BMW i3 120Ah battery upgrade - How to?

[Music] so [Music] hi i'm dalla and i'm heading off for a customer visit we're going to be looking at a battery upgraded i3 and just do a quick checkup and see how it's doing and in this video i will also be discussing more into detail how to do a battery upgrade on the i3 in order to get the biggest possible 120 amp hour battery so stay tuned okay so here is the car that we upgraded a few weeks ago the reason i wanted to check up on it was to see that the charging voltage had gone up over 400 volt as expected and it had here is a screenshot of the 120 amp hour statistics when installed into a 2014 i3 there has been a lot of demand for this video so hopefully all bmw owners will get some more info on this upgrade path uh first of all a disclaimer i am no bmw expert and i've been getting most of my info from the excellent haverla i'll let you know more about this person later uh havrla also shared some video material which i'll be using so thank you so for some history bmw actually had official 60 to 94 and power upgrades in some regions this is really good for us since it means that the software that runs on the modules is sort of forward compatible that is a huge difference compared to the nissan leaf which doesn't have an oem upgrade path but yeah so when the 60 to 94 amp hour upgrades are allowed what about the 120 amp this has never been officially offered but due to the software being written in such a forward way it results in the possibility to upgrade to a 120 amp hour pack and both the rex and the bev can be upgraded to this biggest pack but before you rush out and buy one of these 120 packs there are some things to consider so i will list all the reason why this is so hard to do the first one being that the upgrade is mechanically challenging it's way harder than a nissan leaf upgrade the reason for this is that the battery has active thermal management this means that the ac lines go to the battery so that the battery can be cooled heated before you can remove the battery you need to drain the ac refrigerant this needs to be done with a special machine that is compatible with the r1234 refrigerant that the i3 contains after the new battery is mounted you need to refill the system you should not drive the vehicle without refrigerant doing so can damage the ac compressor and that costs a lot to replace while the vehicle is empty it will run in emergency mode with the fans on full blast so don't do this if you can avoid it also a note about the refrigerant oil i've seen some reports that some professionals quote aren't aware about the special oil that is needed for the i3 and if you refill it with the wrong oil it can be damaged over time basically the ac system is a pain and hinders any do-it-yourselfers from attempting this the second reason why it is mechanically challenging are the tolerances the battery fits very snugly in the chassis using standard jacks to lift in and out the battery will be very hard and you risk damaging the aluminium mounting flanges it is doable but it's best to do it with professional lifting equipment the third reason is electrical safety i always like to compare everything with the nissan leaf and bmw has twice the voltage while you are working on the battery on the leave there is a service disconnect switch which splits the 400 volt dc in half while working on it the bmv battery does not have this so the battery pack has full 400vdc all the time in finland you need the sfs 6002 electrical safety card to do this work please check what your local legislation says before doing any high voltage repairs or replacements due to all this i would not consider this to be a do-it-yourself job you need to bring your vehicle to some shop that specializes in high-voltage electric vehicles and has the modern ac tools needed another thing you need to look out for is that crashed batteries can be locked so bmw decided that if the vehicle is crashed hard enough so hard that enough airbags pop the battery saves this information and locks itself that means that it will not engage the contactors inside the pack making it useless for an upgrade since almost all packs comes from crashed vehicles you can easily see why this is problematic if you are buying a pack from a crashed vehicle you will need to know that it was drivable before they dismantled it and the battery so what if you bought a locked battery you then have two options but be prepared both of them are hard option one is to get the official tool from bmw for unlocking batteries this tool costs almost 10 000 euros and it it because of this it is out of reach for most do-it-yourselfers option two is to buy a new sme that is bmw's word for a bms and take apart the battery and mount a new one this is not a good option since it requires coding to make its function with the car more on the coding later another thing to look out for is that there are two versions of the battery one for the cold weather package and one without it if you mix and match the wrong battery you will have some issues one of those issues is that the internal wiring for the battery communication plug differs this means that the pins for heating are missing from the connector some people on the forums reported a constant 400 watt draw if they use the wrong battery so it is extremely important to buy the correct battery for the correct vehicle and this is not always so easy a tip from me would be to check that the heated seats heat pump option etc if the equipment level matches then you should be good to go oh and the valves for the ac lines connect to the battery there is also difference on models but this part is easy to change out since it's on the outside of the battery another thing to consider is the added weight of the new battery there's not a massive difference here since bmw does offer the 120 amp hour battery even with a range extender in some regions for instance in the united states so it's not like the chassis will break if you mount the 120 amp hour battery the 60 is 233 kilos the 94 is 256 and 120 is 273 but i mentioned this since depending on your region you might have to get a new inspection when you specify that the weight of the vehicle has increased for example by 40 kilograms on a 60 to 120 amp hour upgrade back to the software aspect like i mentioned previously bmw did think about upgrades but there are some restrictions all the software is working if you upgrade to the 94 amp hour and in case you need to do software updates the ista tool will let you know that you are doing a better upgrade and it suggests everything that you need to do but the 120 amp hour grab upgrade this is the one that most people will be interested in so here is some general information about it if you are extremely lucky you will get a salvage battery that has new software on it that matches the eye level of your car bmw releases software by integration levels eye level meaning that the modules all work with each other for example if your vehicle is 20-07 meaning 2020 month 7 and the battery you fit is also 20-7 or something close then your vehicle will work without error codes uh everything will just work although in factory default mode if you aren't lucky the battery will can contain uh two new or two old software and the dashboard will light up like a christmas tree with error messages basically what i'm saying as there is a huge risk with this and you need to take your vehicle to someone that knows how the bmw software works and then and that can update the vehicle in case it is needed a quick word about the factory default mode if you are lucky and get it to work without coding the battery will be in a mode where when it is fully charged regenerative braking will be a bit limited this is because the battery now charges to over 400 volts and the control system will limit region until you start to drive the car after driving a few kilometers you will have full region again this is a bit different compared to the old battery which allowed for region right away when the battery was full so that too long didn't watch summary of this video is that it is extremely hard to do this upgrade at home battery differences crash risk ac work coding etc all will make this quite unavailable to most do-it-yourselfers but luckily we have the experts available and i've been getting all information from haverla here over in the czech republic i'll link to his site email here in the description if you are in the eu and you need a battery upgrade consider checking out that link and getting a quote from there i am still not experienced enough with these bmws and to admit it i just got quite lucky with the first upgrade but i'm get to learn more and i hope you learned something from this video dollar out

Channel: Dala's EV Repair

Views: 116,609

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Id: EH02scyrCaE

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021