EV battery refurb

Glen Immal

Interesting utube video, this gent fits a spurious replacement battery to Prius.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RCdrh666w

I would imagine that any battery vehicle would be similar to work on. Will we be able to purchase replacement battery cells to rejuvenate, say an early leaf or upgrade the ioniq to a larger capacity.

unkel

Excellent video. If it was my own car, I would be inclined to find out the bad individual batteries and replace them for a fraction of the cost of replacing the whole pack. The pack still cost him USD1500 which would be madness to spend on a car that age in Ireland imho

zilog_jones

The problem with replacing individual cells or packs in an already old battery means it's only a matter of time before others start going. I've also heard of some Gen 2 Prius owners (in the US) getting reconditioned or third-party batteries which ended up lasting only 2-3 years or so before causing trouble again.

Going OEM will cost more, but I suppose you should also consider how much you've saved elsewhere in maintenance costs over the years - a Prius (Gen 2 onwards) would have never needed a replacement alternator, starter, belts, clutch, DMF, DPF, etc. because they don't have any of them. A BEV has even less going on.

In 5 years of owning a (pre-DPF/DMF) manual diesel I spent over €800 on fixing things that don't exist in my Prius. For a more modern diesel, you can easily add a grand or more for DPF or EGR valve work - OK, a Prius still has an EGR valve, but they don't cost a grand like in modern VAG diesels and don't fail so much!

zg3409

An Irish leaf owner replaced his entire battery with a better newer secondhand one. He got it from an EV specialist Irish dealer who sold it for 2 or 3k. With the help of a mechanic and a lift he took out the old battery. He found out the mounting bolt positions and features were different between the old battery and the newer model, so he ended up swapping over each individual cell instead of the entire box. This had the added benefit that the old electronics were reused instead of needing to progran the car to accept another cars battery management computer . so in the end no computer magic needed and car just drove away. If the first few days and weeks the range displayed jumped all over the place while the car re-learned the limits and capacity if each individual cell and re-guessed the range. All in all it took him 2 days, even less if it was a like for like battery swap. Ideally you want a battery from a crashed leaf, that has low mileage and has not been sitting lying in a scrap yard for years. Thus sort of thing will become common for back street garages and diyers to do, but as warned you would want quality cells, not some dodgy worn or cheap Chinese copies.

Reconditioned battery I would not do, not worth it, you do not know what the cells were subject to and the thing is , the garage doing the work might not be around in a few years and you're stung.

Lithium, they are sensitive to storage voltage and temperature and you'd be mixing cells that had different lives, not something I would do.

With a leaf the best thing to do is to get the battery brand new from nissan. it was not that expensive for a current gen 24 kwh.

Lots of Prius owners got stung in the U.S that got lithium conversions, some of the companies set up with Government funding and went bust , there's a lesson to be learned.

If getting any sort of battery make sure it's from a well established company, i..e Nissan, Renault, BMW etc.

Markcheese

There are a couple of crowds advertising Prius battery services on done deal, which I assume will keep a lot of otherwise healthy Prius s on the road..

unkel

Deleted User wrote: »

With a leaf the best thing to do is to get the battery brand new from nissan. it was not that expensive for a current gen 24 kwh.

You always say that, but it makes no financial sense to me to order a €5k part from Nissan and then attempt to DIY fit it to your Leaf with a dodgy battery outside warranty (say a 131 Leaf with the old battery) which was worth €4k with a dodgy battery and maybe €8k after

Lots of work and risk and zero financial benefit, in fact you would be losing money by doing it.

unkel

unkel wrote: »

You always say that, but it makes no financial sense to me to order a €5k part from Nissan and then attempt to DIY fit it to your Leaf with a dodgy battery outside warranty (say a 131 Leaf with the old battery) which was worth €4k with a dodgy battery and maybe €8k after

Lots of work and risk and zero financial benefit, in fact you would be losing money by doing it.

What ? you don't fit it , Nissan give you a new battery and install it for about 5.5 K Euro's if it's not cheaper at this stage and give you a real warranty and they're pretty much guaranteed to be around for many years to come.

unkel

Deleted User wrote: »

What ? you don't fit it , Nissan give you a new battery and install it for about 5.5 K Euro's

Ok that takes the risk out of it, but you still lose 1500 by having it done (in my example car worth 4k before and 8k after - any newer Leaf would still be in battery warranty). Unless you're emotionally attached to the car, that's not a rational decision

Or is this now a significantly cheaper job? I guess not as the US Toyota dealer charges USD4500 to replace a tiny hybrid battery. I doubt Nissan will replace the battery for under €3.5k (where it starts to make more economic sense)

creedp

unkel wrote: »

Ok that takes the risk out of it, but you still lose 1500 by having it done (in my example car worth 4k before and 8k after - any newer Leaf would still be in battery warranty). Unless you're emotionally attached to the car, that's not a rational decision

Or is this now a significantly cheaper job? I guess not as the US Toyota dealer charges USD4500 to replace a tiny hybrid battery. I doubt Nissan will replace the battery for under €3.5k (where it starts to make more economic sense)

But does the estimated market value after installing the new battery only matter if you are actually selling the car. Everyone seems to suggest that because of the simple mechanical design BEV's will go on for years so if you are intending to hold onto the car would a new battery be a cheaper option that upgrading the car? At least with the new battery, the most important component of a BEV, you essentially have the range of a new car at a fraction of the price.

unkel

unkel wrote: »

Ok that takes the risk out of it, but you still lose 1500 by having it done (in my example car worth 4k before and 8k after - any newer Leaf would still be in battery warranty). Unless you're emotionally attached to the car, that's not a rational decision

Or is this now a significantly cheaper job? I guess not as the US Toyota dealer charges USD4500 to replace a tiny hybrid battery. I doubt Nissan will replace the battery for under €3.5k (where it starts to make more economic sense)

Nissan charge 5500 for 24 Kwh battery fitted , brand new.

Toyota charge about 2500 Euro's to fit a 1 Kwh battery in a prius........

It's up to the owner whether they replace the battery or not, it's a perfectly good car and is cheaper than buying a new car, I haven't heard of 2014 owners replacing theirs yet , it's a better battery and that's what current 2011-2013 owners will get.

But my point is that there is a lot less risk buying a brand new battery than some reconditioned battery that couls last weeks or months and all that money is wasted + you only get a reconditioned battery with a lot less than new capacity, perhaps 75% where as the new battery gives 100% capacity.

unkel

Both good points, better the devil you know and all that, but I personally would never "invest" €5.5k in a car worth €4k. Even if I was planning on keeping it. I would either get it fixed cheaply (as in replace the pack or a few cells DIY). Or dump it and buy a slightly newer car (for the same €9.5k budget or a bit more, that is still under warranty)

With your €9.5k spent, you will still own a 2013 Leaf worth maybe €8k. I would spend an additional €3k on a 2016 Leaf 30kWh worth all of the money that I have spent (and which has another 6 years battery warranty left)

No I wouldn't spend the money either but there are people who will, you could buy a car for 9K and have less capacity than the older car with a brand new battery, in fact I'd guarantee it.

webmayo

unkel wrote: »

but I personally would never "invest" €5.5k in a car worth €4k.

€4k?. Can you please tell me where I can buy a 131 Nissan Leaf for €4k?

unkel

webmayo wrote: »

€4k?. Can you please tell me where I can buy a 131 Nissan Leaf for €4k?

Worth about €4k with a dead battery...

You're on boards almost 10 years and after all that time you decided to post for the very first time, but you didn't read the thread properly

Won't have a dead battery, but degraded battery, the battery only needs replacing when it no longer provides sufficient range for the driver. Could have 70% charge and make a perfect run-a-bout.

Hears a good one, while we're on the topic of batteries.

I got some Turnigy AA NiMh Low Self Discharge Cells, 7 years ago from HobbyKing.

They are 2200 Mah cells and now provide a good 2000 Mah , that's unreal !

That's roughly 10% loss after 7 years. I'm impressed !

I have a quality charger a Maha Powerex MH-C9000 and it shows the capacity of the batteries. You can set the charge and discharge currents , there's even a break in function which gives them a bit more capacity now and then.

I never really charge above 0.5 amps.

They now live on in the baby monitor. Seems like they'll last years longer. It definitely pays to have good quality cells and a good quality charger.