Won't go into much detail, but due to illness, I don't work anymore. Not doing it for the money*, but doing nothing is driving me nuts. (looking after the house, and the kids is barely nothing (even doing the house halfheartedly), but I hope you get my drift) I want to look into repairing Prius battteries. What do I need? I would imagine a good batterycharger for testing modules, but what is good? I am an EE, so have a good basic understanding, but that's it. First looked into making Gen2's into plug-ins, but tax-exemptions ended this year, it involved gevernmental testing costing >>10k, etc. so I didn't even bother really looking into different available BMS's and their shortcomings, let alone what kind of warranty I would/could have to give, etc. Any thoughts welcomed. * (due to reasonable social security in Holland, I AM doing it also for the money, but won't starve without it)
General recommendations are 1) Make sure you have all the safety, protection, chemical and environmental disposal equipment needed. The electrolyte in nearly all batteries is toxic and/or caustic. The Prius NiMh battery is definitely full of nasty stuff. If you do battery handling, you don't want to find out the hard way that a lot of battery repairs are caused by leaks of nasty stuff. A whole lot of Prius battery repairs are due to physical battery damage from wrecks, speaker screws penetrating the battery, etc. As an EE you should know the electrical dangers involved with high power devices with no OFF switch whatsoever. (e.g. Are ALL your tools non-conductive??) 2) Determine what you are willing to repair. Are you planning to repair cells or just rearrange cells? Huge difference in equipment needed. 3) A large load for sustained battery testing is needed. Specifically, a whole bunch of cells that are the same voltage when fully charged will have very different voltages when significantly discharged. The only way to determine the discharge curves of different cells is to discharge them.
ReInvolt, who was bought out by Dorman used to have some overview videos and discussion on hybrid battery repair, as well as insight into the learning curve. Dorman has a video here with some feel for it. The white haired gentleman seen in the video is I believe the ReInvolt founder. Taylor Automotive : Automotive Service and Maintenance in Sanford, NC There's both Prius and Civic Hybrid shown in the above.
1. What is the likely market in your country for this service? How many Prius are sold there annually? 2. How many of those cars no longer are covered under traction battery warranty? 3. Of those cars, how many are likely to have failed batteries within a given time period? Assume 5% per year to start. 4. And of those cars, how many are within a reasonable distance of your locale? It would be unfortunate for you to invest substantial $$$ in gearing up for this only to find there is little or no demand for your service.
there is a guy here selling grid charger's for $400. this could be a useful tool for battery maintenance and recovery. you should contact eric becky, he has a business, is very knowledgable, helpful and friendly. all the best!
Thanks guys!!! This gives me something to start with. Just a vague plan, even if I never follow through, learning more about it is interesting! 1: This site says some 5000 a year, totalling close to 50k in total so far. Beware the country is tiny (250 miles high, 100 miles wide) with 16million inhabitants. Taxexemptions change with every new government so numbers fluctuate greatly. (I went from being roadtax-exempt to ~900$ a year with the Prius ). 2: I think our warranty is only 100k km, so 62k miles. Our cars are smaller, so even more so than the US, it will be the primary car, and it will often be driven 10-15k miles a year. 3: I have read of very, very few battery failures. But assuming 5% of 20,000 cars (only Prii older than 5 years (>62k miles)) = 1000. 4: About half due to living in the densly populated area of our densly populated country
you may want to pm the young lady from houston hybrids. she and her husband set up a business down there and seem to be doing fairly well at it.
R-P, General questions for you ... to ask yourself General understanding of batteries and battery chemistry Experience hooking them up in different configurations Comfort working in high voltage Understanding of the peculiarities of a battery pack in a car Experience hacking auto battery packs Understanding auto pack failure modes, and likely success, life of different repair strategies Your local market for components I have to admit, reading "I am an EE," and "I would imagine a charger ?" did not overwhelm me with confidence, but we all start somewhere. All the best, and good luck! P.s., I suggest finding all the battery related posts by BobWilson and Seilerts that have been posted to this forum. That is a course unto itself. Oh, and every DIY battery repair thread should be required reading. Lots of pitfalls to avoid.
My suggestion would be to buy a good Minelab or Whites metal detector, (or any other good quality detector), and go hit some old area's and see what you can find! If you have kids, take them along to have them dig for you. Tell them its a "treasure hunt" as it will be! Its a fun hobby, and at times, it can more than pay for itself with what you find! Just make sure you back fill the holes you dig, and have permission to be where you detect! My sugges
I have several deltaV NiMH (AAA, AA, C, D cell) battery chargers and they all are crap. I recently invested in a Maha MH-C9000, and its conclusion is that all my other chargers managed to fry almost all my AA's... So I realise all too well that a decent charger is not that easy to find, hence me using the phrase "I would imagine a charger" somewhat condescendingly (not the exact word I was looking for, but the best I could find in my internal vocabulary ). Given that the BMS/balancing pcb's for DIY plug-in kits seem to fry regularly (or that is the idea I got from reading several threads on the subject), that seems to be a work of art to get right as well. As for the metal detector tip: that's a totally different route... There is the odd chance of finding second world war bombs though... They STILL regularly turn up... (35 years ago, they dug up a 2-yard long one next to my parents house, and the workmen were flicking cigarette butts toward it. and a few months later, someone got blown to pieces when finding one in the riverbed... And just last week they found one under the highway that they had to blow up on site because the couldn't move it...)
In a second language no less. I should have realized what R-P meant -- I have met enough Dutch to know that modesty and self-mockery are well developed.
OK. So ket's say 500 Prius is the potential market. 5. How you are going to communicate the availability of your service to those 500 Prius owners and what will it cost you to advertise your services? Let's assume your marketing is wildly successful and 20% or 100 actually develop an awareness that you and your service exist. It's not unreasonable to expect that 80% will ignore or not register your marketing message. 6. How many of those 100 will bother to take the next step to call you when their battery dies? 7. And then of the people who call, what proportion will actually decide to buy from you vs. buying a battery from the dealer, trading their old Prius in, etc.? It may take a while to get this business going. If you decide to go for it, good luck.
I'd imagine that the Dutch market would be too small to make the business financially viable. If you got up and running, the rest of Europe might have a but of business for you though
