Single LEV50-cell wanted for our Citroen C-Zero

[me68]

Hello!

One cell of our Citroen C-Zero is to be dying. After full charging SOC is only 53%.

I registered this damage back round 1.000km with a SOC of 95% after full charging:

My garage says traction-battery has breakdown. The car is less then 3 years old and was round 62.000km on the road. OEM warranty is 3 years or 50.000km. So the damage is not covered by OEM warranty. My garage is talking from €18.000,- for a new traction-battery as replacement part. One single cell is not available. My garage is talking to Citroen Austria if it can be handled under policy.

On dividing €18.000 / 88 cells, you get round €200,-. Minus housing, cables, BMS-modules etc. one single cell should be less then €200,-

The damage is less then €200,- for material, but you get only the whole thing around €18.000,-!

My hope now is to get one single cell via this forum. Does somebody own an i-MiEV, iOn, C-Zero for spare parts and will sell one single cell to me?
Martin

[mod edit: BLUF, best video ever]

 

[Malm]

Maybe its possible to change the car to an 87 or 80 cell C0. If there are iOn with 80 cells, why not?

Sorry about that. So unlucky. Missing the warranty for something like 1000 km.

 

[JoeS]

Martin, so sorry to see this.

I posted your request on the local Silicon Valley Electric Auto Association email list to see if anyone has any leads.

A brief search uncovered this: http://www.directindustry.com/prod/gs-yuasa/product-12414-624582.html
Have no idea if you could buy one from them.

Maybe if you post on EVDL you might get a hit?
http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html

As an aside, I'm thankful for the terrific drivetrain warranty (separate from the normal 3-year/36K mile warranty) that we have in the USA which I think is a byproduct of the emissions requirements imposed on conventional vehicles. Some manufacturers try to out-do others - for example, Kia Soul EV has 10 years / 100000 miles.

Is it possible for you to talk directly with someone at Citroen corporate to see if they could accommodate you? As you are such an avid supporter of this vehicle, I would try pleading my case wherever possible. :shock:

 

[Don]

Ben Nelson at http://www.300mpg.org might have one. He bought a flooded iMiEV and took it apart. Check his Feb 2013 blog where he removed, charged and tested one of the cells

Don

 

[kiev]

i think all of Ben's cells were damaged.

Siai47 sold his car and all the wrecked car parts including an extra pack--haven't heard anything about who got it and what they were doing with the 2nd pack.

Over in the DIY electric car site we have seen lots of single cell failures and folks just removed or jumpered around it, and charge to a slightly lower voltage.

There is a parameter in the MUT-accessible data for the number of cells in the pack--maybe that value could be changed with the MUT device to allow operation at a lower voltage.

If not and a lev50 can't be found then maybe a '50A-hr cell' could be made using paralleled 18650 cells and wired in to the terminals of the bad cell--it doesn't have to necessarily all fit within the empty slot as there is space in the central area to stuff a few 18650s, e.g. 16 cells @ 3Ahr gets ya a 48Ahr 'cell'. If your cells are older and aged then you may even use fewer 18650s to match your pack.

But it sure seems like all the packs world-wide should have the same warranty.

Good Luck to you and please keep us posted and updated on how you solve this issue. kk

 

[kaiat]

Are you sure there isn't a 5 years/100 000 km warranty on the batteries? As I have understood it, the 3 years/50 000 km warranty is drivetrain only and the battery have a 5 year warranty instead.

Citroen in Norway give 5 year warranty on everything on the car, so I am not sure what the factory warranty says, but I have seen in ads for second-hand C-Zeros imported from Europe that they say that the car has a 5 year factory warranty on the batteries and 3 years on everything else.

 

[Barbagris]

If not and a lev50 can't be found then maybe a '50A-hr cell' could be made using paralleled 18650 cells and wired in to the terminals of the bad cell--it doesn't have to necessarily all fit within the empty slot as there is space in the central area to stuff a few 18650s, e.g. 16 cells @ 3Ahr gets ya a 48Ahr 'cell'. If your cells are older and aged then you may even use fewer 18650s to match your pack.

I think this is the best strategy, unless Citroën take it as "extended warranty" case.

Keep us informed!

 

[me68]

Hello!

As already told, my sneaking sucpicion was my trip to Melk on 30. May. The cell temps go up to 46°C.

The trips in detail:

Trip to Vienna:

Fast Charging in Vienna:

Trip to St. Pölten::

Fast Charging (20kW) in St. Pölten (with interruption):

Trip to Melk:

Trip back to Vienna:

Fast Charging in Vienna:

Trip home:

Cell temps at the end of trips at home:

I got the info from goingelectric.de forum, that Mitsubishi also changes single cells in the meantime. So i contacted Mitsubishi Austria.

In the meantime i talked to a technician from Mitsubishi Austria. In his opinion the cell temps were not the problem. 60°C up are a problem for the cells, but the BMS will reduce current as before. He knows already some cases with defective cells, but Mitsubishi has a warranty of 5 years and 100.000km in Austria/Europe and so till now always the whole pack was changed within warranty. The whole pack gone back to the OEM for analysis purpose.

Mitsubishi Austria offers the whole pack for €10.000. You can get also a 4er- or 8er-block in the meantime. You can choose between high/medium/low Ah-values for this replacment block for best fitting to your existing cells (so cell balancing of BMS can do his job as well as before). All seals for the package are also replaced and after reassembling the pack, there is be done a leakage test. But this all is theorie - Mitsubishi Austria has never done a block-replacement till now.

Another guy, who has a lot of expirience in EVs, assumes a defective BMS-modul rather then a defective cell. In his expirience the Yuasa cells are very good and 60.000km is no challenge for them.

So it's looking much more complicated, as i thought first.

Maybe Citroen Austria is handling this under policy. On Tuesday i'll get new informations.


Martin

 

[me68]

I have done now an analyses of my caniOn database, beginning at 30. May regarding cell voltages, cell temps and SoC. Therefore i compared cell 23 with cell 1.

First abnormality i see at 10. June. There are 20mV diff in cell voltage the first time.

Cell temps drop down since 30. May:

On 19. June i observed the first none 100% SoC after full charging over night. All charging before unequally 100% were fast chargings. All full charging after 19. June were regulary full trys over night with falling trend to 49% yesterday:

Martin

 

[kiev]

That would be great news if you can get a LEV50-4 module to swap out, it would be less work than trying to replace an individual cell in a module.

i wonder if they would let you keep the old module for a short time before sending it back...

Even though the cell monitor temps only went to 41, the cells themselves may have been hotter in their interior.

 

[Malm]

If 46ºC were a problem, mine was with serious problems for a long time. And those from Austrália. But degradation rate will be going up fast.

 

[me68]

I got a phone call today from my garage. They told me, that Citroen Austria will take over 50% of the price for a new battery pack carried out at the firm's expense: so my part is now €9.880,-.


Martin

 

[Barbagris]

For less money you can buy a whole car and you have all kind of spare parts...

 

[Malm]

For sure. In France you can get one for 9.000 € or even less.

 

[offgridQLD]

Couldn't you contact Yuasa and see if they will sell you a single LEV50 cell. Just make out your considering starting a BIG project (stationary storage or EV projec) and you would like a single lev50 cell for evaluation and testing.

1150 Northmeadow PKWY
Suite 118
Roswell, GA 30076

Toll Free: 888.GS YUASA (888.479-8272)
FAX: 678.892-7501
E-mail: [email protected]

9,000 for a replacement is to much considering the value of the car. I also vote on purchasing another car and stripping it for parts. You then have a spare charger, controller, motor, heater and many other parts. The battery could be stripped down and separated int 88 cells keep a few for yourself and sell off the individual cells to other I owners . I know I would love to get my hands on a few and perhaps a BMS cell top board or two.

Get the bank out of the car and you might find after testing the cell that its ok . perhaps something simple like interconnection - terminal issue or BMS cell top board failure.

For the most part I want my battery to last a long time. Though a small part of me wants there to be a issue so I get a chance to pull the battery out and start playing around with it and learning more perhaps even unlock some mystery's.

 

[me68]

Hello,

I have now owned a used LEV50-4. I'll use one of these cells to replace the defective cell 23 of my pack. The cells are already charged to the needed cell voltage, to match the cell voltage of all good cells from my pack.

Keep your fingers crossed for a smoothly replacement.


Martin

 

[PV1]

Very exciting. Would this be the first documented cell replacement for the i-MiEV/C-Zero/iOn?

May I ask how you acquired a module?

 

[jray3]

Very cool- glad to see you taking the challenging but hopefully much more economical path! Please keep us posted.

 

[kiev]

Good luck with the swap and now you have parts to reverse engineer the cmu.


The LTC6802-2 is a complete battery monitoring IC that includes a 12-bit ADC, a precision voltage reference, a high voltage input multiplexer and a serial interface. Each LTC6802-2 can measure 12 series connected battery cells, with a total input voltage up to 60V. The voltage on all 12 input channels can be measured within 13ms.

Many LTC6802-2 devices can be stacked to measure the voltage of each cell in a long battery string. Each LTC6802-2 has an individually addressable serial interface, allowing up to 16 LTC6802-2 devices to interface to one control processor and operate simultaneously.

To minimize power, the LTC6802-2 offers a measure mode to monitor each cell for overvoltage and undervoltage conditions. A standby mode is also provided to reduce supply current to 50μA.

Each cell input has an associated MOSFET switch that can discharge any overcharged cell.

[edit]
From looking at the circuit board the bleed circuit looks like two 82 Ohm resistors in parallel, so 41 Ohms to bleed 4.1 V is about 100 mA bleed current--the same as in a Tesla S pack.

The little white surface mount device(s) is a fuse.

The temperature sensors are located near the philips head screws on the right with the two tiny traces, the third is located within the LT chip itself.

 

[DonDakin]

That is great news martin.

A big adventure awaits.

Please take lots of pictures and video and keep us informed.

Can i ask you where you got the unit from ?

Also if you can unravel the mystery of how the battery temps are sensed while you have the pack open i would love to understand that.

It maybe an idea to add a control of the battery case exhaust fan if possible to be able to turnit on at will for battery temp control.

Don.....