redfarmer27
New Member
My sympathies. Your note is timely, with my car only just having been repaired this week. There appear to be a limited number of battery experts in Europe who work on these types of issue.
You have my sympathy. Mine is finally being put back on the road this week (hopefully) at a total of about half the cost of a new battery pack (which are not available anyway). Not sure I can add the repairer’s details on here so please email me at second_version@hotmail.com and I will give you full info.
Get them to PM you so you are not putting personal info on view to anyone ie spammers
Graculus
Well-Known Member
I suggest you try another specialist, or get a second-hand battery to use as a donor (keep what isn't used for next time). 'Telling' the car its no longer a hybrid is not going to be easy, its a bit more that editing the CCF and shifting some wires around, part of it needs to be functional to keep the motor clutch disengaged.
It should be possible to 'convince' the battery management system that the cell voltages are OK, we've successfully done this by running a discharge routine through diagnostics to bring them all down to the same level but ignoring any panic from the BMS, then connecting an external charger to allow the BMS to bring it back to life gracefully. Its not really a DIY solution though. I suppose you could force the engine to be a single power source at this point by opening one of the interlocks - often as simple as a bonnet catch switch, which you could extend the wiring into the cab and have an internal switch - the constant 'bonnet open' warning would take some ignoring though!.
Range Rover Hybrid battery issue. So I had a 2015 full fat autobiography diesel hybrid with V6 3.0 engine, ironically with 59000 miles. Its taken 10 months and 3 garages to finaly get it back on the road. One of the cells in the hybrid battery went down, blowing all the circuit boards. The final garage were in contact with land rover and managed to get a cell for the battery from the original test rig when the car was produced. From what I believe new cells dont work with older batteries, they dont comunicate, bit like teenagers and mature adults. So battery finally got back up and working and the circuit boards rebuilt and the car was presented back to me last week working and no dash lights. I drove it for a couple of days, albeit only to visit we buy any car and the like seeking to sell it. Id just lost confidence and didnt want to make any longer journeys in case it let me down. It may last, it may not I just dont know. The good thing was that I managed to get just shy of 20K for it. The repairs in total cost me about 6K including vat, which was a far cry from the original estimate of 26K for a replacement battery, plus labour and vat from Land rover dealership. If land rover hadnt come up with the cell, it would have been scrapped like redfamer 27 above. I was lucky, very lucky and feel really bad for those whos experience has cost them dearly. The tech on range Rover hybrids is way behind the likes of lexus and other quality minded brands and ones that dont thrive on brand image only. Ive since bought a non main battery dependant car with just an engine.
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The bus company I used to work for had 4 battery cars for staff runabouts, Renault-something_tiny little cars, allegedly 5 seatser, impossible for 5 bus drivers to fit into... hey had a range of 60 miles and each clocked up over 160,000 miles when the company shut down. They fetched £1500 for the lot! But they were also on charge between runs. New batteries were much dearer than a new car.
Hydrogen may be the answer with some reports of cars doing about 1000 miles on one filling.
Hydrogen may be the answer with some reports of cars doing about 1000 miles on one filling.
