Home built battery?

[Prince Valiant]

Has anyone tried? Any "insight" as to the feaseablity? (sorry, bad pun)

A friend of mine who is an electrical engineer said he'd be surprised if no one had tried yet. I told him that I'd check with you guys...a search turned up nothing.

[devin1955]

Others will no doubt chime in with a more technical explanation, but it's more involved than one would imagine. The batteries are special industrial D cells that screw together, in subpacks of 6 (or 9 can't remember), and there's temperature sensors built into each one too.

Sooner or later someone will tackle it, but my guess is nobody has so far.
-Don

[LoNOx 1]

The D-cell's are welded together end to end.

[Mike Dabrowski 2000]

I am working on a Prius subpack based pack replacement prototype.
http://www.99mpg.com/workshops/mikessaturdayhybri/
The Prius subpacks are rugged, and capable of higher charge and discharge currents right out of the box.
I hope to finish the design by spring.

[IamIan]

for discharge.
normal D cells max out at ~50 amp short pulses ~4C to 5C and don't like more than about ~2C or ~20amps at a sustained rate...

for charging
normal D cells don't like more than about ~1C of about 10 Amps.

The D cells in the Insight handle 100 amp ~15C extended pulse Discharge.
The D cells in the Insight handle 50 Amp ~7C charging.

and they will take this for several thousand cycles... instead of the ~500 or so cycles of a normal D cell.

The only down sides to the Insight cells that I see...
#1> They have lower Ah capacity than normal D cells. ~6.5 Ah instead of ~10Ah to ~12Ah.
#2> Panasonic only sells them in ~10,000 cell production runs. ( as of ~2005 )
#3> To make use of the high Amps you need to weld them together like Honda does.

A few years ago I read about some Lead Acid battery company swapping out the NiMH battery in a Insight with a Lead Acid one of the same pack voltage ... but I do not recall the name of the company and I do not have the story saved...

There are ~11 voltage sensors for the battery system.
There are current sensors.
There are several temperature sensors.
There are heat responding current limiting resistors.
There are Fuses.
The Battery Control Module ( BCM ) has yet to be 100% cracked.

progress has been made yes.... but there is not a guide to the home made battery pack... perhaps eventually... but not yet.

[devin1955]

Originally Posted by Mike Dabrowski 2000

I am working on a Prius subpack based pack replacement prototype.

Good news! Are you thinking of setting up a rebuilding service?

[Mike Dabrowski 2000]

Lets just say that I am exploring that possibility.

[budomove]

cant wait to see it work!

[IamIan]

found a bit about the old lead acid battery replacement they did for a Honda Insight.

Dr. Pat Moseley of the International Lead Zinc Organization and the ALABC,
and Allan Cooper of the European Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium

worked in 2003 on replacing the NiMH 144V battery in a Honda Insight with a Lead Acid battery system supplied by Hawker.

------------------------

Separately
effpower in 2006 installed a Bi-Polar Lead Acid battery in a Honda Insight and did 15,000 km of real traffic test driving... in the end they claimed :
"The Honda Insight with the Effpower lead-acid battery pack outperformed the OEM NiMH pack in terms of fuel consumption."

-----------------------------

Separately
In 2006 Patrick T. Moseley put a paper to the advance lead-Acid Battery Consortium
about his tests on a targeted production cost of $500 Lead Acid battery replacement for the Honda Insight's NiMH 144V system....

--------------------------------

Separately
Furukawa / CSIRO Flat Used 7Ah 12V Lead Acid Batteries to replace the Honda Insight's OEM NiMH.

[Prince Valiant]

Where did you find this? Sounds interesting....