What did you do to your Patrol today!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Cuppa
The 4 year lifespan of the built in BMS is still only anecdotal stuff. I can't warrant it as true or correct, but it is sufficient to make me wary.
LiFePo4 has been around for well over a decade now. Drop in replacements for less than half that. I can't offer more than that other than as Yeti's Beast has posted, drop in market leader (quality-wise) Enerdrive has now changed to replaceable BMS. Either this is because they have recognised a problem, have recognised people's concerns about potential problems, or both.
A chap I know builds lithium custom packs professionally believes that life of internal BMS's will be much shorter than the life of the cells for two reasons. One is many use cheap unsophisticated BMS which create a fair bit of heat in the cell balancing process & the other is that the heat has nowhere to go inside a sealed case. Electronics & heat are not a good mix. I'm no expert, but I think he knows what he is talking about (but also recognise that he has a vested interest in non drop in lithium).
10 years ago I made the decision to stick with AGM's rather than going with lithium because it involved the need for a bigger learning curve than I was prepared to make to put together & maintain my own system. There were lots of debates about what was needed or not needed. The more recent introduction of 'drop in replacements has done a great job of exploiting the market of folk who desired the attributes of Lithium by 'selling' the attributes of what people wanted without the need for the learning curve, but in doing so have often been less than honest about the relatively (compared to external BMS custom lithium packs) restricted attributes of drop ins. (Which are in some ways are still undeniably better than lead acid).
Enerdrive's recent change (also ReLion Batteries) is a positive sign that drop in lithiums are now just beginning to be what has been been promised since drop ins became a thing (ie? 12000 cycle lifespan). Similar to the introduction of LED lights - the promise of extremely long life is only now eventuating. How many of us have had short lived LED lights in the past - a result mostly of the quality of construction & 'supporting ' electronics.
My belief, which I can't support any more than I already have is that drop ins over around the past 4 years or so since they were introduced have mainly been a marketing exercise, often by unscrupulous sellers able to make unsubstantiated claims about their products. A 'first generation' of product. I am pretty sure that the next generation of lithium drop ins will match the claims made for the first & expect that consequently my next batteries will be Lithium.
Enerdrive now have removable lids so that replacing cells or BMS is now possible.
Evolution [emoji106]
Who knows how long Lithium will be in the market place, they have many perks but still after working in the battery industry for 30 years, call me stubborn or stupid but I think these new chargers are junk and AgM is a bullet proof way to go.
My charger is an old Boss charger. It’s a transformer type and is over 30 years old now. It will charge anything !
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