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2023 battery management system: same or updated?

257 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  michaelding313
The previous generation has issues with the battery degrading and losing range, and requires "battery maintenance" at the dealer to recover the lost range, which is bullshit. (This is degradation beyond what is normal with lithium batteries, occurring much faster than for other manufacturers. Also normal battery degradation can't be recovered by maintenance at the dealer). Google "Outlander PHEV DBCAM" if you don't know what I'm talking about.

My personal suspicion is that the Mitsubishi BMS doesn't properly rebalance the battery pack which reduces the stored energy as the cell voltages drift. A rebalance will then restore this lost capacity. But that's just my opinion, I don't see what else they could be doing to get back capacity at the dealer.

Or they could have completely fucked up their management algorithm by having very poor capacity estimation (SOC/SOH estimation of a battery is not an exact science and not very easy to do precisely) and by handling the switch to hybrid operation using only this poor SOC estimation instead of measured voltage (so they switch to hybrid even though battery still has charge left because the BMS thinks battery is empty)

Either way it's a problem with the BMS and their control algorithms.

There were people doing their own research into the battery issue for the previous generation and finding ways of recovering some capacity without a trip to the dealer.

Is there anyone out there looking at the new generation PHEV?

Does anyone know if they upgraded the BMS or just increased the battery capacity in the new generation?

Does anyone know if the new generation suffers from the same battery degradation?
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I believe it’s way to early in the life of the new PHEV to even speculate on all this, at least in North American context. I don’t think anyone on this forum had his PHEV for longer than 6 months….

Yes, increased battery capacity to 20 kWh and some unknown reserve, No battery degradation so far and absolutely no idea about an upgraded BMS, or not. I just guess that if it was a problem before, Mitsubishi did correct it, or at least try to. For my info, BMS stand for Battery Management System ?
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Yes. I also see BMU for battery management unit
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People in europe seem to suggest the BMU was "updated" and the degradation issue was fixed starting MY2019.
Read this in the forms but never seen a primary source.

If that was the case, it seem to make sense as it coincides with the powetrain upgrade for MY2019 in EU/AUS, that powertrail upgrade came to North America starting MY2021.

Given there is no PHEV watchdog for the 2023 yet, it would be hard to tell if batteries degrade, also it will take a while (at least year or so ) for people to start noticing.
The first of the 2023 PHEVs were delivered to people start of Dec 2022, so only time will tell what's in store.
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