In all the literature I have read – from Ford http://www.fordvehicles.com/escapehy...logy/index.asp (The sealed nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery pack in the FHE is rated at 330 volts) to articles on the net and post here – the battery pack is always stated as a 330 Volt Ni-HM, but mine reads 300 Volts. What gives??

I have checked and a ‘standard’ NiMH batteries output is rated at 1.2V (Sanyo Twicell and others). Most articles on the FHE state there are ‘250 batteries roughly the size of a D cell’ - (Car & Driver) ‘250 1.3-volt nickel-metal hydride batteries’ in the battery pack. The 250 @ 1.2V would equate up to the 300 Volts. With the 330 volt output stated most often, that would equate to 275 inline batteries. Am I missing 25 batteries .

On the Sanyo site I did run across some literature on their Twicell batteries at http://www.sanyo.com/batteries/pdfs/twicellT_E.pdf. Seems that both the internal battery and ambient air temp both play a parallel role in correlation with the final output voltage and discharge rate – the higher the temp the higher the voltage/discharge rate etc.

I have seen photos of the battery pack on some sites that have the Sanyo logo on then some with the FMC logo – mine has the FMC logo and reads ‘300V’.

Anyone know what is going on here or if it really makes any difference?

All I know is 'I can use all the help on EV that I can'

You're right that a nominal cell voltage of NiMH is 1.2V.

However, they claim it differently.

Number of Cells: 250 Cylindrical Cell
Nominal Cell Voltage: 1.32 VDC
Nominal System Voltage: 330 VDC
http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/hev/escape2005hevamerica.pdf

Ken@Japan

Ken Thanks for the explanation/clarification on the difference between what is stated and what you see. Thanks for the site you referenced - I had never seen that particular site.

Pleased to know that I have the right fuel cell in the car. Thought it might have been an earlier production car or something and they changed what they were using.

When I purchased the FEH, here in the Atlanta area last year, the '05 FEH's were not available for purchase/order to the local dealers. . They had to go outside the SE. Johnson Ford in Kingston, NY was the original purchaser of my FEH. So basically it was one that was in one of the test market areas. At that time there were only about 8 FEHs on the road in the whole state and only 2 others with my configuration (AWD, NAV - all the options available) in the SE.

Wonder if during that time they sent out FEHs with varying specs out into the different test market areas and let the general buying public (us) be a part of their test (guinea pig) team?