ETorque battery safety

[Boatjockey]

With all of the recent fires in Tesla vehicles and the inherent danger of the lithium batteries, has anyone heard anything about what FCA / Ram may be doing to protect the same thing from happening to their vehicles?
I have an ETorque on order but have some concerns about having my 2 year old sitting in a child seat so close to the battery. I know the odds of anything happening are small but you never know.
If anyone knows about how the battery is protected / shrouded and how much safer the 48 volts are versus the huge batteries in electric vehicles, I would appreciate you sharing your knowledge.

 

[warmachine]

There isn’t any additional protection. The battery is part of the PPU (Power Pack Unit) which contains the BPCM (Battery Pack Control Module). The only protection is the case of the PPU. The PPU is then covered by the backwall trim and rear seats.

 

[warmachine]

It’s also not sealed inside the PPU as it is cooled by cabin air

 

[alacombe]

My wife had a Hybrid Jetta which had the lithium battery and the start/stop feature. The car could not be '"jumped" with jumper cables because of this battery for safety reasons. I dont know much about this e-torque but I would imagine its going to have a lot of the same safety precautions these other hybrid cars have.

I remember when my wife jetta would be dropped off for service at the Volkswagen dealership had to have a "special" certified technician working to work on her car not anyone else because of the potential dangers and safety precautions. Due to this, services for the car would almost cost double. Every time her car needed service the car would have to be disconnected from the battery also for safety reasons. Before the car could even be filled up with gas after pulling the gas door switch inside the cabin the car had to do some sort of self check before it could unlock the gas tank door.

Not sure if the e-torque will be anything like this but I would research the e-torque regarding these issues before purchasing one because the above issues with my wife jetta where super annoying and expensive. We sold the jetta since then the hybrid system did not out weigh the costs of service which where extremely more vs a regular jetta.

 

[warmachine]

On eTorque when the 12 volt battery is disconnected the 48 volt system is isolated. You don’t have to perform the same type of service disconnect as a true hybrid. You also don’t have to use the same safety procedures when working on eTorque

 

[19llhpb]

I would think you could still “jump start” the e-torque since it still has a 12 volt system supplying the vehicle with a separate 12 volt battery. The e-torque seems to me as simple of a ‘hybrid’ as you can get and, as mentioned by warmachine above, the 48 volt system is basically isolated.

 

[alacombe]

I would think you could still “jump start” the e-torque since it still has a 12 volt system supplying the vehicle with a separate 12 volt battery. The e-torque seems to me as simple of a ‘hybrid’ as you can get and, as mentioned by warmachine above, the 48 volt system is basically isolated.

my jettas hybrid battery was also separate from the regular car battery too though

 

[Edwards]

Per the manual, jump starting is identical to a non-eTorque model. It also covers the start/stop feature so I'm not assuming a revision for eTorque models.

 

[warmachine]

If the 12 volt battery is completely discharged the system will use the 48 volt battery to start the vehicle. It will then charge the 12 volt battery so it may make jump starts unnecessary

 

[Edwards]

If the 12 volt battery is completely discharged the system will use the 48 volt battery to start the vehicle. It will then charge the 12 volt battery so it may make jump starts unnecessary

@warmachine - where did you find this info? Very interesting.

 

[warmachine]

It's from the service manual

 

[Edwards]

Man I wish they had real world usable info like that in the user manual.

 

[Boatjockey]

It's from the service manual

Thank you very much for the information

 

[I Love Grits]

It's from the service manual

Do you have access to an online subscription service in order to access the manual? TechAuthority doesn't have hard copies of the 2019 manual available yet - just want to make sure its not available elsewhere.

 

[warmachine]

Do you have access to an online subscription service in order to access the manual? TechAuthority doesn't have hard copies of the 2019 manual available yet - just want to make sure its not available elsewhere.

I work for an FCA dealer

 

[I Love Grits]

I work for an FCA dealer

Figured. Thanks for sharing what you know on this board

 

[INVISBLE]

I work for an FCA dealer

so if you disconnect the main 12v battery, will that kill the power to the radio allowing it to reset or will the 48v battery still keep power to everything?

 

[mikeru82]

so if you disconnect the main 12v battery, will that kill the power to the radio allowing it to reset or will the 48v battery still keep power to everything?

You won't lose your radio presets if you disconnect the 12v battery. I doubt it has anything to do with the 48v battery though because my 2017 Rebel was the same way. The presets probably get written to eeprom, so they aren't lost when you lose power.

 

[stevj]

Here's the E-torque section from the FSM, so you can all have your own copy. There's some interesting reading here.
This was taken from that idiotic Internet Explorer version of the manual. All links in the section (the blue text) were rendered dead by the conversion to pdf.

Steve

 

[INVISBLE]

What I get out of all that is since the 48v battery charges the 12v battery, the the wires connected to the 12v battery are routed to the 12v output of the 48v battery which leads me to believe that simply disconnecting the main 12v battery wont "reset" the radio since 12v power will still be present.