys.

 

That is probably the safest choice. However, it does assume that the quality of current packs is equivalent to that of the originals, and that may or may not turn out to be true. Nobody is going to know until years from now. Past track records are not always reliable indicators of current quality. For instance our original GE Microwave oven lasted 25 years, the replacement GE units we bought both died in under 2 years. The pack in our 2007 Prius is the original, it isn't in the best of shape, but 15 years is an amazingly long time for a battery to keep working.

We don't have nearly as many years of history with the project Lithium pack. A lot of care has clearly gone into the electrical design, and I'm impressed that they redesigned the circuit after observing only a 1% failure rate for a particular problem. A lot of companies would have calculated that most of the failures would be well past warranty and let it slide. Still, assuming that these packs will last as long as the original NiMH ones isn't at all a certainty, despite their best intentions. I worry about the pouch technology batteries drying out faster than the prismatic blades in the original. (One of the main things that kills batteries is loss of water. All else being equal, the thicker the wall, the slower the loss of water through it.) I have my doubts about the longevity of the soldered tabs on the pouches. I don't recall exactly but there was some part of the original circuit boards which I thought might have problems. The vibration in cars is really hard on solder joints and these may crack over time. That's why the Honda IMA battery sticks had cells welded end to end rather than soldered, and why sometimes there is potting material on circuit boards in cars. Tesla stayed away from pouch based packs, but not because of the soldering issue, they were using a different chemistry which is more prone to going up in flames, and they argued that other form factors were safer.

On the other hand...

The Project Lithium pack is clearly superior in some ways. It is lighter and it stores more power. Both of those are going to increase MPG if all else is equal. Will it save enough in gas to offset an earlier failure? Possibly so if the car is driven far enough before that failure occurs.

Also, as Toyota phases out NiMH packs they may reach a point where they stop making replacements. That is basically what happened with Honda and its IMA packs. At that point there are only the aftermarket suppliers to keep the cars going. For that reason, it would be a form of insurance for this ecosystem (as it were) for some of us to buy aftermarket packs to keep the aftermarket suppliers in business, in case that dread day ever arrives. Of the aftermarket packs discussed in this forum, I think Project Lithium is probably the best, both from a technological and business perspective.

So which am I buying? Luckily I don't have to make that decision just yet!

 

When it is time, check out my profile for the link of this amazing HV battery.

I will give anyone in the high desert an install of your purchase for only $150

 

Last time I installed a Nexcell pack I charged near $150 because he seemed like a honest person who deserved a break and $48 an hour is more than fair for someone working from home and not paying for a shop.

But because I let him watch and spent lots of extra time explaining the dude wrote me a check for $400 and gave me a stern lecture about how the only problem with my "highly skilled" work was that I should value myself more... Lol... And Jack as well says the going rate for a shop to do an install is $450 and that I need to charge more.

 

Yea some people like to work slow to get a higher labor rate.

I can do it in half the time and this deal is only for locals in the high desert.

I would rather help people get their packs installed safely at a great price than charge them an arm and leg for whats going to take me way less than 3 hours.

 

I think you have just killed your chances with the company (which you have not contacted directly) after explaining all the non standard charging and mods.

 

Don't. The manufacturer's site says not to use any sort of grid charger on the pack with their LFP blades installed.

The only good use for an HCH1 is as a trade in. I had one, it was a money pit. The CVT kept breaking, there was no OEM IMA pack replacement with good cells (only used ones), and the aftermarket IMA pack with Chinese cells crapped out in very short order. It handled like a Civic, which was nice, but it was just as anemic accelerating as a Prius, and it was far less practical. I was amazed when CarMax bought it for $1K, since as far as I was concerned, it had negative value.

 

Any updates, Mikweb73? I'm curious to know how their customer service is treating you before I buy their pack.

 

Yeah it should be interesting to see how they're going to support this looks like this guy's added a ton of electronics to his generation too My god all these battery monitors from the seat folks got lots of time on their hands I guess holy crap. I'm not really seeing how the battery manufacture seller is going to get involved in this especially when I would think most of the things that have been stalled and this guy's generation two are all 12 volt related for the most part It looks like The sine wave inverters not fully connected so it says. And seen no further post that's always interesting.

 

HI Lesk, I have friends that live in your town and it'd be fun to visit them if you need help with the install... I've also been helping Project Lithium with FAQ writing and adapting packs to run in Honda hybrids, which has given me a front row seat to their customer service work. Feel free to private message me if you have specific questions? They definitely push their economic limits of being generous when people do something stupid that damages the battery pack.

 

LFP modules would have to be an improvement over those strange dual cylinder NiMH sticks Honda started using with the Civic Hybrid in 2006.

We had a first generation Civic Hybrid. You hardly ever see those on the road these days because in addition to the packs not lasting very long they had an unreliable CVT. (Even if one changed the fluid frequently, which was extra maintenance I never needed to do on any other car.) Other than that the car was just a slow Civic, but otherwise reliable. In the same sense as "other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play". Ours rarely did better than 40 mpg though, regardless of driving conditions.

 

I didn't read any of those text walls with no formatting. I have zero affiliation with Project Lithium / Nexcell but I will absolutely attest to the quality and customer service of my Project lithium experience in my 2nd Gen Prius. I paid full price, had a technical issue that-quite frankly-was my fault, and had two replacement blades shipped to me for free along with additional equipment to manage the install.

If anyone has any questions about Project Lithium I would be happy to answer them on a phone call or other means of communication. This batteries, and this company are going to change the market. It's early adopters like us that are driving that change. I'm not going to hand out some referral code or BS like that but if you are anywhere within a couple hours of Denver, Colorado I will help you every step of the way because I believe so much in what Jack at Project Lithium is doing. I'm here if anyone has any other questions.

 

A test I ran on our old NiMH pack showed that it had increased in capacity by about that much over a period of several months with no processing of the pack to cause it to improve. The consensus was that that was noise too. Unless the operating temperatures for two tests are exactly the same the thermal effects are likely at least a couple of percent.