Battery Pack for shakedowns and testing

Topics concerning OEM and open source BMSes
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stibium80
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Battery Pack for shakedowns and testing

Post by stibium80 »

Hi All,

I’m trying sort out a battery pack for doing initial shakedown testing for a conversion. I’ve got a gen3 Prius inverter with an EVBMW logic board. Basically, I’m looking for something between 300-380V that would be able to provide a good amount of current to do some shakedown runs for testing. I’m willing to accept a limited range for now.

Based on what I’ve looked into in terms of cost, performance and weight I’m considering the following:
2013 BMW Active Hybrid 7 accumulator (317V; 1.3kWh; 12s module) (these seem to be fairly cheap and plentiful on eBay)
2018 BMW 740e (gen 3.0: 351V; 9.2kWh or gen 4.0: 355V; 12.1kWh both are 16s modules)
2015 BMW i8 (355V; 7.1kWh; 16s module)

I like these since they are relatively lightweight (as batteries go) and fairly cheap. I suppose the other option is to get a Chevy Volt battery pack, but it’s quite heavy and they seem to be going for a premium on eBay.

My questions are:

1. Does anyone have experience with any of these BMW packs to say if they can produce current any where near the level of a Volt battery pack?

2. i8 packs seem to be plentiful on eBay, but I’ve only seen one 740e pack. Could I maybe start with the i8 center tunnel pack and expand it with modules from the gen 4.0 740e pack when I can find them? Does anybody know if the modules/chemistries are compatible? Although, I don’t know what this would mean in terms of having a BMS.

3. Does anyone know if modules from an i3 are compatible with any other BMW battery modules?

Maybe I’m going about this all wrong, so let me know if I’m overlooking a more suitable test pack.
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Re: Battery Pack for shakedowns and testing

Post by arber333 »

stibium80 wrote: Thu Oct 08, 2020 8:40 pm Hi All,

I’m trying sort out a battery pack for doing initial shakedown testing for a conversion. I’ve got a gen3 Prius inverter with an EVBMW logic board. Basically, I’m looking for something between 300-380V that would be able to provide a good amount of current to do some shakedown runs for testing. I’m willing to accept a limited range for now.

Based on what I’ve looked into in terms of cost, performance and weight I’m considering the following:
2013 BMW Active Hybrid 7 accumulator (317V; 1.3kWh; 12s module) (these seem to be fairly cheap and plentiful on eBay)
2018 BMW 740e (gen 3.0: 351V; 9.2kWh or gen 4.0: 355V; 12.1kWh both are 16s modules)
2015 BMW i8 (355V; 7.1kWh; 16s module)

I like these since they are relatively lightweight (as batteries go) and fairly cheap. I suppose the other option is to get a Chevy Volt battery pack, but it’s quite heavy and they seem to be going for a premium on eBay.

My questions are:

1. Does anyone have experience with any of these BMW packs to say if they can produce current any where near the level of a Volt battery pack?

2. i8 packs seem to be plentiful on eBay, but I’ve only seen one 740e pack. Could I maybe start with the i8 center tunnel pack and expand it with modules from the gen 4.0 740e pack when I can find them? Does anybody know if the modules/chemistries are compatible? Although, I don’t know what this would mean in terms of having a BMS.

3. Does anyone know if modules from an i3 are compatible with any other BMW battery modules?

Maybe I’m going about this all wrong, so let me know if I’m overlooking a more suitable test pack.
Chevy Volt has 350A fuse. I see in VW Golf GTE 8kW hybrid pack it has 300A fuse.
My Pug with Volt gen1 pack went for 9s to 100km/h. I saw somewhere around 400A on DC line for a short time.
My Kokam cells have more range but 230A limit and the car is still very drivable.
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Jack Bauer
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Re: Battery Pack for shakedowns and testing

Post by Jack Bauer »

9kwh 740e pack :
I'm going to need a hacksaw
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Re: Battery Pack for shakedowns and testing

Post by boekel »

also consider the VW / audi, GTE / e-tron batteries, 8,8 - 10 kWh and 10C without a cringe.
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