[adameganSMPE]

Hi

First post here so bare with me.

We are a company that provides aftermarket spares to the automotive industry, with the growth in market share we are looking at breaking into the spares market for EV's.

From what I can see there isn't a great deal of aftermarket parts options for spares forcing people to the main dealers and the prices that come with that.

We want to plug this gap in the market, and the first step for doing that is market research - We don't want to set up production facilities for parts that there is no demand for, this is where you guys come in.

1) Can you let me know common failure points (even better if it was your own car and you know the symptoms etc.) don't hesitate, anything is considered at this point.

2) The prices you had to pay for the parts (preferably not including labour)

I will be monitoring this forum over the next few weeks/months and any suggestions will be appreciated, it makes business sense for us to plug the gap for spares, and it'll be beneficial for you, the consumers to have a viable good quality aftermarket for EV's as an alternative to paying OE prices.

Adam

 

[cah197]

Probably the number one issue we see on here is items related to the HV battery system. This can make repairs very expensive.

Do you think you'd be able to address this?

 

[adameganSMPE]

Probably the number one issue we see on here is items related to the HV battery system. This can make repairs very expensive.

Do you think you'd be able to address this?

Yes we could, we're a large company that can invest in what we see fit, with the correct demand (pay back for the investment etc.)

We'd need specifics (Vehicles and what actually goes wrong).

I've seen a lot of electric water pump failures on the leaf's for example so I'm fairly confident we could offer an alternative there and have payback on our investment.

 

[cah197]

Have a look at some of the threads on the Zoe forums. Elements of the onboard charger can fail.

Probably a good one to start with as there are so many on the road across Europe.

Hopefully this helps.

 

[cah197]

P.S. Good to see firms like yours actively looking at this problem.

Of course the other part of the equation is having qualified techs who can properly diagnose problems.

 

[adameganSMPE]

P.S. Good to see firms like yours actively looking at this problem.

Of course the other part of the equation is having qualified techs who can properly diagnose problems.

Again, if there's enough of a demand there's nothing to stop the business setting up a garage network if there's a shortage of people who can actually work on the cars beside OEM's.

 

[Neilew]

Maybe you should contact Clevely's they do a lot of repairs and upgrades:

 

[whereswally606]

ptc heaters in gen1 leafs are garbage. to use something after market would need a lin bus hack from the ccu to the heater but that has been done by evolution EV-OLUTION

Also their is no one producing replacement new cells for battery refurb so that's a huge potential, will mean people are not reliant on crashed cars for batteries which already had done some miles.

wishbones rubber parts also go after eight or so years due to evs being heavy and stop starty if you have an aggressive driving style. tbh they arent really an ev part so the aftermarket in these is already pretty cheap. be nice to have a part with removable bushes inside of integrated ones which mean you have to recycle the complete wishbone to replace the bush (not very green approach to a green vehicle).

any decent aero mods will help

also a service to install heated seats. You can buy inserts for £25 to convert seats but the labour is the hard bit.

Installing 3phase charging is a huge potential area if only they were affordable to buy of the shelf. 2 tchip/elcon chargers can take a 3.6kw charging leaf and turn it into a 11kw charger which then keep pace with some of the newest cars coming out in terms of charging at a supermarket.

CCS conversions for chademo only cars so you have more options, and vice versa.

lithium managed 12v batteries maybe?

retrofit heatpumps to increase heater efficiency

 

[HandyAndy]

Here's an idea for you, concerns charging EVs. I've had a couple of expensive failures over the last 5 years, both due to electrical short circuits during domestic charging. And in both cases the reason that expensive damage happened is because the CP line between EVSE & EV is a low voltage (12V max) signal line, and it is simply wired directly through from the EVSE controller to the car's logic-system which decides what current to draw etc.

1st failure was the car's socket developed maybe a tiny crack, whatever, but moisture got into the back of it, and shorted the 240V mains to the CP line. Car was fine, undamaged, dealer swapped the socket under warranty, but it blew up the ECU Controller-unit in my dumb Rolec EVSE. I repaired that myself by replacing the ECU with a £80 off-the-shelf item. But it could so easily have been a rather more expensive circuit-board that went bang, and OEMs have been seen to quote upwards of £400 to repair a broken EVSE. My "granny" portable EVSE detected this short, and shut itself down successfully and was undamaged, just needed a manual reset.

2nd failure was the same, now 4-year old, portable "granny" EVSE I'd used a lot, deciding to blow up internally. I think the incoming mains prongs soldered to the PCB suffered metal fatigue in the solder joint, which then overheated too quickly for the internal thermistor to react & shut down the unit, anyway there was total destruction inside and this must have sent a voltage spike down the CP line straight into my EV. This damaged the car, it charged a few times after the accident, then stopped charging altogether. Bill was for £1300 for a new charging controller unit + another socket for the car. And a new portable EVSE.

There are a lot of wall-mounted EVSEs, many are "dumb" units now some years old, that lack protection against short-circuit voltage spikes coming up the CP line from the car. It would be very handy to have a small module that can be wired up inside the EVSE, that opto-isolates the CP signal coming out of the expensive ECU and going to the EVSE socket/cable then to the car. The PCBs I've seen inside EVSEs happily mix the mains voltage, going through some relays to act as contactors, with the low-voltage logic elsewhere on the PCB. It's difficult to make this kind of thing utterly safe from burnouts on the PCB causing high voltage to leak into the logic-level stuff. The Rolec/Viridian design does a pretty good job of isolating things, because these use industrial Contactors which are separate, bt the CP line is still in danger.

A small unit to isolate the CP line could be retrofitted to any wall mounted EVSE that lacks this spike-protection, and I'd buy one instantly. It could be powered from a small isolating mains transformer, not an auto-transformer, to create the 12V needed on CP line and to power a small cpu. It would use an opto-isolator to sense the information coming from the CP line of the ECU, and the small microprocessor would be needed to apply the various resistor-loadings to that CP->ECU wire, to match the resistances being switched in by the car. Easily done with a couple of mosfets & 2 resistors. The car signals whether it wants a charge or not by applying one fixed resistor permanently between CP and Ground to pull the 12V down to 9V, this tells the ECU there's a car at the far end, then when the car wants power it switches in another resistor that pulls the voltage down to 6V. The EVSE then closes the contactors & power arrives.

The existing way of a CP wire straight through from EVSE to EV is a dangererous way to do things, as I know to my cost. It really does need a small circuit to monitor what's happening on the CP line, and do the necessary "mimicry" to convey the signals in both directions, at the same time isolating the EVSE side of the CP line entirely from the EV side of the CP line, so there's no way that 240V coming from either direction can jump the gap & damage what's on the other side.

 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Here's an idea for you, concerns charging EVs. I've had a couple of expensive failures over the last 5 years, both due to electrical short circuits during domestic charging. And in both cases the reason that expensive damage happened is because the CP line between EVSE & EV is a low voltage (12V max) signal line, and it is simply wired directly through from the EVSE controller to the car's logic-system which decides what current to draw etc.

1st failure was the car's socket developed maybe a tiny crack, whatever, but moisture got into the back of it, and shorted the 240V mains to the CP line. Car was fine, undamaged, dealer swapped the socket under warranty, but it blew up the ECU Controller-unit in my dumb Rolec EVSE. I repaired that myself by replacing the ECU with a £80 off-the-shelf item. But it could so easily have been a rather more expensive circuit-board that went bang, and OEMs have been seen to quote upwards of £400 to repair a broken EVSE. My "granny" portable EVSE detected this short, and shut itself down successfully and was undamaged, just needed a manual reset.

2nd failure was the same, now 4-year old, portable "granny" EVSE I'd used a lot, deciding to blow up internally. I think the incoming mains prongs soldered to the PCB suffered metal fatigue in the solder joint, which then overheated too quickly for the internal thermistor to react & shut down the unit, anyway there was total destruction inside and this must have sent a voltage spike down the CP line straight into my EV. This damaged the car, it charged a few times after the accident, then stopped charging altogether. Bill was for £1300 for a new charging controller unit + another socket for the car. And a new portable EVSE.

There are a lot of wall-mounted EVSEs, many are "dumb" units now some years old, that lack protection against short-circuit voltage spikes coming up the CP line from the car. It would be very handy to have a small module that can be wired up inside the EVSE, that opto-isolates the CP signal coming out of the expensive ECU and going to the EVSE socket/cable then to the car. The PCBs I've seen inside EVSEs happily mix the mains voltage, going through some relays to act as contactors, with the low-voltage logic elsewhere on the PCB. It's difficult to make this kind of thing utterly safe from burnouts on the PCB causing high voltage to leak into the logic-level stuff. The Rolec/Viridian design does a pretty good job of isolating things, because these use industrial Contactors which are separate, bt the CP line is still in danger.

A small unit to isolate the CP line could be retrofitted to any wall mounted EVSE that lacks this spike-protection, and I'd buy one instantly. It could be powered from a small isolating mains transformer, not an auto-transformer, to create the 12V needed on CP line and to power a small cpu. It would use an opto-isolator to sense the information coming from the CP line of the ECU, and the small microprocessor would be needed to apply the various resistor-loadings to that CP->ECU wire, to match the resistances being switched in by the car. Easily done with a couple of mosfets & 2 resistors. The car signals whether it wants a charge or not by applying one fixed resistor permanently between CP and Ground to pull the 12V down to 9V, this tells the ECU there's a car at the far end, then when the car wants power it switches in another resistor that pulls the voltage down to 6V. The EVSE then closes the contactors & power arrives.

The existing way of a CP wire straight through from EVSE to EV is a dangererous way to do things, as I know to my cost. It really does need a small circuit to monitor what's happening on the CP line, and do the necessary "mimicry" to convey the signals in both directions, at the same time isolating the EVSE side of the CP line entirely from the EV side of the CP lineclamping , so there's no way that 240V coming from either direction can jump the gap & damage what's on the other side.

Or maybe just a beefy clamping device (e.g. tranzorb) to earth and a 100mA fuse ?

 

[adameganSMPE]

So batteries have come up a few times now, am I right in thinking currently your options are

A) New battery from OEM - Has anyone had this done? idea on cost?
B) Battery from crashed vehicles.

I like the feedback, keep it coming and share with your friends please, if we can provide an aftermarket to EV's it will hugely benefit everybody, as well as us as a business.

 

[adameganSMPE]

Here's an idea for you, concerns charging EVs. I've had a couple of expensive failures over the last 5 years, both due to electrical short circuits during domestic charging. And in both cases the reason that expensive damage happened is because the CP line between EVSE & EV is a low voltage (12V max) signal line, and it is simply wired directly through from the EVSE controller to the car's logic-system which decides what current to draw etc.

1st failure was the car's socket developed maybe a tiny crack, whatever, but moisture got into the back of it, and shorted the 240V mains to the CP line. Car was fine, undamaged, dealer swapped the socket under warranty, but it blew up the ECU Controller-unit in my dumb Rolec EVSE. I repaired that myself by replacing the ECU with a £80 off-the-shelf item. But it could so easily have been a rather more expensive circuit-board that went bang, and OEMs have been seen to quote upwards of £400 to repair a broken EVSE. My "granny" portable EVSE detected this short, and shut itself down successfully and was undamaged, just needed a manual reset.

2nd failure was the same, now 4-year old, portable "granny" EVSE I'd used a lot, deciding to blow up internally. I think the incoming mains prongs soldered to the PCB suffered metal fatigue in the solder joint, which then overheated too quickly for the internal thermistor to react & shut down the unit, anyway there was total destruction inside and this must have sent a voltage spike down the CP line straight into my EV. This damaged the car, it charged a few times after the accident, then stopped charging altogether. Bill was for £1300 for a new charging controller unit + another socket for the car. And a new portable EVSE.

There are a lot of wall-mounted EVSEs, many are "dumb" units now some years old, that lack protection against short-circuit voltage spikes coming up the CP line from the car. It would be very handy to have a small module that can be wired up inside the EVSE, that opto-isolates the CP signal coming out of the expensive ECU and going to the EVSE socket/cable then to the car. The PCBs I've seen inside EVSEs happily mix the mains voltage, going through some relays to act as contactors, with the low-voltage logic elsewhere on the PCB. It's difficult to make this kind of thing utterly safe from burnouts on the PCB causing high voltage to leak into the logic-level stuff. The Rolec/Viridian design does a pretty good job of isolating things, because these use industrial Contactors which are separate, bt the CP line is still in danger.

A small unit to isolate the CP line could be retrofitted to any wall mounted EVSE that lacks this spike-protection, and I'd buy one instantly. It could be powered from a small isolating mains transformer, not an auto-transformer, to create the 12V needed on CP line and to power a small cpu. It would use an opto-isolator to sense the information coming from the CP line of the ECU, and the small microprocessor would be needed to apply the various resistor-loadings to that CP->ECU wire, to match the resistances being switched in by the car. Easily done with a couple of mosfets & 2 resistors. The car signals whether it wants a charge or not by applying one fixed resistor permanently between CP and Ground to pull the 12V down to 9V, this tells the ECU there's a car at the far end, then when the car wants power it switches in another resistor that pulls the voltage down to 6V. The EVSE then closes the contactors & power arrives.

The existing way of a CP wire straight through from EVSE to EV is a dangererous way to do things, as I know to my cost. It really does need a small circuit to monitor what's happening on the CP line, and do the necessary "mimicry" to convey the signals in both directions, at the same time isolating the EVSE side of the CP line entirely from the EV side of the CP line, so there's no way that 240V coming from either direction can jump the gap & damage what's on the other side.

While I understand fully where you're coming from I imagine these chargers are made in china and therefore we'd not be able to compete on cost, and therefore demand would be low for our product, being in the UK with our skills means we can do things others cannot on complex product groups, but for 'simpler' things the Chinese will be making them at a fraction of the price.

Keep ideas coming though. we are noting them.

 

[HandyAndy]

Or maybe just a beefy clamping device (e.g. tranzorb) to earth and a 100mA fuse ?

I've not looked into a tranzorb, but will it cope with a sudden 240V coming at it? and supposing the fault supplies 99 mA continously, is the transorb able to sink that power continuously? Just trying to imagine the worst possible scenario, no matter how improbable! And it needs to manage/handle the fault, whether being generated at the car's end, or at the EVSEs end. And it mustn't interfere with the required voltage levels used during signalling, where there's the 12V with 1k ohm pullup being pulled down to 9V or 6V by the switched-in resistors. Not sure offhand what the error-margins are on those signal levels, would need to look them up.

 

[mikeselectricstuff]

I've not looked into a tranzorb, but will it cope with a sudden 240V coming at it?

Yes, for sufficiently big device, which is probably not actually all that big in practice

and supposing the fault supplies 99 mA continously, is the transorb able to sink that power continuously?

yes, e.g. for a 20V clamp, 100mA is only 2 watts.
For example this small device can handle a 3kW spike, and 400Amps for a single mains cycle

https://www.littelfuse.com/~/media/electronics/datasheets/tvs_diodes/littelfuse_tvs_diode_smdj_datasheet.pdf.pdf

Just trying to imagine the worst possible scenario, no matter how improbable! And it needs to manage/handle the fault, whether being generated at the car's end, or at the EVSEs end.

You'd put a seperate fuse either side of the TVS to handle faults from either end

And it mustn't interfere with the required voltage levels used during signalling, where there's the 12V with 1k ohm pullup being pulled down to 9V or 6V by the switched-in resistors. Not sure offhand what the error-margins are on those signal levels, would need to look them up.

The above device has a capacitance of under 10nF and leakage current of a couple of microamps, which would not be an issue

 

[mikeselectricstuff]

You may want to look at this - outrageous part prices from Nissan - the ones mentioned could easily be replicated at sensible prices :

 

[adameganSMPE]

Hi All

We have acquired a 2013 PTC heater and we are looking at what fails on these to see if we can give a viable aftermarket option on them.

 

[whereswally606]

The problem with fixing the 2011-2013 is that if you replace the ptc elements with new ones the heater recognises this sends a message via linbus to the climate control unit in the car and the car then will not start the fixed heater. One way around this is a linbus emulator which could as the car for state so that the emulator which would now be responsible for controlling the refurbed heater would not blow the precharge resistor. All quite tricky and not particulary plug and play and probably classed as a modification pushing up the insurance premium.

 

[adameganSMPE]

Hi just wanted to get this thread back in the public domain. Need people to share their experiences, keep things coming guys.

 

[DanP]

Maybe you should contact Clevely's they do a lot of repairs and upgrades:

I agree, plus contact all (or a good number) of HEVRA garages to see what repairs they’re commonly seeing, might not be that many! (yet?).

HEVRA- Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Repair Alliance

 

[adameganSMPE]

Hi

Just want to bump this thread.


So far were in the process of looking at

Nissan Leaf PTC
VW PTC
Zoe Air con pump