Car battery 'wear'?

Status
Not open for further replies.

bullheimer

Senior Member
Location
WA
So, there goes a new chevy volt cruising down the road with vinyl all over the side for Pacific Power Batteries. I needed to go in there the other day and have them check my battery, and asked them, (curiously, since i used to work for SPX, WHICH was a complete waste of time,) if they had installed a 240V quick charger for it. spx, in case you don't know, has the deal with gm to sell quick chargers furnished by DOE and others, made by Coulomb, and themselves, i believe). In any event, you also see these quick chargers springing up all over the place, and i noticed online, that one of my competitors has installed at least ten in the last year as well.

So back to the story. This person at PPB, who seemed to know it all when it came to car batteries, Answered "No. That would adversely affect the life of the battery, causing it to fail sooner.", and basically going on to say that quick chargers should never used, just the slow go 120V that takes all night.

anybody know anything i don't know? why would gm offer quick chargers, and i believe nissan will furnish one free with their cars as well, if it hurts the battery? other than the obvious, that they both sell new batteries? and if a 240V level two charger is bad, what does that say for the ultra quick 480V level 3 chargers?

Once again, just when i thought i knew how to play the game, somebody comes along and changes all the rules.
 
Last edited:

Hv&Lv

Senior Member
Location
-
Occupation
Engineer/Technician
So, there goes a new chevy volt cruising down the road with vinyl all over the side for Pacific Power Batteries. I needed to go in there the other day and have them check my battery, and asked them, (curiously, since i used to work for SPX, WHICH was a complete waste of time,) if they had installed a 240V quick charger for it. spx, in case you don't know, has the deal with gm to sell quick chargers furnished by DOE and others, made by Coulomb, and themselves, i believe). In any event, you also see these quick chargers springing up all over the place, and i noticed online, that one of my competitors has installed at least ten in the last year as well.

So back to the story. This person at PPB, who seemed to know it all when it came to car batteries, Answered "No. That would adversely affect the life of the battery, causing it to fail sooner.", and basically going on to say that quick chargers should never used, just the slow go 120V that takes all night.

anybody know anything i don't know? why would gm offer quick chargers, and i believe nissan will furnish one free with their cars as well, if it hurts the battery? other than the obvious, that they both sell new batteries? and if a 240V level two charger is bad, what does that say for the ultra quick 480V level 3 chargers?

Once again, just when i thought i knew how to play the game, somebody comes along and changes all the rules.

Planned obsolescence?? :lol: Maybe they are in cahoots with the battery manufacturers...
 

bullheimer

Senior Member
Location
WA
REALLY?! DID I REALLY LEAVE THE "Y" OFF OF BATTERY UP THERE? SON OF A Bee!!! no way to edit or delete this post and start again, either. Damn!!! Don't dip your car in beer batter guys! And little league coaches, don't tell your batters to hurry up either.
 
Last edited:

hurk27

Senior Member
Well not sure the level of knowledge of the person you spoke with, there has been many break through with battery technology to fast charge batteries as we find with many of our phone, laptop and hand tool batteries that work with out no problems, I have a "smart" charger in my garage for even car batteries that will bring a wet cell up to full charge in half the time it normally takes.

The biggest improvement is using the pulse charge system that is designed to not over heat the plates, many of our hand tool chargers use this system to pulse the battery at a high amperage for a short duration then have a rest time, this high amperage charge is also made up of high frequency pulse trains that are design not to over heat the plates, if you ever had your radio plugged in close to the charger you would have heard these cycles in it, I have to keep my job radio well away from my dewalt chargers as it drives it nuts every few seconds, many other charging systems use this also.

So be careful when seeking your info sources.
 

bullheimer

Senior Member
Location
WA
hmm, you seem to know alot about batter chargers. wonder where PPB guy gets his data. one would think if they are in the biz of car batter, they would know about batter powered cars. but, that's what i would get for thinking.
 
Last edited:

hurk27

Senior Member
hmm, you seem to know alot about batter chargers. wonder where PPB guy gets his data. one would think if they are in the biz of car batter, they would know about batter powered cars. but, that's what i would get for thinking.

We must remember allot of new technology is and has been in development for a while as newer battery technology is being developed, remember it was not long ago when Ni-Cad was the best thing to hit the market instead of the sealed wet cells and gave us a much lighter battery for our hand held tools and portable phones which were in bags back then, now we have LI-Ions that are way much lighter and smaller for the same amount of power, but charging technologies have also changed to meet these new batteries and some times when developing chargers to make these new batteries work they find they can be adapted to older systems to make them better.

But in essences batteries will have to get allot better before cars will be viable because there are still many draw backs and one is, any battery not fully charged destroys its plates, this is an inherent design when using chemical reaction to store power, this causes the plates to dissolve when the specific gravity is not at the right level, so I have learned to keep my batteries at full charge, and to use automatic float chargers (not trickle) on ones I'm not using to maintain full charge.

Even my Dwalt batteries go back on charge even after drill only one hole.
 
Last edited:

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
The level 3 is suppose to sense if the battery is getting to hot and cut back on the charge rate, the level 2 is really no different than the level forklift chargers charge at. The 120 volt chargers for the Volt is suppose to be a temporary charger until the level 2 charger can get installed.
 

Rampage_Rick

Senior Member
So back to the story. This person at PPB, who seemed to know it all when it came to car batteries, Answered "No. That would adversely affect the life of the battery, causing it to fail sooner.", and basically going on to say that quick chargers should never used, just the slow go 120V that takes all night.

anybody know anything i don't know? why would gm offer quick chargers, and i believe nissan will furnish one free with their cars as well, if it hurts the battery? other than the obvious, that they both sell new batteries? and if a 240V level two charger is bad, what does that say for the ultra quick 480V level 3 chargers?
With the Volt, the 240V cord is slightly more than 2x the charge rate of the 120V cord (1440W vs 3300W) The Nissan Leaf is also 3300W, and the most recent models are capable of 6600W. The Volt's onboard gas-powered generator puts out 55,000W. No Level 3 charging support yet on the Volt...

In the Volt at least, the battery condition is extensively maintained, including active thermal management. When new, only half of the battery's 16 kWh capacity is usable. (16.5 kWh for 2013) The battery will only charge to 80% and discharge to 30%. As the battery ages, the window is widened, so in theory in 5 years you will get the same usable capacity, example: it may now charge up to 95% and discharge to 10%.

The Leaf lacks some of these thermal management and state of charge controls, and there are already signs of battery issues in hot climates: http://www.plugincars.com/nissan-responds-leaf-battery-capacity-loss-issue-123433.html

My Volt is supposed to be built in 2 weeks. (Target Production Week: Aug 13th)
 

Open Neutral

Senior Member
Location
Inside the Beltway
Occupation
Engineer
So 2 other EE's & moi are building a electric Miata conversion, aka Qar. It has Li-Ion batteries roughly the size of 3 bestseller front-back. There are 36.

The issue with fast charge is the same as fast discharge; the cells get hot, and that's ungood. Our charge controller measures each cell voltage every few msec, and every few cells there is a temp sensor. If anything looks askew, we cut way back/stop charging; the $5E3 on batteries is a big bite.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top