Second Battery

[Turtle]

Battery

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[bcording]

I thought the hybrid battery was under the second row seat on the passenger side.

The battery that is accessible when you lift the rear seat is the 12v battery that you would find in any car. The high voltage battery is is also under the seat but outside of the cabin attached to the undercarriage of the truck.

 

[Rob Cactus Gray]

It was a serious question thanks for all the serious responses.

I was 100 percent serious

 

[Turtle]

The battery that is accessible when you lift the rear seat is the 12v battery that you would find in any car. The high voltage battery is is also under the seat but outside of the cabin attached to the undercarriage of the truck.

So the regular battery is in the same place it was on my 59 beetle. WoW

 

[MakinDoForNow]

There's also the issue that they have the existing battery watercooled and adding the second would not have the cooling unless you developed a system to extend the cooling lines to it as well.

Looks like cooling/heating the second battery would require parallel loops so the computer would have to be reprogrammed to detect which battery needed heated or cooled and maybe opposite of the other one.

 

[ralatalo]

This has mostly been beaten to death, but I will add my 1.5 cents anyway.

The standard Hybrids battery is 'designed' (from what I have read) to spend most of its life at 50% charge. The system mostly charges when it would otherwise be braking to slow down, and then uses that Energy to start moving or speed up again.

So in stop and go traffic it's charge while you're stopping and then powering that go. The only way I see an extra battery really helping is if you have lots of long hills/mountains where you could spend a really long time charging, and then use enough of that energy climbing the next hill that you had had room to charge the battery more on the next downhill

The question I have been pondering is, do you lose regenerative braking, or more importantly start burning your physical brakes if you are driving down a mountain and your battery is charged up?

 

[clavicus]

This has mostly been beaten to death, but I will add my 1.5 cents anyway.

The standard Hybrids battery is 'designed' (from what I have read) to spend most of its life at 50% charge. The system mostly charges when it would otherwise be braking to slow down, and then uses that Energy to start moving or speed up again.

So in stop and go traffic it's charge while you're stopping and then powering that go. The only way I see an extra battery really helping is if you have lots of long hills/mountains where you could spend a really long time charging, and then use enough of that energy climbing the next hill that you had had room to charge the battery more on the next downhill

The question I have been pondering is, do you lose regenerative braking, or more importantly start burning your physical brakes if you are driving down a mountain and your battery is charged up?

It might sound strange but I recall that the ICE actually does engine braking if necessary during a loooong downhill run, if the battery is full it’ll turn the ICE into an air compressor basically to offload the wasted regen.

 

[KingGenny]

I know I'm late to this discussion but also wanted to raise another point that will add context to why adding a second hybrid battery will not help mpg in the Maverick. Hybrid technology has already been optimized to get you the best mpg without needing more battery capacity because there is no focus on "electric only" range. On the contrary, this does matter for plug-in hybrid EVs. If you compare the Toyota Prius regular hybrid to the plug in "prime" model, the outgoing 2022 model has a .7 or .8 kWh battery whereas the prime has a 8 kWh battery. That's 10x larger. However, the regular Prius actually gets about 3-4 mpg better than the prime version (I presume because of the prime's extra battery weight). Also, the upcoming 2023 Prius Prime battery is 13.6 kWh. So with these numbers, we can see that the larger battery in the prime does not actually result in better mpg -its only purpose is to provide an EV only driving range.

 

[Tiger Dude]

Am an engineer

Upside: more regen braking, more juice for electric power

downside: extensive changes you would have to make to have this work. This isn't like adding a 2nd 12V battery to your 4x4.

• software. The system knows the battery capacity and manages it. A lot goes into keeping the battery in its midrange charge state to make it last.
• electrical hardware. You can't suddenly add battery capacity without all the electrical stuff getting sized for it.
• mechanical hardware. cooling/heating, structural

I'm sure there are people out there who could make this work, like the dude who rebuilds Teslas (Rich Rebuilds). It is beyond the scope of mere mortals. I imagine Ford will be adding a 2nd battery at some point. Let them do it.

 

[GPSMan]

Ya. Old thread restarted but the short answer is: not physically doable to just add a second battery.

I worked with some fine folks back in 2006-2007 scratch building a 2006 Escape Hybrid into a PHEV.

The short version is:
Have to physically remove the stock battery.
Have to "spoof" the car's computers into thinking the original battery is still there by generating the proper signals.
Build your own battery pack, battery management system, heating and cooling system, charging system, etc.

We then "spoof" the Escape into thinking it has a high charge (~70%) constantly.... which biases the ECU to pull more on the battery pack.

It was still a hybrid. Still used gas. Did not significantly improve EV range. Did about double MPG from 35 to 70 during the 30 minutes / 30 miles the larger pack lasted.

Cost at least $50,000. Maybe $75,000. I didn't get close access to the financial records of the company. I was only a beta tester.

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