Charging error (All 5 segments turn RED) HVB Module failure

[Grumpy2]

Before it went into the shop Car Scanner was showing 100% for the battery state of health. So I don't think it reliably tells you anything about the health of the HVB.

It seems to me the battery module failures todate are due to two general quality control issues during original pouch fabrication or during module assembly, not on how the trucks are being charged and used. I am not sure a scanner will help on either QC issue.

The current fire safety recall seems to be a module assembly quality control failure when they reference swelling and tabs shorting out. "We discovered that certain batteries were not built to the manufacturing specifications resulting in a misalignment of the electrodes ..." This sounds like a Ford QC issue. But if it is, why are we waiting on parts to solve this since modules do not seem to be in short supply now ??

There are modules being replaced regularly due to the other QC failure:

The subject of this forum issue centered on 2022-2023 models may be the result of a QC failure of spotting the pouch cells with lower voltage potential before inserting them into the module. I believe the only way of finding these poorer pouches is waiting for the BCM to send out the notice of a low energy pouch. To me this sounds like a SK and Ford shared issue.

I also believe the BCM protects the other modules when one or more have a failure condition.

It is so good that Ford used a repairable battery design. The structural battery design must have a system to drop out strings when cells go out of spec which would effect range without chance of repair.

Sponsored

 

[Firn]

How do you know an acronym is more useless than useful? Use your favorite search engine and see if it shows up right on top. If not, then don't use it because you will lose people in the conversation. Kind of like when you talk to someone in real life.
"Hey Bob, I'm not a doctor, so stop using medical acronyms with me, I don't use IT acronyms with you"

If Google is an indication of use, ChatGPT is a tool to answer questions.

It says.
The abbreviation "MY" for Model Year in the automotive world has been in use since at least the 1950s, possibly earlier. Automakers and government agencies in the U.S. began formally using Model Year to designate vehicle specifications that may differ from calendar year production.

By the mid-20th century, MY became standard in industry documentation, compliance filings, and regulatory language—especially once emissions and safety standards started being tied to the model year (not just the production year).

So while it's hard to pin an exact first use, MY as shorthand for Model Year has been standard in the auto industry for over 70 years.

 

[flyct]

That’s what retirement is all about - getting lazy. I’m 87 years old and worked pretty darn hard all my life. Give me a break 🥹

Doc, we also love retirement. I have 3,000 hrs PIC and wife has 2,000 hrs PIC. Love it when ATIS shows CAVU and no AIRMETS or SIGMETS. The tag on my wife’s car is VFR DAYS. Decoding METARS with OVC010CB is second nature.

Doc, I bet you don’t have any problems understanding these abbreviations?

 

[flyct]

If Google is an indication of use, ChatGPT is a tool to answer questions.

It says.
The abbreviation "MY" for Model Year in the automotive world has been in use since at least the 1950s, possibly earlier. Automakers and government agencies in the U.S. began formally using Model Year to designate vehicle specifications that may differ from calendar year production.

By the mid-20th century, MY became standard in industry documentation, compliance filings, and regulatory language—especially once emissions and safety standards started being tied to the model year (not just the production year).

So while it's hard to pin an exact first use, MY as shorthand for Model Year has been standard in the auto industry for over 70 years.

My Tesla MY MY is a 2023. Get it?
1st MY = Model Year
2nd MY = Tesla Model Y.

it can get confusing.

 

[Traconesu]

I am currently in the process of having one module replaced. Before it went into the shop Car Scanner was showing 100% for the battery state of health. So I don't think it reliably tells you anything about the health of the HVB.

I hoping my Launch X431 CRP919 EV car Scanner will give me individual battery cell voltages. At the very least I'll be able to see each module voltage but I'm hoping for individual cell voltages.
I have a friend that owns several nissan leaf and uses an app leaf spy is capable of monitoring individual cell voltages and even gives him cell deviations. I'm hoping to be able to monitor the battery modules BMS.

 

[Traconesu]

It seems to me the battery module failures todate are due to two general quality control issues during original pouch fabrication or during module assembly, not on how the trucks are being charged and used. I am not sure a scanner will help on either QC issue.

The current fire safety recall seems to be a module assembly quality control failure when they reference swelling and tabs shorting out. "We discovered that certain batteries were not built to the manufacturing specifications resulting in a misalignment of the electrodes ..." This sounds like a Ford QC issue. But if it is, why are we waiting on parts to solve this since modules do not seem to be in short supply now ??

There are modules being replaced regularly due to the other QC failure:

The subject of this forum issue centered on 2022-2023 models may be the result of a QC failure of spotting the pouch cells with lower voltage potential before inserting them into the module. I believe the only way of finding these poorer pouches is waiting for the BCM to send out the notice of a low energy pouch. To me this sounds like a SK and Ford shared issue.

I also believe the BCM protects the other modules when one or more have a failure condition.

It is so good that Ford used a repairable battery design. The structural battery design must have a system to drop out strings when cells go out of spec which would effect range without chance of repair.

I continue to receive the recall that they don't have a fix for yet other than recommending owners only charge to 85%. I agree these module failures have nothing to do with the way people are charging or driving their trucks. At 75 years old I seldom put my foot down hard on the accelerator and probably baby it more than any others do because I charge my truck from solar, the more kwh I use the more days I have to keep it on the charger, since I can only charge on sunny days and usually limit my charger to 6 kwh charge. So it's obviously flawed modules is the problem. Personally I wish they'd correct that problem and give everyone with a failed module a complete battery replacement with upgraded modules to avoid the end users having to constantly go in for .module replacements. Of course That will never happen.

 

[Firn]

I hoping my Launch X431 CRP919 EV car Scanner will give me individual battery cell voltages. At the very least I'll be able to see each module voltage but I'm hoping for individual cell voltages.
I have a friend that owns several nissan leaf and uses an app leaf spy is capable of monitoring individual cell voltages and even gives him cell deviations. I'm hoping to be able to monitor the battery modules BMS.

I don't think it does individual module voltage, or at least i don't think we have the PIDs for that. It does give min, max, average, variation, and a few others that are similar (iirc)

 

[TaxmanHog]

I don't think it does individual module voltage, or at least i don't think we have the PIDs for that. It does give min, max, average, variation, and a few others that are similar (iirc)

I'm fearing that you're correct, but it would be cool if this handy new tool did have the ability to read the cell group voltages!

 

[Traconesu]

I don't think it does individual module voltage, or at least i don't think we have the PIDs for that. It does give min, max, average, variation, and a few others that are similar (iirc)

I'll find out when I get my truck back.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I'll find out when I get my truck back.

SMH, again keep it in ONE THREAD

 

[htobin]

Doc, we also love retirement. I have 3,000 hrs PIC and wife has 2,000 hrs PIC. Love it when ATIS shows CAVU and no AIRMETS or SIGMETS. The tag on my wife’s car is VFR DAYS. Decoding METARS with OVC010CB is second nature.

Doc, I bet you don’t have any problems understanding these abbreviations?

Sometimes !

 

[chl]

I've copied a resource created on the Mach-E forum to our forum located on this thread:

Acronyms, TLAs, and Initialisms

If anyone thinks there are a lot of acronyms here and in the automotive area, just compare it to the acronyms used in telecommunications companies like AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph) - omg (Oh My God).

When I worked at Bell Labs (Bell Telephone Labs) in the 1980's it was crazy trying to understand WTF (What The Fudge) the technical documents were saying there were so many acronyms.

So I wrote a little program in the Unix Shell that would scan a document for acronyms (defined as 2 or more upper case letters in a sequence - the most often used format) and then would search a database I created for matches and output a glossary file for the document, with the acronym and it's definition, sometimes there was more than one definition for the same groups of letter!

NOTE: UNIX: an operating system derived from UNICS - Uniplexed Information Computing System; Shell: the Bourne Shell language a command line interpreter that interfaces with the underlying UNIX operating system developed by a guy named Bourne at AT&T - Stephen not Jason though - in other words a user interface.

Crude but effective.

We could do a lot on the networked DEC (Digital Equipment Company) VAX (Virtual Address Extension) mini's even though they were not even as powerful as the average smart phone these days. That is, until the system would crash every Friday around noon - can you say TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) and I'm going home early?

 

[chl]

I hoping my Launch X431 CRP919 EV car Scanner will give me individual battery cell voltages. At the very least I'll be able to see each module voltage but I'm hoping for individual cell voltages.
I have a friend that owns several nissan leaf and uses an app leaf spy is capable of monitoring individual cell voltages and even gives him cell deviations. I'm hoping to be able to monitor the battery modules BMS.

I have a 2012 Leaf with the 24kWh battery.

As I understand it, technically Leaf Spy reads the cell voltage of cell pairs, because of the parallel cell connection in pairs.

Of course because they are in parallel, the terminal voltage each cell of the pair has to be equal to the other cell.

The 24 kWh Leaf battery pack has 48 modules.
Each module has 4 cells.
Each module’s cells are in two pairs.
Each pair is in parallel.
The two pairs are in series.
So voltage has to be measured in cell pairs since the individual cells are all in a parallel connection of 2 cells, as in this block diagram:

Module voltage is 7.5 volts.

Leaf Spy is reading the data that the on-board BMS (Battery Management System, called the LBC for Lithium Battery Controller by Nissan) provides which is raw data, like temperature and cell pair voltage, combined with calculated values for SOC and SOH based on the raw data.
So I do not think it would detect bad modules before the BMS did.

There are many caveats with calculating methods for both SOC and SOH, but whatever method is used, the Lightning BMS according to the OP did not predict the bad cells/failure and did not alert about it until it had happened.

I imagine that Car Scanner reads the BMS data and therefore would not be able to predict/detect bad modules before the BMS did, eh?

I suppose if a module(s) fails gradually over time, the weakness has to reach a certain threshold before being detected as a bad module.

If it was gradual, the BMS should not have been reporting a 100% SOH to the Car Scanner.
There should have been a steady decline in the SOH as the bad module lost capacity compared with the new battery capacity.

So I suppose when the module fails it is a sudden thing and can't be predicted.

The BMS could isolate electrically or disable a failing module to protect the rest of the modules in the battery system.

As for the trucks with misaligned batteries, “Due to production process deviations at the supplier, the electrodes in the high voltage battery cells may be misaligned. Over repeated charge and discharge cycles, this misalignment can eventually lead to an internal short circuit...the company is asking owners not to charge batteries past 80% until dealers can repair them.”

So it seems this misalignement is a potential battery problem that the BMS cannot detect and isolate, and charging beyond 80% will heat stress the battery to the point that the misalignment could result in a short circuit and a fire. A truely scary proposition!

Sponsored