12 channel LiFe battery management system

Posted Jul 4th 2008 7:50AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: transportation hacks, daily

With fuel prices rising, EVs are becoming more an more stylish. This bit of floor tile wrapped hardware is actually a 12 channel battery management system designed to handle Lithium Iron battery packs. It's designed to take power from a standard lead acid charger and supply the batteries with their maximum charge current. The cost and complexity of the BMS has been a major stumbling block in the past, so it's interesting to see these come around. If you need more than 12 cells, multiple boards can be used.

Reader Comments

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1. Lithium Iron? Must be something new. LOL

Posted at 11:54AM on Jul 4th 2008 by Greg

2. Yes, lithium iron. No, not terribly new. hence the 'life' in the title. li for lithium, fe for iron. a) pay attention to the ongoing developments in battery tech, and b) go and study the periodic table instead of assuming a typo occurred.

Posted at 12:34PM on Jul 4th 2008 by xyphur

3. li-ion i\is my fav battery for slow drain devices but i still am a fan of ni-cd and wetpack

Posted at 1:01PM on Jul 4th 2008 by alex mccown

4. Google for lifepo4. They've been in the works for a few years now. All the benefits of traditional lithium, none of the exploding when punctured. Made of very common materials and completely recyclable. Tricky part is monitoring and charging.

www.lionev.com is using lifepo4 batteries to convert factory ford rangers to ev. They also make several kits to convert hybrids to full plug-in electrics for around $4000.

Posted at 1:07PM on Jul 4th 2008 by ed3

5. @number2
its not life its LiFe, you should know, right, cuss you know the periodic table

Posted at 1:22PM on Jul 5th 2008 by arthur92710

6. Aaanndd... the all-lowercase CSS bug bites again! I was going to post a comment "I think you mean 'battery life management', not 'life battery management'.

Is it a test -- if you're not running Greasemonkey and capable of writing your own userscript to disable the CSS, you don't deserve HAD?

Posted at 1:10PM on Jul 7th 2008 by James

7. Excuse me, but lithium polymer (lifepo4) cells do *not* have all the advantages of lithium ion. Yes, they're safer, but they also have lower capacity for a given volume. If I'm wrong, please post links to where such cells can be found. For comparison, check out the various cells in the 18650 size (or 4/3 AA). Basically the 18mm dia by 65mm long cylindricals. I find the polymers to be around the same cost, but the max capacities are around half of those of similarly sized ion cells. I'd like to be wrong about this, so please enlighten. -M

Posted at 2:02PM on Aug 5th 2008 by Mark

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