Prime traction battery configuration

The New Car Features book, available by subscription to techinfo.toyota.com, says:

(c) Compact, lightweight 3.7 V lithium-ion battery cells are used in order to generate high power output.
(d) The 19 lithium-ion battery cells provided for each hybrid battery stack are connected in series in a bus bar module.
(e) The HV battery consists of 5 hybrid battery stacks. They are connected to each other in series through bus bar modules and wiring harness.​

There is an illustration of a cell, which is a rectangular solid with terminals on top, not a cylinder like a 18650 cell.

 

congrats and welcome, all the best!

 

Please correct me if I've got this wrong but I think Tesla was the only major player using the generic 18650 cell design. The other manufacturers are using prismatic or other type construction while Tesla has since moved to the 2170 cell for the Model 3.

I guess another way to say it is, their common similarity is they are all different due to patents, corporate pride, tech. advances, and such.

 

I’m not aware of a published source for this information. The cell used in the smaller Li-ion battery pack for the fourth-generation Prius, however, is described in an SAE paper: Nagai, H., Morita, M., and Satoh, K., “Development of the Li-ion Battery Cell for Hybrid Vehicle,” SAE Technical Paper 2016-01-1207, 2016, doi:10.4271/2016-01-1207. The paper refers to U.S. patents 8,486,564 and 8,945,768.

 

This video might help. This is the disassembly of a Gen4 Prius Li-Ion pack. He does briefly discuss the differences between the hybrid-only version and the Prime's larger pack. Both Prii use what is referred to as prismatic cells vs. the Tesla cylindrical cells.

 

When I watched the above referenced video, it showed the Lion battery in the regular latest Prius and said more of the same type was used for the Prius Prime. You may want to look again.

 

keep in mind that toyota has been using li-on since the introduction of the 2012 plug in, and in europe before that.
safety has not been a problem, afaik. while there have a been a few car fires reported here, idk if it has been traced back to the battery.

 

They are individual 25Ah cells, which are commonly available that size and larger. For example:

Tattu 30000mAh 22.2V 25C 6S1P Lipo Battery Pack perfect suited to UAV Drones.

 

Successful greenwashing will result in that assumption.

Taking time to research will reveal they stated cost was the issue.

 

And was a lack of a proper TMS for the pack also part of the 'cost issue'?
(what's "Greenwashing"?)

This is not an individual cell. This a a '6 Series' 22.2 VDC battery pack.
A individual 25Ah - 3.8 VDC cell is not something a person buys.
Manufacturers buy them to build a large pack and typically include a method of heating and cooling the cells as required.
If TMS is skipped for 'cost issues', typically the Dreaded Battery Degradation shows up in harsh climates. (Leaf - Tucson)

 

It's 6 individual 25AH cells, in series. It's not a parallel combination of 3.4AH 18650s or similar. That was my point.

 

I had been under the impression that pretty much only Tesla uses cylindrical cells - in some conversations I had with people planning EV conversions (and those who had prior experience), they noted that prismatic cells were (at that point, about a year ago) superior in terms of management and stability unless you got an entire Tesla pack and BMS. From what I've gathered, Volt cells are fairly popular.

I am a little confused by why you would think that Toyota would have access to Tesla's (I would assume proprietary) battery development knowledge (outside of what is publicly known and what they can glean from disassembling the cars). Toyota sold off their ownership stake and (as far as I know) there isn't any technology licensing agreement in place any longer (presumably there was one in the past for the development of the RAV4 EV).

 

Right, but also keep in mind these RC guys flog their packs. They claim to have Discharge rates of 20C, 30C maybe even higher.
There is very little regard for life span of a pack and no thought of TMS for the pack.
In sanctioned racing they are limited how hard they can charge them and how hot they can get the pack during charging.

 

That's not relevant to my post. I was answering this sort of thing:

"So presuming they are using 18650's, do we know which one and how many are in parallel within each of the 95 serial groups? For example, I think Tesla is using Panasonic NCR18650B's at 3400 mAh each."

"the typical "cell" would have a maximum Ah value of around 3.4 Ah."

"I'm thinking that in the information you provided, the use of the term "cell" means each parallel group of cells, not individual 18650 cells, and that the parallel groups would have to consist of 25Ah capacity each."

I pointed out (correctly) that you can get individual 25AH cells that aren't composed of parallel groups of cells, nor are they composed of cylindrical cells.