[Yaesu] Re: Opening Yaesu handheld battery packs for cellreplacement

[Augie Hansen]

> ...
> It's not well known, but the batteries in the Prius are only charged 
> to 40-60% of capacity to maximize life and allow a reserve for 
> regenerative braking.

Close. The design range is 45-75%. The following is an excerpt from a 
Consumer Guide AUTOMOTIVE article, and matches what I was told by 
service personnel at my Toyota dealer.

URL: 
<http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-batteries-none-the-worse-for-wear-cga.htm>

" To get maximum life out of the Prius battery pack, the car's computer 
brain does not allow the battery to fully charge or discharge. Toyota 
says that for the best service life, the Prius battery likes to be kept 
at about a 60 percent charge. In normal operation, the system usually 
lets the charge level vary only 10-15 percentage points. Therefore, the 
battery is rarely more than 75 percent charged, or less than 45 
percent charged.

If you're familiar with the Prius, you know there's a battery-charge 
indicator on the instrument panel. Toyota says this isn't the charge 
level per se, but rather a state-of-charge window. The top of the window 
represents about a 75 percent charge, the bottom about 45 percent charge."

Toyota claims that fleets of Prius vehicles used in taxi service have 
the original batteries with more than 200,000 miles on them. The company 
is saying that the battery will last the life of the car, and that the 
only replacements they've had to do were for failures due to accidents 
or misuse.

Of course, in ham radio service we're dealing with a different set of 
requirements. For my emergency "go" kit and portable system, I keep a 55 
AH deep cycle AGM battery topped off by a solar panel and Flexcharge 
controller. Batteries used infrequently with this kind of charging 
system have lasted 10 years or more without problem.

Gus Hansen
KB0YH