Lead Acid used to Replace NiMH

2715 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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clett

· #6 · Aug 15, 2005

Re: Battery

IamIan said:
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)

IamIan said:
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!

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