Zap! Truck Lithium Battery Upgrade

This truck was originally equipped with six 12V 150 Ah AGM Lead Acid batteries. The customer said the vehicle struggled to go 30 Mph and he never got much better range than 3 miles to 10 miles. The new installation consists of 24 3.2V 130 Ah LiFe04 Lithium Iron Phosphate Aviation grade battery cells and a Manzanita Micro battery management system. The vehicle now easily goes 30 Mph on the flat and has a greater range.

This is the original 72V 150 Ah AGM Installation. My first task was to dismantle all of this. After tearing it all out I found the OEM did not have the AGM batteries inside of battery boxes at all. Since I bid hit job and battery boxes were not in the budget I built battery & electronics boxes out of pressure treated OSB wood.

Installed Lithium Phosphate Iron (LiFe04)Cells and Battery Management System circuit cards (BMS).

Once all connected I logged into the cards and assigned each battery an address for the local network in the vehicle.

While logged into the cards using a terminal application I witnessed as the onboard charger brought the system up to charge and the BMS cards balanced the battery pack.

The commissioning test drive was great. The vehicle dropped about 450 lbs of lead weight and handled really well. The increased range & speed are ideal.