Llecentaur wrote:Do you think it would be a matter of drop in the new batteries assuming same size and voltage just a higher capacity or will we have to reprogram or buy a new battery management system ?
You'd need to nearly completely redesign the car, I'm afraid. I doubt we'll ever see any conversion kits for it either . . . . they just didn't sell enough of these to justify the necessary engineering. They sold literally millions of 2CV's but maybe only a thousand or two iMiEV's
Your new battery bank will need to have a new BMS system designed specifically for the battery chemistry and capacity matching your new pack - I'm guessing the BMS alone would run you $1500 to $2k US and then it still wouldn't work with the cars onboard diagnostic systems. Programming the new generic BMS into the cars electronics will be very difficult, if not impossible . . . . well, I guess nothing is impossible - Suffice it to say it would be very difficult
Our current battery pack capacity is 50 AH and we recharge that with a built in 10 amp charger. If your capacity was tripled to say 150 AH, your stock charger would take about 20 hours to do a recharge, so you'd probably want another charger . . . . something on the order of 25 or 30 amps I would guess. The charger alone would probably run you $3500
Assuming your new triple capacity batteries could be had for *only* $5K US, then you'd still have to somehow get them installed in the stainless package which bolts to the underside of the car . . . . or build a brand new one from scratch - You would easily have $10K US or more in this project . . . . and even then, it probably wouldn't be trouble-proof
One day, someone with lots of technical expertise will no doubt do a one off modification of one of our cars with something like you propose, but it will likely take them months and $10K or more to do - I really doubt you'll ever see any 'bolt on' modification packages for sale to DIY'ers to do this themselves. The engineering costs would be prohibitive and the package would be so costly they'd have few if any customers
I *hope* that 7 or 8 years from now when my car needs a new battery pack, I can buy something reasonably priced from Mitsu to replace the OEM pack . . . . or maybe they'll be able to just refurbish my current battery so I can get a few more years of use from it - If a new pack has about the same range and I can replace it for only $5K or so, I'd probably be interested . . . . wishing or hoping for any great advancement in battery technology to be able to bolt into an old car probably isn't going to happen . . . . at any price. I suspect for most of us, when the OEM battery is done, we'll just move on to another car
We bought the car understanding very well all of it's limitations. We knew we wouldn't be taking any long trips in it, but then we rarely have the need to go much farther than 50 miles or so in a single day. It works very well for us because of that. If we needed to go farther or if we could only have just one car, we would have bought something else
Don