[Wren] Nick, remember how I had to take that Uber yesterday to get to work? It was because my car wouldn't start! I almost didn't make it to work today, I almost had to take another Uber. So this is the Boosted Board. It's an amazing piece of equipment You may recognize it from Mario Skate that we shot a couple years ago What if I actually rode this work instead of driving this car? My issue is that this boosted board tops out at about five miles of range, whereas I live about 15 miles away. I've actually seen videos of people who have modified their boosted boards by putting extra battery packs on them. You want to consider the right battery to use, and the first obvious choice is a lithium polymer battery Known as a LiPo. These are commonly used in like drones and RC cars and stuff like that today But what peaked my interest is this 18650 battery made by Panasonic. And what makes this thing special Is that this is the exact battery used today to power the world's most technologically advanced cars on the market. Yeah what's the name of your car? [Brandon] Geoffrey [Wren] Geoffrey?! Haha! [Brandon] The one true king! [Wren] So you have a P85d which has exactly 7,100 Batteries inside and the way, it's arranged. Is that you have basically 16 modules of like 444 Batteries oh Man that does not get old that's incredible. The batteries in this car are designed to hold a lot of energy, but not output that energy very fast. All right, so imagine That this glass of water represents the Boosted Board battery which is a lithium iron phosphate battery, and that this bottle of water represents the Panasonic Batteries found inside Tesla cars which is the lithium Nickel cobalt aluminum dioxide battery. With the water inside both representing electrical energy. This one for instance can pour all the water out really really fast Oh but look, now this glass of water is empty. No more water. This one even though it holds a lot more water it takes a lot longer to pour it all out because it can't pour it out that fast. You got this bottleneck here. If I wanted to make this pour out water faster how do I do that? Well the answer is to add another bottle of water in parallel. So what happens is that with both of these pouring at the same time, you have double the output rate of water! So much water now! Why use a smaller amount of water when you can have a lot of water and output just as fast? If these batteries can actually power this massive car to go so fast, surely having a couple packs in parallel on my Boosted Board will be able to deliver the power I need and the longevity that I also need to get to work. [Brandon] You're gonna ride all that way to work? [Wren] Yeah dude, it's like 15 miles away. [Brandon] Oh man. [Wren] Yeah. Hopefully, it works! My plan is to make a battery pack that matches the voltage of the Boosted Board itself which is about 40 volts I have to take each of these 10, connect them end to end and then take the second 10, and also connect those end to end. This will give me two packs of 10 batteries each that will connect in parallel to double the output rate and the capacity. We have the battery pack right here, and we have the control board. This is where all the circuitry goes and if I lift this off, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to splice the batteries directly into the cables where they meet at the control board. AKA, I have to solder wires directly to the board. I could destroy this $1500 piece of equipment and I don't think warranty will cover this. What I'm doing here is making custom bullet connectors that I can connect the batteries directly to the Boosted Board itself I've made two bullet connectors on wire. This plate actually covers the control board and I'm going to drill a hole straight through this so that I can take these connectors which connect to the battery and will stick out of it. And then I'll get the right length And then I'll snip these here and solder the ends of these onto the control board. That'll do wonderfully. And be able to pull this up and over. Oh man look at that Here are the two wires we're most concerned with. I'm actually going to cut a small little hole to expose this wire and expose this wire. From there, I'll be able to take these and solder them directly to the cable. This is actually the part most nervous about simply because I'm officially voiding the warranty now. Uh, hopefully this thing doesn't break. I think it works man. These things are stuck on there. They are not coming off. There's now exposed connectors here, so I'm going to cover that up with liquid tape which is essentially just electrical tape but fluid. The last step of this mod is to create these little Y connectors, little splitters here that will connect the batteries together and into the Boosted Board as a single stream of power. [Nick] What's up? [Wren] We have an issue, that I probably should've checked on first. I let the Boosted Board bit, get too low on energy and then I just let it sit there for, months. Over time battery's kind of lose their charge and now the battery charge has gotten too low in the Boosted Board to even turn on and if I plug it in green light comes on, red charging, [Confused Wren] and now it's blinking. And there is a way to fix this dead battery problem. We need to borrow your car. By towing myself behind Nick's car I turn the motors into power generators which add enough energy into the battery to revive it and allow it to be charged again. Oh God. Ah! Ah! Ugh! I'm going to try it. Yes! It turned on. The board has been charging for last half-hour. Now the moment of truth is to see if it turns on. Hey, okay, it's green. Solid green. That means it's on. Does it connect? Yes! It works! Just do it! I'm light-headed now. We fixed it Nick! Dude I got this incredibly strong, Velcro. So if I just pop this on... We got this guy. These two batteries are connected together and into the Boosted Board. We're good. Seems to be working. [Nick] How can you tell the range. That is a bit of an issue? There is no way to tell the range. The only way to know is to test it. I'm excited. So for all intents and purposes, this is where I'm starting, very close to Griffith Park here in Burbank slash, Glendale area and I'm going to be going down along this bike path right next to the LA river. I am now driving right alongside I-5 here, and look at traffic. I'm going the same speed... ...kind of. I'm approximately two to three miles away from where I started. Normally I'd be halfway through a Boosted Board battery even though it says that I'm basically dead. So far that is the scariest part about this mod. Is that I have no way of actively monitoring what my battery levels are so that's a bit scary. This is it. If I take one more step I'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been. Come on Sam. Remember what Bilbo used to say. A good half of this entire ride is right along this river I'm just going to keep riding along this river as far as I can go. Well that sucks. Should I just say screw it and go past it? There is a worker over there. He might stop me. I think I'm pretty fast I might be able to, get around them. Just continue on. I think I'm okay What an annoyance So this fine gentleman basically just told me I can't continue this way because of all the flooding, there's all this stuff that you got to chop down is that right? [Worker] Yeah. [Wren] He's go a GoPro on me too, so unfortunately, I have to turn around and go back. I don't know how far. How far do you think that is? [Worker] Half mile [Wren] Half a mile? So what if I just decided to ignore you and just keep going? [Worker] I'd call the police right now ~Wren laughs~ [Wren] Yeah, I figured as much, have a good day [Worker] Thank you brother [Wren] Eh, that's unfortunate. Hopefully that doesn't add too much more time to my travel, This is a big detour. I don't know how much extra distance this is going to add to my trip. But that being said, now I have to figure out my way to work on the LA streets. Uh, okay Here I am about nine miles into the ride and I'm walking up a hill because the Boosted Board can't handle my weight on such a simple hill. It has enough charge continue going for miles, but I guess I can't quite have the torque I needed, which is what I was hoping for. I just need more batteries in parallel to properly do this. Here's what I don't get. I'm actually getting pretty good readings from the multimeter. 35.6 and then 36 even for the right battery pack which means that all the battery packs are at the same voltage, and I still have a fair amount of charge left in them. So why am I not getting the current draw that I want? I still got another several miles to go so hopefully I'll be able to make it. I'm about three and a half miles away from studio now But this is killing me. I've been going on average like five miles an hour. I mean look at this I'm like ah, so close to making it to the studio. I'm less than two miles away. And I'm actually potentially causing damage by continuing to ride, but, I'm going to keep going. Alright. It's official. I am on Hunter street. This is the last leg of the journey. 14 miles. Didn't quite make it, but it's still going. We made it. We made it. [Jake] You're late man [Wren] Dude, okay. So I left at like 9:30. I know it's like 1, now. In my defense I did have to like fly the drone and check the battery Basically the second half of the ride I couldn't go faster than like five miles an hour the last two miles I was having to be like, a regular old skateboarder. This means I can't, I can't depend on this to get to work. Remember that water analogy? These two represent the battery packs I made and this represents the Boosted Board battery. The way batteries work is that they start at a certain voltage and then they drop voltages until they reach a point where they can't drop any further. For the Boosted Board battery that's about 33 and a half volts. So once the battery gets to that voltage, it no longer works. Unfortunately the two battery packs I made can continue to work down to 30 volts. As soon as we reach the bottom of this battery, we can't utilize any more power from these batteries. So I have all this energy that I can't utilize yet. So I need your help. I need to somehow make it so that I can utilize all of the energy in a smaller voltage range. Is that even possible? I don't know if that's possible. What if I used some sort of, like, boost converter to up the battery voltage over the course of time. Let's brainstorm together. Maybe we can figure out a way to make this battery system work. Thanks for watching. In the meantime, I'm going to be reading all the comments and trying to devise a better way to do this Boosted Board. Or I might just figure out a way to do this with the one wheel. Is that even possible? [Cue Outro]
What a great video. Sometimes I stop watching their vids for a while, then I see shit like this and binge many of the ones I haven't seen.
/u/wrenulater you should make a proper case for those batteries when you get it finalized. The flex on the board might compromise the velcro.
Also the title should've been "18650 Batteries in an Electric Skateboard!". I'm sure you guys know tesla doesnt own those batteries :P
Anyone else notice the Brandon Sanderson names on the battery packs
For the board could you add a smaller battery wired in series connected to the og battery of the board that way when the sensor reads the voltage of the battery it would read the battery read the stacked voltage not just a singular one
But seriously... What if u connect additional original boosted battery?
there is evene some1 selling two of those od boosteds reddit...