More and more people are thinking of buying an electric car in Ukraine. Ecological mode of transport is actively conquering our market, and no one is surprised on the road Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model S. These leading models are gradually catching up BMW i3, Fiat 500e, Ford Focus Electric, Kia Soul EV or Mitsubishi I MIEV ES. However, with the growing popularity of the cars themselves, Ukrainians are also beginning to wonder about the maintenance of electric vehicles. We must admit that the service for electric cars in Ukraine is at the level of origin, because we do not have any official service for the maintenance of electric cars. However, it is possible to service an electric car in our country, good thing, such cars do not have something supernatural. In other words, the electric car remains a car, no matter what type of power plant it is driven.
Electric cars have not changed the design principle of most units, and by and large, their maintenance should not be much more assembly than cars with internal combustion engines. But in the case of electric cars, it should be noted that when working in some areas of the car, purely theoretically, may be affected by high voltage electricity – 200-400 V. Fortunately, this is the only serious difference in the service of such machines. But is our market ready for mass maintenance of electric vehicles? Let’s understand.
Three main differences
Maintenance of Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model S, Fiat 500e or any other electric car at the service station can be divided into three main requirements:
- The staff of the technical station has the necessary level of training, as well as knowledge of diagnostics and specialized devices for “communication” with electrical equipment, which, for obvious reasons, is somewhat different from the equipment for machines with internal combustion engines;
- The station has the ability to service the battery;
- The staff is familiar with the safety precautions when working with cars where high-voltage electricity is possible.
Features of stuffing of electric cars
Cars with fully electric traction on board carry almost the same equipment as classic gasoline cars. However, the repair of some of them can be carried out only at dealerships. And here it is not the complexity of the work, but the availability of dealers with the necessary software and special tools. In Ukraine, there are independent service stations that have everything you need to service electric cars. Fortunately, there are no fundamentally unique or unusual components in electric vehicles.
The main components of electric cars include:
- High voltage rechargeable battery and battery management system (BMS)
- Inverter or power electronics
- DC / DC converter (optional if the car does not have an inverter)
- Charger for high voltage battery
- High voltage heater (optional).
Manufacturers try to hide the high-voltage battery and main power cables in the least vulnerable places in road accidents. The main problem in the maintenance of such machines is that the usual units, such as air conditioning compressor or heater are powered not by 12 V, but by a high-voltage circuit.
Red button
Owners of Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model S probably paid attention to the red button. This is a special traction battery switch. It was designed in case of unforeseen circumstances on the road or at home. First of all, we mean the main relay system (SMR), which automatically disconnects all power circuits from the battery in case of an accident. And here the red switch is created for manual disconnection of a power circuit. Also in electric cars the service socket – the switch which disconnects current supply for components which can be dangerous to the person is provided. All service technicians know the location of this switch and know how to use it.
What you need to service electric cars?
The list of special equipment for servicing electric cars is not large and not complicated at all: protective gloves, a universal ratchet with an insulated handle and a megohmmeter for diagnosing insulation. It is possible to diagnose the parameters of the equipment with the help of the usual scanner KTS 590. It carries the necessary software ESI Tronic, with a database, which is required when checking all currently available electric cars. However, some modern batteries require a special standard battery tester. In fact, this is all you need to check your electrical friend, if you do not take into account the special training of staff. But this is, so to speak, no longer your problem.
The most painful
The main question for a person who has bought a Nissan Leaf or any other electric car, especially if it is old – how long the battery will last as the most expensive part of the car. This question may well be answered by the already mentioned scanner KTS 590, which provides information about the power supply from each of the ten modules of the high-voltage battery. Based on these data, service technicians can make a conclusion about the condition of the battery, as well as the prospects of its “longevity”. Battery repair, in fact, comes down to detecting and replacing used modules. There are, however, especially running cases where the replacement of individual modules will not be useful and only in such cases, a person will have to be generous to buy a new, or used, but “live” battery.
And what about mechanics?
From the point of view of mechanical features of electric cars, there is nothing unusual here. All models of electric cars are based on their gasoline counterparts. The “donor” in the Nissan Leaf is the Juke model. Tesla Model S, figuratively speaking, is a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, well, a Fiat 500e Ford Focus Electric, completely built on the basis of its brothers with internal combustion engines. Therefore, in terms of maintenance of the chassis or other components that are also used in conventional cars, questions should not arise in principle.