So let's summarize here for everyone: due to the construction and engineering of this battery pack, if you develop one single bad cell, for all intents and purposes the entire pack is doomed?

 

Fixed.

No remotely reasonable amount of engineering or altered construction could avoid this. Period. How many billions of 12V batteries have died over the decades in exactly the same way - one dead cell renders it inoperable. Where's the outrage?

Stupid gears! If a single tooth fails, the whole gear is bad! Stupid engineers!

There are MILLIONS of this type of battery that have been produced. Most platforms are regarded as among the most reliable cars on the road. The fact that these last as long as they do is a testament to good engineering.

They had two choices:

1) produce an economical product using proven technology that routinely lasts > !50K miles
2) Wait another 7+ years for Lithium technology to become viable

Toyota and Honda are EXACTLY the same in this regard - single cell goes bad - dead pack.

 

First of all, I didn't say they were stupid. And I think your analogy is flawed: this isn't a single tooth on a single gear failing, it's a lot more like a single GEAR failing in a train of MANY gears, but it's almost impossible to figure out which ONE of those gears went bad, because you can't test them individually. So instead of being able to test each cell and identify which one is causing the pack to fail, we're left with the unpleasant reality of: "Buy a new pack." It's like throwing away the entire transmission because a single gear strips inside it.

I think that's sad, expensive, and regrettable. I'm not saying the engineers were stupid, and there's nobody who likes their 11 year old Hybrid more than I do (remember: you were the person who said that you wouldn't accept a 2010 model even if it was given to you when I was a new member here - way to go to encourage the newbies!)

I think it is kind of stupid, however, that they weren't packaged in such a way that the pack could be more easily disassembled and single cells (or maybe several at a time at least) could be easily tested.

 

And secondly, S Keith: Where the hell do you come off correcting my posts for me? Do you do that to everyone else in this forum? Or are you just having one of your days?

 

A gear needs all its teeth to work. A battery needs all its cells to work. The analogy applies.

Manufacturers would be pretty stupid making high voltage batteries easy to work on from a liability perspective. You seem to think "testing" is trivial. The amount of testing required to truly repair a pack is either time or resource intensive or both.

There's really no difference between overhauling an engine or transmission and testing/rebuilding the battery. It's not just one gear failing. It's the wear on the rest of the components that has to be addressed as well. You couldn't just replace the gear without inspecting/replacing the rest of the components making it time and resource intensive. They have similar levels of "consumer friendliness." Would YOU remove, disassemble, inspect and rebuild and entire transmission? Probably not. You'd choose to get rid of the car, buy a new transmission ($5k) or get a reman ($2-3K). See the analogy?

Oh my... "Where the hell do you come off..." touchy much? That's a very common practice on forums to convey something in context. I've done it hundreds of times. I have it done to me hundreds of times. It's a thing. Had I been a moderator and been able to actually edit your post, I would get your outrage, but simply revising quoted text shouldn't ruffle your feathers so much. Sounds like you're having "a day." I'm good though. Thanks for asking. Hope yours gets better.

 

Keith, you seem to impute a lot of things to people that aren't so while you are trying to give authoritative explanations. First of all, I never said engineers were stupid. I hold engineers in very high regard, two of my close family members are engineers, and I'm a software "engineer" who programs in half a dozen languages. Second, the basic unit of this battery pack is the individual cell. They are all wired in series, so we know that even a single cell going bad can cost the owner thousands of dollars in pack replacement costs because it is onerous or impossible to test the cells individually. I think that's a shame. Regardless of whether it would have been in Ford's best interest, liability or otherwise, to make it easer for technicians to test the cells, I think it's regrettable that they didn't. If they made it easier, maybe a good battery technician could remove some safety covers, test all the cells in the pack one by one in an hour, and figure out which one(s) were bad and replace just those cells. I feel the same way about this as I do about the fact that Ford deleted the rear A/C evaporator on the 2010-up cars. It's regrettable, I don't know why they did it, but I'm living with it.

And yes, I have replaced single gears in a transmission before: on both an Audi Quattro 5-speed and a GM Muncie M21 four-speed. I have friends who are hot-rodders and they dismantle their transmissions all the time and replace synchronizers and individual gears. I can't do that right now because I don't have a garage, so RIGHT NOW, no, I wouldn't do it personally.

Not everybody in this universe approaches problems the way you do, thinks the same way you do, or necessarily draws the same conclusions about what engineers should have or might have done as you do. Have you ever visualized a complex sine wave? It's a 3-D spiral, not a 2-D plot if you look at it a little differently. So we can both be correct. I think it sucks that there's no good way to test single cells with this arrangement.


Finally, I have a lot of respect for the level of knowledge you bring to the table here. You spend a lot of time answering questions written by people who have little or no comprehension of what they're trying to diagnose and repair. I know that must be annoying over the years. Over and out.

 

There are certain things for which you have an extensive understanding about which I would be clueless, and I might think they should be better or "not like that" due to a lack of understanding the fundamentals.

You and your friends are outliers when compared to the unwashed masses. Furthermore, I would ask you if your policy of replacing only a single gear is the right thing to do. Meshing gears are not independent of one another. If one has a problem, it's almost certain that the mating gear is out of spec and should be replaced.

Ford (and all NiMH hybrid manufacturers) had a choice to make - follow the state-of-the-art and produce a competitive product, or triple the cost and complexity of the pack for the sake of ease of rebuild.

I guess my issues is lamenting the absurd, e.g., "Honda was making cars in the 80s that got 50 mpg, Cars should be getting 100mpg now!" - That's absurdity. Those that make statements like that have never heard of the word "thermodynamics."

Thinking it sucks that you can't test individual cells fails to acknowledge that having that ability would have killed the hybrid market, and it never would have existed.

I guess I don't have tolerance for complaining for the sake of complaining. Phoenix summers can be brutal. I don't complain about it. I accept it as the price I pay for 6-8 months of very nice weather.

 

Yeah, we definitely have some outliers in the bunch, and we've done some "fast" repairs that were also questionable if we had been doing them for anyone but ourselves.

I couldn't agree more. It's true if everyone wants to drive a 25-50 horsepower car that doesn't go over 40 MPH and never carries more than a few hundred pounds from place to place, has no crash protection, and so forth. At least until the energy density of the batteries improves by leaps and bounds. You can't change the laws of physics, and something that has to move real people in the real world is always going to be a compromise.

You're probably right about that. Did Ford actually make any money on the Escape Hybrids it sold, even with the specifications they were built with, including the engineering assistance from Aisin, etc. I know my '10 Limited was a rather expensive car at the time, even for a dentist (who was the PO) but she had the means and just paid for it, because she wanted it.

Enjoy the sun! In the meantime I'll keep dreaming of a surplus of really good NiMH cells for this car and an unlimited amount of time and money to disassemble and refurbish my battery.

 

It can be done. Just LOTS of time and labor.

 

Yeah man here is what is happening. Your 12 V battery is not grounded to the frame properly. It may appear well but it isn’t. You must remove the battery. Remove the battery tray. Remove both grounding bolts clean polish. Remove all paint from the grounding area clean the bolts. Wire brush sandpaper the battery terminals and connecting wires. Get everything ready for maximum contact. I guarantee you this is your problem. You must also have a good 12 V battery 12.4 minimum resting voltage.