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Originally Posted by Big Damo
Awesome to hear about these things, out of curiosity whats the life on the battery bank and how much over the counter for a new battery bank? Whats involved in changing it out?
Are there any slow charge options when its plugged into the wall rather than fast charging it? As fast charging significantly reduces the life of batteries.
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Hi Damo,
Plugging it into a 15A socket is the "slow charge" option. Looking at some of the charge curves I have seen on the internet, it starts in slow charge mode, then moves to a charge rate around 3.2kW/h, and then tapers off to a trickle charge in the final part of the charge. A fast charge occurs at the charging station and will take it to 70% charge in 30 minutes, before dropping into trickle charge mode.
Battery has a five year/ 130,000 km warranty. Design life is 65% capacity after ten years. If one can believe the internet chat ... apparently, the battery bank is grouped into 3 X 4KW cells. By design, one set cops the most work and one set is worked very little. The set that does the most work has the shortest life. The idea is that if battery performance is down, swapping out the first 1/3 will restore most of the capacity. Changing the entire battery bank costs around $12K and takes 2 hours. A good home mechanic should be able to do the battery swap.
The other point to keep in mind is that the price of batteries is falling. In ten years time, I would expect replacement batteries to be half the cost they are today and will have significantly more capacity. It is quite possible that someone will do a battery swap on the PHEV in 10 years time for the equivalent price of a new ZF gearbox and have a 24kWh battery bank as a replacement.