Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - Lithium Battery

My Banner Bull is now dea d, so thinking about putting a Lithium battery in my M3W, has anyone any experience of doing this, or not doing this lol ??

Strange some people do not read the news papers.
A big car transport vessel is on fire at this moment around the North-Sea. 1 crew member dead and nearly all brought to the Hospital.
When this vessel can not be salved the North of Holland will be in extreme danger for pollution.
2 years ago a car transport vessel sunk south of the Azores including a huge pollution case.
Several ferry companies do not allow electric cars on their vessels anymore.
Both accidents have to do with Lithium Car Batteries, which fire you only get out by dumping the car 72 hours in a container filled with water.
When lithium is not properly charged - the reason for those uncontrolled fires - like with our famous regulators there will be a moment you will regret you bought a Lithium battery.

When CCA - crank-capacity - is the issue.
I have a cheap and simple 40Ah lead-acid AMG - but you can use a smaller one too - when you put a super-capacitor bank parallel to it.
Great extra cranking amps. I have this now for 7 month and it works fantastic especially in wintertime.
Your battery will last 2 times longer and the capacitor bank can be sold by your heirs.
One extra tip : all batteries hate a heated environment - say > 40 C - so take them away from your lube-oil tank.

I stand by what I wrote.

While there are several formulations of lithium ion batteries in EVs today (LCA, LCM, etc) most formations focus on energy density (range).

Some hybrids and most of the aftermarket lead acid retrofit batteries use the Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4 or LFP for short) formulation, as their reduced energy density (range) is less important when you have an onboard charging system.

The presence of iron in the cathode of LiFePO4 batteries yields a more stable chemical structure, less prone to runaway discharge events that leads to fires, i.e. it's a safer design. So if you are really reading the 'newspapers' you would do well to note the battery types involved, and would find that LFP type fires are very rare indeed.

Welcome to TalkMorgan! Car transport ferries seemed to have a lot of accidents - plenty of them are nothing to do with EVs!

Interesting data in this story:

Although these fires do present a real danger, fortunately for us they remain very rare. Data obtained by Air Quality News through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that in 2019 the London Fire Brigade dealt with just 54 electric vehicle fires compared to 1,898 petrol and diesel fires. Although these fires remain rare, when they do occur, they can be extremely dangerous.

That is old data, but if ~2% of cars are EVs, and 2-3% of vehicle fires were EVs, its only a slightly higher risk... but for a relatively new technology I suppose not unexpected. A counterargument would be ICE vehicles are likely to be much older...

Back to car batteries as opposed to EV... I have a Li-based "battery" (actually a battery+conditioning circuitry) and so far it seems good. I do trickle charge though as the car does seem to leak current / I have not yet fitted an isolator! I think an M3W is more at risk from broken fuel tanks than batteries...



Very neat!

Well said. The amount of FUD put out by the media regarding EVs (and their batteries) is astounding. I presume there must be an appetite for it - but that doesn't make it right.

do be sure to use a lithium battery charger. Regular chargers will not work.

I have LiFePO4 batteries in 3 different cars, including my M3W. No changes made to the charging systems in any of the cars. No issues at all. I do put the batteries on an LiFePO4 charger every few months, mostly to make myself feel better.

Any Lithium-based battery for car use will have some electronics within it to do power management. They are typically designed to behave to the car as if it was a lead acid battery ie 12-14v out, ~14v in for charging, discharge protection etc (although the latter seemed to be missing on the Li-based battery that failed on the Grindelweld trip this year - it apparently discharged to zero and became unchargable - mine emptied after the IoM trip and regulator issue a year ago but recovered fine)...

A big question that is difficult to answer from spec sheets is "how good are the Li-based cells" and "how good is the electrics surrounding them". Like Steve's, my battery is LiFePO4 based (as used in power tools) which is safer than the "Li-ion" LiCoO2 based cells used in mobile phones etc.

The one I have is still available in the UK. It's a JMT YTX30-FP and there is a description of it and a scary price at M&P and more friendly prices on eBay