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Old 08-05-2005, 09:12 PM
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Schwa Schwa is offline
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Real Name: Erick
Location: Coquitlam, B.C.
Hybrids: 2001 Prius
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Default Re: Which will make a better used car, IMA cars, or HSD cars?

Quote:
Originally Posted by lakedude
I was impressed that your packs are modular but I don't think replacing single modules is really possible. I fly electric planes that use similar batteries and you can't really just replace single cells in old packs because of a missmatch issue. The new batts will take more charge so you will overcharge the other older batts causing a heat and safety issue. Are you sure you can just replace modules in the Toyota?
I agree, I would have thought that by the time the pack start exhibiting serious degradation all the cells would be getting pretty tired. This is the case with most battery packs, unless one or more cells are defective and cause the pack to fail prematurely. If that happened you could gather many of them together and make rebuild packs out of the tested-as-good modules, but since that's relatively rare then it's most likely going to be Toyota or Panasonic managing that operation.

What I think will be interesting is to see if they can make a new battery with the latest technology (lighter, higher density) to the same physical and voltage specifications for the car so that when you do finally replace the pack it's upgraded, maybe even to a plug-in variety, who knows? It's going to be fun watching all the Prius geeks modify and upgrade their cars as they age.

Last edited by lakedude; 08-05-2005 at 09:18 PM. Reason: edit typo in quote
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