What is this page for?: The purpose of this page is to serve as a location to research and determine ways in which the BMS AFEs can be improved for MSXV.
List of possible changes:
Change of IC - ex two 18 cell or one 36 cell BMS
Smaller pack won’t need as many thermistors
Is there any way of checking/approximating how many we will actually need? If we are changing this we also may want to change out the multiplexer that the thermistors work with. (probably not necessary as we can just tie them to down to ground or check with code)
Active balancing? (a challenger vehicle may benefit more than cruiser) (maybe stick to passive imo)
From MSXII:
After more research, we've found that most EV manufacturers (including Tesla) only use passive balancing. This whitepaper from Li-Ion BMS is a good comparison between active and passive cell balancing.
Overall, it seems like the practical benefit between active and passive cell balancing is minimal for our situation, as we're planning on building a matched pack and will be charging for an extended period of time. Since we'll be charging whenever we're coasting and we're looking at 5kW chargers, we should have plenty of time to use a slower balancing cycle. If we're able to implement an SOC-based balancing algorithm, we'll be able to balance anytime we want instead of just at the top of the charge curve, reducing the required cell balance current further. This whitepaper on balancing current is interesting. The biggest concerns with active balancing are that hardware and software are complex and expensive, and that it may not even be necessary depending on cell tolerance, which is tested in every shipment.
Resources:
https://www.analog.com/en/technical-articles/active-battery-cell-balancing.html
Single buck instead of buck → LDO?
This seems like it should be do-able
We’re going to have to consider how the part shortage is going to affect us. We can take from old boards but communications and key ics are going to be important to check