Lead Acid used to Replace NiMH

2717 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by Mike Dabrowski 2000, Aug 15, 2005

IamIan

Discussion Starter · Aug 12, 2005

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.!

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IamIan

Discussion Starter · #4 · Aug 13, 2005

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...

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IamIan

Discussion Starter · #5 · Aug 13, 2005

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

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