[IamIan]

I thought I had menchoned this before but didn't see it when I did a search ... so I figured I would post this so everyone knows about it....

Espeically with all the recent concern about battery pack replacement I have been reading lately....

Basicly there is a group of people who replaced the NiMH 144 Volt Battery pack in the Insight with a Lead Acid Battery pack....

http://www.batteriesdigest.com/lead_for_hybrid.htm

They of course were doing it in coroperation with a lead acid battery maker, and were a bunch of engineers in a fully equiped facility...

The article listed above goes into some of the details.... But not any of the down and dirty details needed for others to also make this swap out and who knows what all was required to make it happen....

What this does mean though ... is that other batteries can be used in the insight to replace the NiMH and with lead acid being a option a cheaper alternative is out there ... The big remaining question is what is required to make it happen?????

I am still in school ... and yet do not know enough to figure it out on my own... continued web searching has not yeilded more answers for me ... so Until I am more educated or until someone already more educated does the work to figure it out this is the key and main missing piece of detail needed to make this kind of swap out.

To those who already knew about this.... I don't think anything new has happened.... they made the switch proved it would work and haven't done anything else with it since....

Just an FYI for those who didn't know about it...

Later

Ian.!

 

[Resist]

Interesting.

 

[Aaron Cake]

Interesting, but they didn't seem to provide a solution to the problem of leaving a lead acid battery at less then full charge. Leaving any PbA battery at say, half charge, for more then a few hours is damaging due to sulphate deposits. This is not a problem with NiMh, so the Insight does't care about leaving the battery overnight with very little charge. This is VERY BAD for lead acids, and when repeated a few times, will cause quick death.

 

[IamIan]

Battery

Aaron, Agreed.... Useing a straight Lead Acid Replacement for the NiMH will not last long unless you always ended with a full SOC ... But would be much much cheaper... and it works.... if only they would tell us the dirty details of how....

Lighter Lithiums need to be charged very different from Lead Acid or NiMH ... But Valance Lithiums that the Prius Plus Folks Used can be charged in the same way Lead Acid can.... And as Lithiums they can left in various SOC without Harm.... Which would be an interesting experiment.... The only questions about the Valence Lithiums would be how many AMPs in & AMPs out they can take and how well the AMP counter in the Insight Elestronics can be matched to the Capactity of the Valance Lithiums or will capacity go unused....

but this is mainly just an FYI for those who didn't know about the Lead Acid conversion that happened...

 

[IamIan]

Battery

I forgot to include in my first post....

the Foresight the name they gave to the Lead Acid Hybrid Insight project has been taken over as a hybrid / alternative vehicle project ...

another paper about the lead acid conversion is here:

http://www.foresightvehicle.org.uk/info ... D17JUN.doc

the Web site about the UK Program is at:

http://www.foresightvehicle.org.uk/index.asp

They program seems to be moving in all alternative fuel directions.... so noting dedicated to the insight or lead acid and insight central is a better resource i think... bu that is what happened to the group that did the Foresight.

Later

 

[clett]

Re: Battery

The only questions about the Valence Lithiums would be how many AMPs in & AMPs out they can take and how well the AMP counter in the Insight Elestronics can be

The Valence U-Charge lithiums can give out 100 Amps continuously or up to 200 Amps for 30 seconds. 100 Amps in too (pdf here)

will capacity go unused....

Yes, unless the Insight is "re-programmed" in a similar way to the Prius+ project. Basically they fool the computer into thinking there is too much charge in the main pack the whole time, so the car tries to get rid of the excess charge by assisting the gas engine with the max 21 kW electric assist at every opportunity. Hence it cuts fuel use dramatically at all speeds.

With this kind of set-up (electric assist from overnight grid-charging) I think 200mpg could be a realistic target for an Insight+ project. Good thing Mike has set up the groundwork to make this possible in the form of the MIMA project!

 

[Mike Dabrowski 2000]

Hi Guys
Some of the recent test have shown that the SOC determination which is based on the hall effect current sensor output can be easily fooled into thinking that more or less charge is happening, and therefore it would be pretty easy to fool the system into charging a bigger pack, as the SOC determination is solely depending on this output.
The full charge determining circuits, and recal producing subpack voltage monitoring systems would have to be fooled as well, and from what I have read, lead acid will have a much bigger droop in voltage when drained at the 100 A rate than the saphion's or the Nimh subpacks, so it could be an issue.
I have not read the link at the begining of this thread(too busy trying to get ready to ship MIMA), but will be looking into the battery issues once that hurdle is crossed.
:wink: