I was wondering if anyone tried to replace the cells with a Headway 38120 cell. It looks like two of these cells in series could replace one stick. Below is the specs of these batteries.

Anybody's thoughts on this would be helpful.

 

The chemistry is different as is the charging on lithium phosphates. If you could edit the battery module to support them it would be interesting. The 2k cycles isn't that great for a battery charged/discharged several times a drive. I mean they aren't fully discharged but that doesn't seem like a whole lot over a year.

 

Shadyescape, I'm so sorry for the late response. the notification got lost somewhere in my mailbox.

Yes the chemistry is indeed different, but the question is, would it work? I've seen packs built by Project Lithium (Nexpower) and have replace the Nimh cells from the prius with lifepo4 one. The other challenge is finding something with a similar form factor. I've also looked at Lithium Titanate batteries by Yinlong. they have the long cycle life, but have a maximum pulse discharge of 180A.

 

It will not work, and what we are likely to see is that in the 3-5 year time frame, Nexpower's product will prove to be inferior to the NiMH cells in a NiMH application over the long term.

Lithium MUST be managed at the cell level. With the Nexpower system, there is no cell level management at the vehicle only in each 5S module. The car will treat the LFP like NiMH at all times.

Proper lithium conversions involve "spoofing" data to the car to get it to treat the cells the way they need to be treated for given conditions. Nexpower didn't bother with this. They just shoe-horned 5S LFP in place of 12S NiMH and are crossing their fingers.

If you have a lot of time and money, go for it. Let us know how it goes.