Battery packs are made from a large number of parts. Often it is not the battery cells that fail and hence a repair or replacement of the failed part is logical.
One of the first steps is diagnosing what has failed or is failing. This might be in a number of ways:
- customer impact
- range / power / charging time
- doesn’t always switch on
- errors displayed
- vehicle / system level diagnostics
- vehicle ECU error codes
- BMS errors and battery pack data
- external testing
- internal / sub-system testing
The next stage is fixing that fault. Again, this might be done in a number of ways from software updates through to complete pack replacement.
Maximizing Battery Longevity through Design, Thermal Management, and Revival Techniques
Many two-wheeler EV manufacturers adopted Phase Change Materials for passive thermal management. However, in our revival work, PCM-equipped batteries frequently exhibit localized thermal stress and early failure. This is largely due to PCM’s low thermal conductivity and heat dissipation limits in compact environments.
Replacing a module / set of cells in a battery pack can have a number of challenges.
The Tesla Model Y battery pack with the 4680 cylindrical cells doesn’t lend itself to being repaired in any way.
The cells are covered in a “silicon” based foam that is designed to reduce the chance of thermal runaway.
A Field-Validated Framework That Exposes the Limits of SoH – a module at 78% state-of-health (SoH) is scrapped as end-of-life; after reconditioning, it powers a stationary storage for three more years. Another at 82% SoH fails weeks into revival. Conventional metrics cannot explain the difference.
4R’s Repair, Reman, Repurpose, Recycle
Before moving to the recycling of a battery the following options should be considered:
This approach can reduce cost, impact on the customer and most importantly the impact on the planet.
Batteries are not emissions and toxic waste free and so the life cycle analysis (LCA) must be considered from cradle to grave.