THERMAL RUNAWAY Battery Detection Cell Guard for Electric cars, Joseph Holdsorth #Chargeheadslive
Forgotten about them um so yeah no I I can’t remember if I saw the JCB one down there but yeah it was Bonville was an absolute experience and you know anyone that’s you know whether they’re a petrol head or into electric stuff if if there’s not a foot of water you know uh
Flooding the whole place um you know it’s definitely a uh a car Enthusiast uh must to go and visit um still a few things to off my list yeah I mean you don’t get that scale here in the UK of variety and just the money that some of
These guys have to spend on some of these vehicles independent Rich you know individuals yeah it looks it’s fascinating to walk around it and speak to some of them you know yeah yeah a lot of it a lot of stuff is actually still very homeade a lot of it’s still very
Home kind of made if you like we wanted to take the rental we want to take the rental uh V Club but unfortunately it didn’t it didn’t fit into any categories uh but but yeah like you said there there are a lot of categories we saw we saw some
Really interesting things there I’ve got a load of pictures and um yeah that’s if you hire your car from Salt Lake City if you if you hir your car there and return it there over the we over the Bonville week they will check for salt underneath your car so that’s
Why you know loads of people go to Wendover and get their car washed straight after they’ve come off Bonville that’s what obviously it also stops your car from rusting but um yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah the high car companies do check to see if you’ve attempted some sort of speed record with
A 300C Chrysler or something you know yeah yeah I think we we we rented ours in Denver when we flew in and then we had our journey all the way to Bonville Salt Lake City then Bonville and then back going past uh yeah going up the uh yeah Pikes Peak which is very
Exciting uh yeah very exciting stuff right we are live uh here we are for another charge Heads live and uh very exciting and and a big thank you to Joe Joseph Holdsworth coming on today because we’re going to be talking about um piece of equipment which is called
Cellard uh and yeah I’m really looking forward to finding out more about it because you know safety in batteries it’s great to know that there are these things uh coming into the uh EV world to help the electric transition make it safer so I’ve got a load of questions
For uh Joe and I’m hoping anyone that joins you know has got a few questions as well and any questions at the end you know once we finish the live pop them on there and I’ll do my best to answer them where I can uh thanks for everyone who’s
Joined so far hi Jerome hi lar Zoe Fox and FES thanks for all coming uh straight away uh American debt is very high though maybe I should get a loan uh yeah well I I’m not sure if a bank would be proven of a loan for a Bonville race
Car but you know you got to try it if you don’t ask you don’t get um but yeah just as a bit of a intro my name is Tim alen I’m a founder of charge heads charge Heads live is something I’ve started eight o’clock every Thursday talking about everything to do with EVS
Focusing on modified EVS EV conversions and everything in between and Joe can you tell us a little bit about um you know how you’ve got to this point in terms of uh producing this cell guard uh piece of equipment for safety and and a little bit obviously we were talking about
Bonville earlier uh because of your association with blood hound um so yeah can you give us a little bit of a sort of a backstory and then we can get on to the yeah the stuff I’ll try and make it brief but um I guess it started with my dad who
Went to see Thrust SSC actually run it in in the desert now that wasn’t Bonville um and he was a member of um blood hounds 1K club which was like a whoever was interested it could go to talks on it and I went with him on a
Talk to it and I handed in my CV and ended up getting a job there um which was you know it’s been one of the highlights of my working career I suppose it was uh great fun maybe will be great fun they’re looking for funding again aren’t they looking to get a new
Driver for it yeah um and because that project by its nature is always in and out of money you end up working on lots of other things so I was a contractor at the time I worked for um Williams but indirectly for jlr they uh did a one
Make race series called e trophy which was uh based on the electric well the ipace um so I did um the vehicle control module yeah I did the the vehicle control module for that and um I then went on to work on an air speeed record an electric air speed record called
Project EXO which actually has the air speeed record and you can see it in the science museum now um I have done all sorts of other stuff as well um but I guess um during this process of working on lots of these different projects my background which is electronic software firmware that kind
Of thing systems you end up noticing you are looking for sensors and things to fulfill a function on these vehicles um a lot of it particularly on the small projects you end up designing them yourself or doing stuff yourself because they don’t exist so I thought okay well
Why don’t I start making my own canas sensors for targeting low volume R&D applications so the first things we started doing were inertial based sensors so that’s looking at vehicle Dynamics and things like that um and one of them was targeting battery safety so that was uh looking at uh detecting
Early stages of something called thermal runaway which is where your cells get really really hot and Catch Fire um yeah and that got sold into the aircraft project because as you can appreciate it’s not quite like a car the safety case is a lot well how would you put it I mean you
Could stop you can stop a car and get out with a plane if there’s a problem you’ve got at least 10 minutes you know before you can get it on the ground so any kind of early warning system that you can get is beneficial so that those
Were the first guys to kind of use it um and then I thought I suppos hang on SEC this is probably not the only situation where it’s needed then I start to try and sell it you know push it a bit more into more markets and an oem
Came and asked us if we could do a mass produced version of it which is what cellard is um so yeah and I guess it’s it’s still kind of early days it still seems like um a new kind of concept or technology into batteries but yeah we’re
Seeing a lot of lot of pickup in terms of at least oem’s wanting to test it so yeah that’s where it’s come from nice you know with with all of the I would say there’s a lot of negative press with regards to batteries so having you know having early detection
Is great and uh as Zoe’s put in there you know there’s no hard shoulder at 30,000 ft for uh for aircrafts of course but um but yeah yeah someone says they got no sound oh Jamie yeah I think everyone else has got sound please put in the
Comments if you haven’t got the sound and Paul was asking why I’m a bit softer on the focus it’s because my uh my other laptop’s not come back from the shop yet so uh so you’re going to have to deal with the less less pixelated Tim and uh
For now I’m afraid Paul um but yeah so so obviously you’ve got this uh you got the skills to be able to do the to design these sensors and what um from from a from a from a battery point of view obviously um there are a lot of different chemistries of batteries and
Something that I was thinking is I think it’s a great it’s a great uh sensor to have for sure you know whether you is is it a retrofit style bit of equipment or is it does it have to be you know what how’s it implemented the actual equ
We’re trying to get it in we’re trying to get it in at the design phase because it’s meant to fit inside battery packs that’s where it’s going to work we have the best response time better performance um so yeah we’re trying to get it in at the design phases for I
Suppose the Next Generation packs um mhm yeah yeah have they got anything at the moment is there any kind of yeah so what they do at the moment is um they so you got your battery pack and the electronics that comes with it will measure cell voltage and cell
Temperatures um and they will use those two bits of data to try and detect problems um the issue with using cell voltages um is that imagine you’ve got a load of cells and parallel and one of those cells goes bad well all the other cells will kind of mask that bad cell so
It’s actually quite hard particularly in a short time frame to spot that you’ve got a problem with a cell from cell voltage fluctuations over a longer period of data you could say okay that looks that that series array of cells looks suspect but short term it’s difficult the
Temperature method is actually good it’s a good way to check you know if you’ve got a problem with the cell because it’s checking to see if the cell gets hot which is what the problem kind of originates from but the issue with that is is that the providers of
Chipsets into these packs what they do is is they’ll have uh a channel to measure cell voltage and then one channel to measure temperatures but that means they’ll only ever cover like one cell in a in a whole parallel Bank of cells what that equates
To is at best you are measuring only 50% of the celles temperature and usually it’s a lot lot less than that so that leaves you open to just not being able to detect a cell getting hot because chances are is you’re not actually measuring the cell that’s getting hot
You know so that is what they currently do that’s where this kind of comes in because this is a non- contct sensor it looks for the gases emitted from the cells if there’s an issue with them so you can use that alongside current bory Management Systems to detect issues
Early essentially before you go into something called thermal runaway so yeah that’s what they do now and that’s where this kind of Technology fits in yeah and uh how how many battery Management Systems uh does it talk to does it talk to uh the majority of them
Are there any that you’re still trying to work out still or so typically still canbas is widely used on these vehicles uh canas um sorry say again Joe I missed I missed that last bit so again so on modern vehicles you have something called canbas there are other which is a
Digital bus um which is a Communications bus sensors will talk over so um our sensor is a can based sensor and the nice thing about that is it makes it very easy to just add it on to any canvas so in terms of integration with other battery Management Systems it’s
Pretty simple really um if you’re in that field and you’re working with canas it’s quite easy to do and the the sensor itself is configurable so you can change what’s known as the can address so that you don’t clap with other units on the on the on the canas and also you can
Change the can speed so that you can make sure it matches the can speed of the network is attached to so yeah integrating is pretty simple into any so it detects the gas is there perfect and you said it detects the gas what does it detect the um uh
The potential thermal runway in any other way or is it literally just the gas so the sensor has there’s two variants but the the main variant has got a sensor which detects the gas it’s also got a pressure sensor so as uh you see gas released in a pack you’ll see a
Increase in pressure but the sensor is not just for like this what I mean a thermal event or a cell venting is kind of a one-way trip with a battery pack you know after that’s occurred your battery packs probably going to either be very expensive to repair or needs to go in
The bin so um this sensor just doesn’t it it doesn’t just do that one shot oneoff kind of detection it’s got a humidity sensor on it so it can check for water Ingress it’s got a dueo sensor on it that’s useful if you’re cooling the pack so a lot of performance Vehicles will
Actually cool the battery packs if you cool the cells down too far you can actually hit du point and start forming moisture on the cells so this sensor tells you that the other thing it measures in another in one of the variants is um impacts so it’s got an accelerometer specifically designed to
Detect collisions and to see if you’ve over GED okay so I mean a lot of the situation now is like someone Park their car on the side of the road someone goes into you you’re like well at the at the moment they I think they just use the
Airbag to go oh yeah that’s a write off or not but an airbag has not got the Fidelity in terms of the G range it measures and also um duration of the G and Etc and whatever the crash case might be this sensor specifically targets that and specifically aims to
Tell you whether or not the crash is damaged your battery or not um so it’s got that feature too okay well um Lars who we had on I think it was last week now was saying that he seems to think that that could have saved his battery pack uh because he had
A a battery F in his EV conversion um so uh so yeah I think you know having that from a safety point of view it’s it’s ultimately it’s going to save lives isn’t it give you giving you all that extra time to be able to contact emergency services yeah I mean there’s
There there’s a lot of focus I think I think the legislation is coming in now particularly for public transport which is you need to be able to detect and contain a fire for x amount of time in order to get people off the vehicle so any kind of early warning you can get
Allows that to happen and that’s one of the things the sensor can get you um but yeah I mean as mentioned people focus in on the thermal event because I guess that’s the flames and the exciting bit but um the sense also does lots of useful things as well um so yeah yeah
Yeah it might have saved the pack I don’t know I mean it it depends on what the failure mechanism is but yeah one of the one of the comments here by Fox and Foles um saying so if any one cell in a module begins gassing you would know immediately is is that the
Case I mean how how quickly does it detect it so I mean I mean the response time dependent on the kind of free air volume that’s inside the pack but you are looking at a very rapid response probably under 10 seconds usually under five okay that’s good I’ve got a few
More L what intervention is still possible when gases emerge yeah that’s a good question we get out of the car yeah I mean the other thing you don’t want to do is have false positives as well oems don’t want to have you know a false alert and then
Everyone gets out of the car and so um there’s a trade-off between how certain you are there’s event and how quickly you respond to a sign that there’s event so there’s there’s those things going on in the background But to answer your question what can you do if you detect
Event well it depends on the failure mode inside the cell so let’s say you detect an event the reason why your cells are getting hot is because you’ve probably got them under load I.E the car is driving so you would disconnect the um bus bars or disconnect
The H3 pack from the rest of the car that would then give you a good chance of not then proceeding into getting the battery hotter and it turning into a thermal event however you know you know it’s a good question you can’t always guarantee what the failure mechanism has
Been inside sell most of the time if you unload the pack in from our testing you’re going to be okay but not necessarily every time so the best thing to do is yeah get out of the vehicle at that point yeah I would say yeah sounds like you’ve got a order
Ready L has asked where he can get one so um if you do get well let’s lead it on from there you know are are these available now and where where do we get them from and obviously we’ll go back to where we were before but yeah so there’s
A a company called Felton in the UK that we use as a distributor think we’ve heard of them yeah and um the others Distributors actually what we what we do you know we’re still early days for us and we’re learning about distribution as well so um we’ve set up
Uh Distributors that actually Target oems rather than the general public because that’s where I guess we see the volume sales in this but Felton is you can buy it from and it is something we would like to to kind of build on but our main focus at the
Moment has been distribution into OEM yeah okay and uh where whereabouts are they made are they made in the UK I mean where where the component Source from yeah so like most Supply chains the components are made by multiple companies some are European the actual integration or assembly of them at the
Moment are in China but we might move that depending on um our customers what they want the final build integration programming test calibration happens here in the UK um yeah okay and um I mean it’s something uh cuz if you didn’t know Joe uh myself and mainly Ralph Hosier from rhel
Engineering we’re building an electric TVR and uh a TVR okay it’s GNA be more do you think it’s going to be more reliable more reliable safer you know you’re trying to make it as safe as possible so this could be a really good um really good addition um but yeah
What’s what’s the cost on the cell guard what what are they retailing at from for example Felton so I think from Felton they’re about 77 to start with in in one if you if you buy 77 pounds yeah so if you if you I think with with
Oems and stuff like that I mean obviously that’s one or twos but the volume the the cost comes down substantially in volume but yeah um just to go back to the TVR thing my dad has a TVR so it’s okay for me to to to say that about TVs because it was always
Having problems great car always having problems it’s all right you’re you’re among friends here Joe it’s fine you know we we all know what tvrs are like well yeah because uh I had a Griffith 500 for seven years so but yeah the car that we’re converting is a
350i um so and we’re using used batteries to make it as green as possible so for the sake of 70 7 pound to give myself more you know I think you could argue from an insurance point of view um that could be an insurance standard and I know that there’s a lot
Of work being done uh by uh people in the EV uh conversion um industry and you know the enthusiasts and I’m I’m trying to help that by bringing more EV conversion Enthusiast together by having these sort of Standards uh and I think this could
Be a you know it’s a really good case to have this in every conversion uh from a safety point of view and to give people that extra time but uh going over to the question okay um bit of a something about batteries there and come back to
That later but no that is really interesting I was I’m actually surprised at the the cost it just seems great value from what it actually provides from a safety point of view so um funly enough we’ve got uh we’ve got um Chris on from Felton next week so so I could
Always put my older in next week Jo and I’m sure you know the guys listening today will be uh very keen to know more about it uh yeah you’d want to get one per battery enclosure so you’ll need two or three for the TV that is true I would
Need two because there’s two battery boxes funny enough um so is there any it’s 40 kilow hours 40 two battery packs one yeah that’s total usable is going to be about 38 um so uh so yeah it’s uh it’ll be exciting we’re not we’re not far off we’re not
Far off are you are you making all of the enclosure your battery enclose yourself and is that uh yeah Ralph is doing all the battery PS yeah yeah it’s exciting stuff I’m I’m hoping to do the course soon level one to four and then do the EV conversion course when I’ve
Got time and Somey money to to start getting involved in it myself because you know I used to be at the point where I’d look at a car and think about you know what could I do to make it more exciting now I look at cars and
Think where would I put the batteries and motor so I think I’m I’m really involved and really kind of passionate about the EV conversion side of things so so there we go um so L has put here my self failure so this is the last we talked about earlier caused by an
Internal cell sh when the car was parked so yeah there we go can the sensor wake the car up if it measures an event oh that’s a good question yes so the sensor has a low power mode that turns it off on can and if it detects a
Threshold being breached it will turn itself on and then can wake up the other can modules from itself so yeah it does yeah it’s also got it’s also got it’s also got um it’s also got um memory or storage on it so it can remember over power Cycles whether or
Not a threshold has been breached which might be useful more useful for humidity or dueo or temperature parameters but yeah you can see if your packs got hot or or whatever or had an impact for example in the impact case it will save it will say it will save the flag will
Flag that that there’s been an impact and save it till its own m so that when you power cycle it is still there if you see what I mean so obviously if you power cycled it and the the fold cleared it’s not that useful is there a way of plugging in and
Downloading the data to have a look at a bit more detail so at the moment the data is literally a flag to say it’s over this amount or under this amount or whatever so you can look it immediately that way the reason why I guess we didn’t want to
Start recording data on the actual device is because it gets expensive to do that and also there’s other problems with doing that let’s say the power’s cut and you’re trying to write to it it can damage the memory Etc so flags are the easiest way to to get around that
Basically yeah okay and is there development if you got a sorry hang on my we’ve got a new puppy and it just it just it just ran in and uh luckily my family members grabbed it it’s the mad house we’ve got here so so we’ve got a new puppy and
It’s mad as a bag of frogs this um uh uh it’s a what is it it’s a not a cocka poo it’s it’s a lab it’s a Labradoodle that’s what it is yeah it’s a bit mad so yes it’s a bit mad uh name’s Rebel Rebel
By name rebel by nature but it’s gone now so we’re all good um so only wake wake on can or also analog it’s got a digital pin as well it’s got a it’s it can also drive so it’s got five pins power ground the two can lines and the fifth pin is a
Switch so the switch can be turned you can program that switch to come on at a certain threshold so if by means of analog I mean I suppose you might mean analog output in terms of the sensor values it doesn’t have that but it does
Have a digital IO that you can set to trigger based on a threshold so you can use that to turn something on as well okay well apparent yeah no that that’s that’s really good and in terms of the actual s guard itself are you
Working on a a mark two or you on to another sensor from a safety point of view what what’s what’s kind of next because I mean from information wise that’s that ticks so many boxes for me um so I yeah you know I didn’t know that
I wanted one until now we’ve got all the information I definitely want a couple so certainly put order they only come in Black okay you’re gonna say 400 aren’t you but the um there’s lots of stuff I’m uh working on um yes there are you know
I’ve got other ideas around this I think you know we talk about 77 pounds for an oem that is quite a lot actually so um okay I want to develop a like a cheap cheaper version of it less features things like that um there’s other things that are in the
Pipeline that are not these types of sensors I do um inertial sensors and dead re have you heard of dead reckoning so it’s where doing a bell yeah sure it’s where you lose GPS but you can still get your position so it’s useful if you’re in inner city
Areas because GPS signal you can suffer from something called multipath which can make your position jump around a lot and it’ll work through tunnels and car parks and stuff like that so um I’d like I’m I’m working on something or a can module that uh supplies that to the car
Um so it’s useful for position and things like that um lots of a can a to d an analog to digital uh can converter but this one’s slightly special because it’s got an Ultra low power mode which means that you can switch the turn the car on from
It if something goes beyond a certain temperature or value or there’s a button press or something like that so lots of things really but yeah in this space which is the EV battery space um yeah there are future variants I it’s like anything though you have to kind of
Although I’ve got all these things I want to do you’ve kind of got to deliver one thing at a time hopefully make some money from it and then use that to work on the rest of the the ideas you’ve got so yeah there is more but yeah the focus
Is this one at the yeah um Fox and FY has asked a very relevant question which is what’s the physical size of the sensor um I mean we’ve actually got uh if I just present for a second yeah might have one like a proty one room hang
On I’ve got one of the early prototypes with my hand um this is one of the early types if I hopefully you can see this there we go there that’s what it looks like there and uh yeah if you could show us what it looks like uh there we
Go okay yeah it’s not huge it’s quite slim isn’t it yeah it’s about 10 mil high so is it the size of a debit card credit card yeah I’ve got see if I can get a debit card out and you can see the size comparison so that’s that’s to be
Mounted on anything in particular so that’s the oh wow it’s pretty small yeah uh it’s pretty light if you’re worried about weight it’s 15 grams um yeah okay what was the other question you just uh is there a particular way to mount it does it need to be mounted a particular
Way or is it fine to be mounted in any which way so I guess a couple of things we say usually these packs have a breather port on them somewhere so mount it near the Breather port and mount it somewhere if you did get um liquid in your pack although probably at that
Stage it’s the least of your worries uh whe this sens is getting wet or not um Mount there slightly you know above that point so near the Breather Port away from where moisture or water will pull that’s basically it okay um L has asked does it have any
Certifications uh yeah ECR r10 so um it’s got It’s been tested to Automotive standards I Automotive standards so when I say that it’s it’s gone through the electrical testing so the EMC testing what that tests for is voltage fluctuations uh from maybe Alternators on hybrids which can be quite severe
It’s also gone through Environmental Testing Automotive Standard Environmental Testing so yes it it I mean we’re trying to sell it into oems which means that it has to have passed these things essentially so yeah there has yeah okay and you got any oems on
The hook at the moment or is that uh NDA uh I it’s like so I mean yes we do um I can’t mention I I can’t mention the names and that makes it sound you know but yeah it’s good it’s good is good yeah I mean and um you got
Have you got anything that you want to put it go on sorry there’s a delay yeah um no I mean there’s yeah I think I answer the question yeah there are oems that um are going through the process of taking us through their procurement chain now which is quite you know okay
Impressive I mean as in the the procurement chain itself the number of Hoops you have to jump through is quite large but yeah I I can imagine I can imagine and uh uh James put uh plus one on ISO monitoring I’m not sure what that is but um I’m not
Sure if you can answer that what’s that one to me plus one on ISO monitoring I’m not sure what that means Jamie if you could dulge that would be amazing but um what I was going to ask you Joe is um is there anything is there a vehicle that
You’re going to put it in yourself have you got any kind of have you got any any electric Hobbies yourself that that you’re working on other than the the sell I know it’s difficult because I’m sure a lot going on I don’t you know part of trying
To as I’m sure some of the people watch and listen to this if you run your own business most of your money goes back into that particularly early days I mean there’s tons of stuff I’d love to do but right now I’ve got to spend it on this
Kind of thing you know if I you know and see where it goes so yeah I’d love to have the time and the money to go do um loads of stuff but I mean one of them would one of my dreams is to like earn enough money and this is just a complete
Pipe dream but to go back and finish Blood Hound that is what I would love to do um but I mean that’s millions of pounds away so but yeah well you know if you got a focus it’s it’s it’s just building the plan to to make it happen isn’t it I suppose
Yeah I mean you got to be you got to be do you drive an electric car yourself no I’ve I’ve got a Ford Focus a one a one liter Ford Focus ah the three-cylinder turbo that’s it they actually I’m no stranger to a three-cylinder turbo actually I had a die hatu shereé
Gtti back in the day so uh know them well be one impr turbos I’m impressed about what they can get out of one liter in terms of it sounds all right and it’s doesn’t feel that slow seems all right no that’s it that’s it um and um
Yeah so you mentioned and I think I missed it because again there’s a little bit of DeLay So apologies everyone for the delay here um but did you say that you can’t buy single cell guards at the moment what is the buying process for S you you could just go to the
Felton website and buy one from there you can get individual ones yeah okay yeah brilliant well I’m hoping that um I’m hoping that there’s a few more uh potential Outlets that be interested have you have you touched the American Market with it at all other than through
Felton uh yeah yeah um in fact they’re one of the bigger markets for us at the moment yeah no good not through not through no idea what Eco what can your sensor tell when the ecoboom is going to blow what’s an Eco blo
Oh I feel like I need to look that up U but what I’ll what I’ll do in the meantime is uh I’ll I’ll add this to the stage so this is uh the mettis engineering uh website which has got the cell guard on there um have you with mettis engineering have you done
Anything else uh in terms of components I know we were talking about the future of other centers that you’re doing but is there anything that you’ve done in the past uh yeah so at the top there there’s our R&D sensor range but that’s kind of targeting more low volume vehicle
Manufacturers so um okay if you if you there you go so we’ve got a range of different sensors there um you’ve got the you’ve got a high data rate GPS so that’s 50 htz position rate so if you’re moving quickly um then you might want to have
More position fixes so that let’s say you’re analyzing your path it’s less what you would call pixelated if you like it’s more there’s more sample points um there’s Imus on there and attitude heading reference systems type stuff that’s for vehicle Dynamics and uh there’s a dead reckoning sensor on there
As well and and our origin um R&D version of this sensor yeah we should looks like you work with Monroe yeah they’ve put some in their past see Monroe there that’s that’s good to see I tell you one question that I did have and I don’t know if I thought
It was quite a good question kind of gave myself a thumbs up internally for this one U it could be completely off it could completely off the case but with with battery chemistry changing uh from nmc to lfp to sodium to um uh solid state does that must affect whether how how
Um how effective this uh this particular sensor is how how does it affect it as the chemistry is change yeah so I would kind of flip this one around slight ly um it’s more to do with how safe the batteries are and what the driver is from the manufacturer into putting these
Kind of systems in now the cell choice that people pick nmc lfp maybe sodium maybe solid state in the future like any kind of I suppose um product or engineering thing they each have their own benefits like positives and negatives nmc High you know power density but slightly more volatile in
Terms of setting on fire but you’re going to need them for performance Vehicles lfp less energy dense bit safer but as people are fny out with lfp although thermal runaway is less likely you’re still get gonna get a load of smoke it produces a lot more fumes and
Those fumes are poisonous and you know can essentially so that’s what the lfp thing is so lfp you know even if you’re putting lfp in your car it’s going to be safer in terms of setting on fire but it can still get to the point where it’s
Going to off gas smoke a load and produce noxious fumes so people are still interested in putting this sensor in side lfp packs because of that in terms of the sensitivity between nmc and lfp if the response is both pretty good I mean the gases although all be
Differently the sensor can pick up various types of gases so doesn’t seem to be really affected by it um in terms of response and performance sodium I can’t really comment on uh solid state um yeah I mean I suppose it once you know people talk about solid state um if
They manage to produce um a cell which is never going to set on fire and never going to have issues then yeah maybe the detection of off gasing is no longer needed but the other parameters still will be so we just switch the sensor or reduce or produce one which doesn’t have
That particular feature which is the off gasing bear in mind it has all the other features um I think also the rate of change of the market any Market is going to change right and you have to adapt to to that so um the you know nmc and lfp
Technology if you look at the think the numbers of cells produced I think there’s still the vast majority of cell chemistries are out there and will be out there for the next two three four years um so so yeah things will change no doubt that’s the
Way it is isn’t it you know we’re driving EVS I suppose but um and you have to adapt to that yeah um but there is a rate of change and you can adapt so yeah I’ve I’ve now worked out and obviously Jerome’s confirmed confirmed it ecoboom obviously ecoboost engine
They’re not a very reliable engine from what I remember it’s a bit of a throwaway engine it’s very difficult to repair from memory uh in my old motor trade days I remember hearing this uh Eco boom there we go you learn something new never heard
That phrase but I love it yeah I I’ll know it I’ll know it when I hear it I’ll know it when I hear it well I don’t think it’s a physical boom but I could I could be wrong um so uh are there are there any other applications other than uh battery packs
Uh that that uh this sensor can be integrated into the cellard sensor the answer is we’ve we’re developing one for HVAC systems so um that’s um for you know in again can based so targeting Vehicles so cabin air quality and things like that so there are kind of spin-offs
You can use this for yeah but I mean the market for Ev battery packs excuse me we’re also looking at energy storage which again is obviously battery packs but that’s oh yes yeah you nothing to do with with which is potentially an even bigger Market than
EVS you know so um that’s something else we’re we’re hoping to to push into yeah no because um I recently I have heard quite a few horror stories of you know uh battery storage uh not the best quality battery storage and it’s in your house you know and sleep at night and
Having that early detection I mean how easy is it to retrofit to um a battery pack that you’re getting cheap from China you know yeah I mean you you it’s a can based sensor if you set it up if you the thing is I think there’s that barrier to entry which is familiarity
With using can buses which I think which is why we target generally tend to Target like integration at the build point because as suppose more people are going to know you know they’re going to know the manufacturer going to know about it um can I suppose in the
Automotive can be well if you’re playing around with your own vehicle it’s actually quite hard to get the can definition to understand what all the data means on the bus and a lot of the time that’s the struggle so it prohibits people from playing around with stuff so
I guess that’s why we target manufacturers oems that that that kind of thing but yes it’s just similar to the battery packs they they EV battery packs they use they use the same technology they’ll use can based coms a lot of the time in these energy storage um uh platforms so yeah hopefully
Relatively easy for them to install at the design point I mean if you’re a hobbyist and you know about this stuff then yeah sure but we but the bigger Market we see for us is is obviously manufacturers yeah is is there a way of I mean I’m
Talking off top of my head here but is there any way that you could have a retrofit device so you have the sensor and have uh something that enables you to put it a bit like a this might this might be completely Pie in the Sky here
But bit like a smoke alarm so you can pop it on a battery and it can I suppose it’s got to it’s got to be inside hasn’t it really or is there any way that you could Plum it in somehow to on something existing because I think you can yeah
And that is something that we’re hoping we’re hoping to release a version of it this year which is something similar to that but yeah I suppose for me I I oh yeah I suppose I want the product to if I’m you know we’re a small company so dealing with technical
Questions it would be very hard for me if I opened up to the public because the amount of technical questions I would receive would be very hard for me to respond to in any timely fashion so um that again is why I’ve looked into integration at the point of build
Because you’re dealing they’re making loads and you’re only dealing with one person to to do that so yeah you could you can you can add you could add this on and do it s but also the engineering when I say engineering the installation you you ask
Me questions to how do you IND where do you install it how do you get the repeatability how do you you know those kind of things my worry would be that somebody would just put it somewhere wrong and it wouldn’t work at the time and they’d need it to work if you saw
What I mean so you there needs to be I feel yeah um I again it’s something I’d like to move into and hopefully we do um but but yeah yeah I I mean that’s kind of my thoughts on it at the moment maybe I maybe I’ll open up to it a bit more
But yeah okay um Zoe’s asked can you integrate it into a non-an buus vehicle yeah if you just so at some point with it you you if you want there’s a digital ion which you can use to turn on something at a certain threshold so when I say that imagine the
Unit detects there’s a cell vent well you can use that pin on the sensor to turn on a relay or or a light or anything really um but at some point you will need to have can Communications with the sensor to tell it what that
Threshold is to set to set it up so it triggers so although you can use it without a canvas at some point you would need a canvas to set it up if you sort to mean okay uh we got a couple more here uh another one from L been hot tonight
Is the can ID end user changeable yeah the can ID and also the can bus speed is changeable is configurable yeah perfect and got another one they’re coming thick and fast again most DIY conversions involve some integration with can system these days and I’m sure Ralph will be incorporating can based
Systems on the TVR yes I’m sure he is yeah it’s hard to in a couple of weeks was it on the 20 hard to in this you know it’s hard to steer away from these digital communication buses you know these days it’s yeah the benefits I mean they just
Absolutely I like them I mean obviously I’m I use them um a fair bit and uh just the reduction in wiring is is it’s just attractive to start with so yeah no definitely Jerome makes a really good point uh who funnny enough he’s not on next week he’s on the week after
Chris so it’d be great to speak to Jerome on the live uh this type of product that makes you wonder why no one else did it before yeah I completely agree absolutely uh you’re spot on there Jerome and well done for Joe for you know jumping on it um if you’re using
Something like zombie will have can coms between us the BMS yeah absolutely uh what’s sorry saying oh less wiring saves cost well this is why you know Tesla cyber truck they’ve gone 48 volt isn’t it because they can uh reduce the amount of um this it reduces the amount of current doesn’t
It which means the wires don’t have to be as thick so it reduces weight usually so it’s the other way so if you increase the voltage you’ll reduce the current typically um but they might G for 48 Vols that’s what I me I knew what I
Meant they might have gone yeah I’ve got this habit of being really annoying so don’t wor about but um yeah the they might I need you on my side all the time they might need they might have moved to 48 volt modules sub modules because obviously that’s the legal that’s
Beneath the legal kind of what’s considered is it high voltage or medium voltage or something but anyway the point at which you’re going to hurt yourself from an electric shock um so that does make sense no that’s great do you know what I am I am fresh out of questions I’m on
Board I I definitely want I was going to say one I need two um so Joe I’m yeah very much uh looking forward to speaking to Ralph to uh to add to his Wes um no uh if anybody has got any more questions I’ll just do a quick sum up but if
Anybody’s got any more questions for Joe and sell Garden uh whack them in the comments now I just want to say first of all thanks everyone who’s asked questions and commented it really really helps uh please like and comment uh like the video as well that really helps um
Like I said earlier in the conversation we’ve got Chris Hazel from uh Felton formerly zero EV on next week which I’m really excited about um so if anybody’s got any particular questions subjects that we want to focus on because we’re going to try and steer away from talking
About Felton uh because I think Chris does talk about that a lot so I think you’d like to talk about maybe a particular subject there’s plenty of subjects when it comes to EV conversions and modified EVs and if you’re not careful we’ll probably start talking about Japanese cars uh because me and
Chris like a bit of uh the Jack car action um so that’s what’s happening next week um very excitingly got a few videos is coming through yesterday I put a video out which was about the battery degreg on the Tesla Model 3 that I’ve got Rusty
So check that out um I’m probably going to do another battery degreg test on my test model 3 uh mainly because the miles are racking up now it’s the 95k but also we’re going to try the other method of testing the battery which is the Tesla
Way instead of the scan my Tesla app so uh so yeah no no more question so Joe thank you really so much for uh giving us an hour of your time to talk talk about sard because you know like Jerome summed up you know this this product is
I think it’s a massive game Cher for the EV conversion world and you know the sooner the oems adopt it uh the better as far as I’m concerned um so yeah thanks thanks for joining us and explaining it and um yeah if you’ve got anything else that’s coming out uh from
The uh uh the selection of bits or any updates please please share it with chargee heads um and if you haven’t go and check out the TVR conversion it’s a bit like the binky project just it’s a never ending I will I’ll look at it yeah thanks again Joe thanks for everyone for
Listening and uh we’ll see you next week thanks for having me too thanks Joe bye bye no worries thanks Joe great
We discuss Thermal Runaway detection with Joseph Holdsworth for electric car batteries. Joseph is managing director of Metis Engineering and worked as Head of systems on the Bloodhound the land speed record holder. Battery safety is a concern for many, so is this the breakthrough we need in technology to assist the electric transition?!
At the start of 2021 I created Chargeheads to ELECTRIFY petrolheads essentially get more car enthusiasts into electric cars. An Electric Petrolhead if you like….A CHARGEHEAD!!!!
To start I decided to do an EV conversion and went on an amazing journey visiting many of the big companies in this field.
I selected the not so well known TVR Tasmin 350i, AKA the Wedge (#tvrwedgee ) to electrify after careful consideration of other cars. As I already had a TVR Griffith which I enjoyed driving and with my passion for raw, powerful, tail happy cars with no driver aids TVR was the obvious choice when selecting a car to electrify.
The 2nd build is the #SpecialTrikee project a 1970’s BSA Aerial 3 Tricycle Scooter that me and my mate Vinny have turned into a e-Trike. I use this for local trips and it’s a load of fun. Mrs Chargehead calls it my special scooter…..that originally had a 50cc two stroke motor and has a 250 watt motor in it, of course.
The Latest project is Rustee #RusteeTesla the Tesla build to make a Model 3 Long Range….well…..better! Better in looks, handling and performance while keeping her a monster mile daily and the efficiency intact. Focusing again on modifying with used parts to keep it green, where possible.
I hope to not only entertain with ChargeheadsUK Channel and the #TVRWedgee, #SpecialTrikee and #RusteeTesla builds, but also to inspire watchers to create their own greener transport.
With the help of leaders in their field like Ralph Hosier (Engineer, designer, builder of special vehicles, teacher, writer, TV presenter and trouble maker.
Ralph teaches Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Training (IMI Techsafe), builds some amazing one off projects and most of all is a top bloke!
He’s the engineer behind #TVRWedgee the Electric TVR.
So let the fun begin……safely in a controlled environment using the right EV safety equipment! ;0)
Did I mention myself and Ralph have also done an EV Conversion safety video as well
#TVRWedgee #ChargeheadsUK #Specialtrikee #RusteeTesla
Find ChargeheadsUK on:
Patreon
TIK TOK
