[theluckycountry]

Pricing - Electric Vehicle News and Trends
https://insideevs.com/news/678631/used- ... last-year/

[Plantagenet]

More bad news for EVs.....they may not work when the sun starts shining and it gets extremely hot.

It turns out the EV battery can fail and the car can turn into a brick when it gets hot.....something to consider in our "global warming" world.

And that can have deadly consequences!!!!!

How a man's own Tesla turned into a "death trap" for him in hot weather

/arizona-driver-trapped-in-hot-Tesla

Most people know that EVs lose a lot of battery power in cold weather.......

But Its not as well known that EV batteries also lose power in HOT weather.....with some EVs losing ca. 30% of their battery power when the temperature goes above 100°F and lasting even more power when it goes to 110 or 120. I was just down south for my annual visit to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City Utah........and that put me right under the giant heat dome that it blasting the whole southern USA. The hottest I experienced was 117° when I drove down to do some photography at beautiful Silver Reef near St George Utah......it was just a degree below the 118° I experienced in Death Valley the year before. Basically we're getting DEATH VALLEY level temperatures all across the SW under the heat dome. Fortunately I didn't have an EV when I drove to Silver Reef, or things might have gone badly at 117° when I tried to drive back to Cedar City for the rest of the Shakespeare Festival. There aren't a lot of EV chargers in Silver Reef, Utah.

Imagine some poor person gets in their EV and goes on a long drive off in the morning but when you get in your EV to drive back home its now 117 degrees and you've just lost 30% or more of your battery range and you ain't gonna make it back home.

That would be bad enough.....but it can get even worse for the poor, hapless EV driver....

As reported in the link above, a poor guy in AZ got in his TESLA and it was hot hot hot (no soo-prise as its hot across the USA right now) and his EV battery failed entirely and he couldn't get out of his own car. No battery power means the doors won't open.

So there he was ....literally cooking to death in his own Tesla......His EV literally lost all battery power and his Tesla turned into a death trap just in the extreme heat!!!!


Remember.....when a TESLA battery dies in extreme heat you can't get out.....the doors won't open and the car can turn into a death trap.......BEWARE!!!!!!!

Cheers!

[theluckycountry]

Major Safety Alert: The ABC15 Investigators found dozens of drivers have filed complaints with federal auto safety regulators who are urging car owners to learn how to manually get out in an emergency.

Why wait for an emergency? Get out now while the car is only 30% down on last years prices. Wait another year and you'll have a chicken coop. I love how the guy in the video has a US flag flying over his house. I wonder how much patriotism played into buying his Tesla? Nothing wrong with patriotism, but modern patriotism is merely a marketing tool.

[Plantagenet]

More bad news for EVs....

Kia and Hyundai recall ALL 91000 of THEIR EVs

hyundai-kia-recall-91000-us-vehicles-over-fire-risks-urge-owners-park-outside

The problem....the EVs are at risk of exploding into flame.

The risk is so great that the manufacturers tell EV owners to NOT PARK IN THEIR OWN GARGAGE or even near their houses because they could burn down the entire house when the EV spontaneously combusts.

Some of these EVS were previously recalled by the same manufacturers for the same reason.

It doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that they will be able to actually fix the problem with EV batteries exploding into flames since they didn't fix it during the previous recall.


EV batteries exploding into flames? No problem....just don't park in your own garage or anywhere near your house

Cheers!

[The_Toecutter]

It doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that they will be able to actually fix the problem with EV batteries exploding into flames since they didn't fix it during the previous recall.

Actually, there is a simple and easy solution to this.

Use a single string of large AH LiFePO4 chemistry batteries, with an initial bottom balancing, dumb charger, and no BMS.

This is a setup that entails minimal electronics, using a chemistry that instead of catching fire will instead simply melt and produce toxic smoke should it go into thermal runaway, and which is so simple that your average high school dropout could locate and swap out a bad cell should one develop and have the pack working again for about $50-100 per bad cell(there might only be 100-250 of them in the entire car in this sort of setup, and a problem will arise if just one cell goes bad, and it will usually be one at a time in this configuration). It's also a very reliable way to build a battery system. Jack Rickard of evtv.me used them in the conversions he built, and 10 years after installation, the batteries were all within 0.001V of each other, with five-figure and six-figure mileages on the packs and never a BMS used. In fact, a BMS can destroy these batteries prematurely if you let the car sit long enough unused. The CALB CA100FI in my Triumph GT6 conversion are also all within 0.001V of each other, initially installed in 2014, also with no BMS.

You can only get away without a BMS if it is a single series string, so this does require large prismatic cells. If you have two or more parallel strings of batteries, they will go out of balance over time and will need a BMS. Do not do this with any other LiIon chemistry, only LiFePO4.

The auto industry designs its vehicles to be complicated and unrepairable on purpose, with proprietary software and tools locking local mechanics and DIY types out of repairs(they're doing the same to modern ICE cars, not just EVs). What could be a car that could last a million miles has been turned into landfill fodder, deliberately, with a few lines of code and some encryption, so that you'll go out and buy another car when something fails and the dealership wants to charge more than the car is worth to fix it. With EVs, this is especially wasteful, as the technology allows the potential of a car that could last a lifetime once built and be less complicated and easier/cheaper to fix than the ICE cars of the 1950s.

Then the industry uses a battery type that is more sexy for marketing purposes than it is practical, and thus more prone to catching fire while also requiring expensive/complicated electronics to work properly, and the designers also need the increased energy density offered by other more-volatile lithium chemistries to get decent range because the vehicles are designed to be oversized road hippos with the corporate styling zeitgeist dujour and an emphasis placed on brand identity in the vehicle's design both prioritized over aerodynamic drag reduction.

Instead of efficient EVs that consume 120-150 Wh/mile and are repairable with basic tools and built to last forever, we get road hippos that need 300+ Wh/mile and can't be fixed outside of a dealership and are destined for the landfill in 15 years. Guess what this does to the size/cost of the battery pack for a given amount of range? Guess what this does to purchase price AND operating cost?

And then everyone wonders why the working class can't afford to buy cars anymore...

[AdamB]

Instead of efficient EVs that consume 120-150 Wh/mile and are repairable with basic tools and built to last forever, we get road hippos that need 300+ Wh/mile and can't be fixed outside of a dealership and are destined for the landfill in 15 years.

Sure Toe, but then they can't withstand a frontal crash against a concrete wall while saving the the 4 passengers, no one wants to pedal their EV, and if you can't haul around at least a family of 5 at highway speeds in air conditioned comfort at 80mph on the belt way, so no one wants them. Except you of course, and you are already building your own, so enjoy! I'm thoroughly enjoying my road hippo and years of no maintenance and 25K miles of service it has rendered, and I imagine will keep on rendering for years to come. It isn't as though it has that many moving parts to break anyway.

[The_Toecutter]

Sure Toe, but then they can't withstand a frontal crash against a concrete wall while saving the the 4 passengers, no one wants to pedal their EV, and if you can't haul around at least a family of 5 at highway speeds in air conditioned comfort at 80mph on the belt way, so no one wants them. Except you of course, and you are already building your own, so enjoy! I'm thoroughly enjoying my road hippo and years of no maintenance and 25K miles of service it has rendered, and I imagine will keep on rendering for years to come. It isn't as though it has that many moving parts to break anyway.

My pedal-electric vehicle consumes less than 1/10th that 120-150 Wh/mile.

I wasn't referring to an electric velomobile with that comment, but a midsized or full sized sedan with good aerodynamics. You know, a type of car that could be designed for its 5 occupants to survive a 120 mph crash on the Autobahn while fully able to stretch their legs(something they often can't do in a "compact SUV"), with at least basic features such as air conditioning or a way to interface your phone to the radio. It doesn't need heated/cooled/massage seats, loads of infotainment systems, everything integrated into a touch screen with an obnoxious CANBUS system. Make it a simple, no-nonsense, affordable car where everything can be repaired with basic tools, physical buttons are used for the functions, and give it good performance in order to increase the value for the money spent in exchange for sacrificing frivolities that most people don't use or want anyway but often come into cars standard to pad profit margins and increase price. Going from a 100 kW drive system to a 300 kW one with an EV would only add about $1,000-2,000 to the cost to build the car. A sedan the size of a Mercedes W123 is not an unreasonable proposition, and it could be built to weigh around 2,800 lbs with a 30 kWh battery without using exotic materials and still get 200 miles highway range in real world driving and meeting modern crash standards. In mass production, with such a small battery, it would be possible to price it around $20k with narrow-thin profit margins, so that working class people can afford it, and so that it makes sense to replace their $1,500 clunker because the monthly payment is less than the amount saved on fuel/maintenance for said clunker.

But the auto industry won't do that. Such a car, if available, would cannibalize the sales of more expensive vehicles. They make more money financing $60,000 road hippos, than they do selling them, they want you in as much debt as possible paying them interest each month, they want you buying the big feature-laden vehicles that are more than you need with as much profit margin as possible(and want no alternatives to that available on the new car market), and they will assure you buy another one if you have any money or credit to do so by making sure Bubba mechanic down the street will never be able to fix it without spending 5-figures on proprietary tools for that specific make, model, and year of vehicle. Those chickens will come home to roost in the form of the bottom 95% of people in the 1st world no longer being able to afford new cars, a collapse of the auto industry as dealership lots fill up with unpurchased vehicles, allowing the Chinese to come in and take over with cheap EVs from companies like BYD, if the domestic auto industry doesn't succeed in using government to keep the Chinese cars out while getting yet more endless government bailouts at taxpayer expense.

The vehicle I describe could have been built and sold with the technology we had in the late 1990s. The Solectria Sunrise demonstrated that level of efficiency and range using a 26 kWh battery, and while it was a compact car could still seat 5, the designer James Worden claimed a $20,000 price tag if mass produced, and this was demonstrated way back in 1998. The legacy auto industry wasn't at all interested.

[AdamB]

Sure Toe, but then they can't withstand a frontal crash against a concrete wall while saving the the 4 passengers, no one wants to pedal their EV, and if you can't haul around at least a family of 5 at highway speeds in air conditioned comfort at 80mph on the belt way, so no one wants them. Except you of course, and you are already building your own, so enjoy! I'm thoroughly enjoying my road hippo and years of no maintenance and 25K miles of service it has rendered, and I imagine will keep on rendering for years to come. It isn't as though it has that many moving parts to break anyway.

I wasn't referring to an electric velomobile with that comment, but a midsized or full sized sedan with good aerodynamics. You know, a type of car that could be designed for its 5 occupants to survive a 120 mph crash on the Autobahn while fully able to stretch their legs(something they often can't do in a "compact SUV"), with at least basic features such as air conditioning or a way to interface your phone to the radio.

I see. Well..the good news then is as electricity becomes more expensive...a big if considering how supply and demand work, then someone will build it. Not sure about Joe Average fixing it on his own, even hybrids with minor sized battery packs are cordoned off inside the maintenance bays at dealerships for fear someone will touch the wrong part and ground themselves and then ZAP. I've actually seen it when they were putting a new fuel pump into my Ford Escape Gen I hybrid more than a decade ago.

But the auto industry won't do that. Such a car, if available, would cannibalize the sales of more expensive vehicles.

Could be. And so what? If there is money to be made at the cheap end of the scale, someone will meet that demand. Just look at cheap stuff that once came from Japan, or cheap stuff currently coming from China. Folks will buy cheap because it is cheap, knowing it isn't as pimped and advertised as the expensive stuff and not caring, as long as it works. And someone will figure out cheap, yet good enough..and presto. Chinese Honda or Toyota a decade later.

They make more money financing $60,000 road hippos, than they do selling them, they want you in as much debt as possible paying them interest each month, they want you buying the big feature-laden vehicles that are more than you need with as much profit margin as possible(and want no alternatives to that available on the new car market), and they will assure you buy another one if you have any money or credit to do so by making sure Bubba mechanic down the street will never be able to fix it without spending 5-figures on proprietary tools for that specific make, model, and year of vehicle.

That's a financial scenario, not a "why they won't build them" scenario. Sure, companies would like everyone to be rich, and overpay. But everyone isn't rich, and even some of them won't overpay. So difficult to build a hypothetical business model on.

And both my EVs go to my local yokel mechanic and he does fine with them. Good news being, they don't need anything in the way of repair of those expensive electrical bits. No moving parts is COOL!

The vehicle I describe could have been built and sold with the technology we had in the late 1990s.

Then find yourself a Chinese backer and get to work. Become the Elon of the cheap EV world and we can all say we knew you when you were just the guy who built things in his backyard and they had pedals..look how far he went!

[theluckycountry]

EV’s are the future….future bankruptcies

Fisker Posts Just $825,000 In Revenue For Q2, Slashes Production Guidance Again

EV company Fisker lowered its production guidance for the second time this year on Friday morning, and reported a Q2 loss than beat the street's expectations while missing production targets...
Also alarming is the fact that Fisker did not update shareholders on the number of reservations it had for its Ocean vehicle. This number was disclosed as 65,000 in May when the company reported Q1. Generally, companies only remove reporting metrics from filings and announcements for one reason: the numbers may not have the shine people expect them to...

For now, Fisker is flush with cash. It has $521.8 million, down from $652.5 million last quarter, as a result of a recently completed $300 million financing round. But with EV competition now saturating the globe and names like Tesla and Rivian, joined by GM and Ford, all competing aggressively with one another (and slashing prices), it remains to be seen whether or not Fisker will ever truly ever get off the ground.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fiske ... ance-again

That point in time when the little operations reverse expectations and begin to fail.
Same thing happened with ICE back roughly a century ago but that was triggered by a depression basically. There is no excuse this time other than the public's disinterest in the product being offered. PeakEV

[theluckycountry]

Hey Look! They found a new way to waste the Earth's resources.



An electric powered caravan (trailer to you sepos). As if theses vans weren't expensive enough considering the junk build of them they have added electric motors and batteries. Not too many batteries I hope, because we know how heavy they can get

It's got solar on the roof too, so no parking it under the trees, but I'm sure it will have a big air-con unit. The sales pitch is that it will counter "range anxiety" Funny thing is, most people who hitch up a van for a holiday aren't just going across town are they so the van may well power itself but the tow vehicle will still need regular recharges. I didn't know they they had charging bays where can fit a long van in as well?

Anyway starting price is $125,000, probably $165k if you want the long range pack. Something tells me they aren't going to sell too many of these.

Marketing video, with pretty girl in shorts of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_8W4keDWb0
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/fi ... ge-anxiety

[theluckycountry]

Texas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing Heat

August 6, 2023
Electricity prices for the grid rose to more than $2,500 a megawatt-hour for Sunday evening, up from Saturday’s high of about $275, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator. The surplus of available power capacity on the grid versus power consumption will narrow to 1.6 gigawatts in the hour ending at 6 p.m. Sunday, a level that can trigger emergency responses, though Ercot has additional reserves it can tap to meet demand.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... aring-heat

doesn't Adam live down there? Imagine having to charge up your EV for a Sunday drive
It's not the first time either.

Shocking Electricity Prices in Texas Mean Charging Your Tesla Can Cost up to $900

February 18, 2021

Part of the appeal of owning a Tesla is how affordable it typically is to charge it up and cover hundreds of miles. However, the rolling blackouts occurring right now across Texas are creating a unique challenge for Tesla owners. According to Muscle Cars and Trucks, electricity prices in Texas have skyrocketed in recent days. …

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/shocking-e ... up-to-900/

The future of EV

[theluckycountry]

Texas to hit all-electric vehicle owners with high fees

August 3, 2023
Beginning Sept. 1, owners of those vehicles will pay a $200 fee to the state at the time of registration or renewal. New electric vehicles issued two years of registration to match a two-year inspection will have to pay a $400 fee.

"For every 'fully electric' vehicle that is purchased and operated on a Texas roadway that is just that much less fuel tax that is not being paid being paid on the purchase of gasoline," Wichita County Tax Assessor-Collector Tommy Smyth said in an email...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-hit-el ... 24808.html

[Tanada]

Texas to hit all-electric vehicle owners with high fees

August 3, 2023
Beginning Sept. 1, owners of those vehicles will pay a $200 fee to the state at the time of registration or renewal. New electric vehicles issued two years of registration to match a two-year inspection will have to pay a $400 fee.

"For every 'fully electric' vehicle that is purchased and operated on a Texas roadway that is just that much less fuel tax that is not being paid being paid on the purchase of gasoline," Wichita County Tax Assessor-Collector Tommy Smyth said in an email...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-hit-el ... 24808.html

On the other hand if you are in Texas and your utility pays you a feed in tariff you can earn some serious profit right now pumping your home generated power into the grid. With the right kind of HEV or home generator system you can even do it burning fossil fuels.

[AdamB]

Texas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing Heat
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... aring-heat
doesn't Adam live down there?

No. I was born there.

Imagine having to charge up your EV for a Sunday drive

What kind of cager incompetent thinks Sundays are for a DRIVE? Sunday rides aren't for cages. You don't have twistys in the land famous for being a penal colony and manufacturing incompetence, you have minor curves designed to keep cagers safe from their poor training, and to protect the kangaroo riders loping along at slower speeds.

You just stick to "Aussie twisties" Lucky:

and leave the read twistys to those qualified. Hell, lowland incompetents are unlikely to be able to breath doing this, let alone have what it takes to ride them the way they deserve.

[Plantagenet]

It doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that they will be able to actually fix the problem with EV batteries exploding into flames since they didn't fix it during the previous recall.

Actually, there is a simple and easy solution to this.

Use a single string of large AH LiFePO4 chemistry batteries, with an initial bottom balancing, dumb charger, and no BMS.

This is a setup that entails minimal electronics, using a chemistry that instead of catching fire will instead simply melt and produce toxic smoke should it go into thermal runaway, and which is so simple that your average high school dropout could locate and swap out a bad cell should one develop and have the pack working again for about $50-100 per bad cell(there might only be 100-250 of them in the entire car in this sort of setup, and a problem will arise if just one cell goes bad, and it will usually be one at a time in this configuration). It's also a very reliable way to build a battery system.....

Then the industry uses a battery type that is more sexy for marketing purposes than it is practical, and thus more prone to catching fire while also requiring expensive/complicated electronics to work properly, and the designers also need the increased energy density offered by other more-volatile lithium chemistries to get decent range because the vehicles are designed to be oversized road hippos with the corporate styling zeitgeist dujour and an emphasis placed on brand identity in the vehicle's design both prioritized over aerodynamic drag reduction.

Instead of efficient EVs that consume 120-150 Wh/mile and are repairable with basic tools and built to last forever, we get road hippos that need 300+ Wh/mile and can't be fixed outside of a dealership and are destined for the landfill in 15 years. Guess what this does to the size/cost of the battery pack for a given amount of range? Guess what this does to purchase price AND operating cost?

And then everyone wonders why the working class can't afford to buy cars anymore...

I think we totally agree on this.

Thanks for your intelligent and insightful post.



Cheers!

[theluckycountry]

On the other hand if you are in Texas and your utility pays you a feed in tariff you can earn some serious profit right now pumping your home generated power into the grid. With the right kind of HEV or home generator system you can even do it burning fossil fuels.

They must have some generous laws there, here the feed in tariff is fixed, but so is the cost per kW used. That is basically because the government owns and controls the means of production and distribution, although the actual billing has been let out to the private sector. The latter is to put a buffer between the government and the public so they won't march on parliament house every time the power bills go up I assume. People did that in the 1970's, big marches too. Now that we have arrived at the era of diminishing resources there are going to be very big upheavals in what used to be areas of life/consumption that were taken for granted.

[mousepad]

I attended an interesting fire fighting class yesterday regarding EV. Apparently the whole insurance and building code business is in great flux due to the added danger of ev fires. Not only are ev car insurance premium higher than the gas equivalent, but many home owner insurances are dropping coverage if you charge an ev in your garage. Same for business. Installing ev chargers in your business parking lot will cost you plenty extra due to the risk to nearby vehicles and buildings.

Interesting is also change in building code. It is now required in my state that for commercial installations ev chargers are placed upfront on the commercial lot so they are easily accessible for fire fighting.

Meanwhile junkyards in my area are reluctant to take in damaged ev onto their lot due to the risk of the complete junkyard catching on fire. And the ones that do take them are installing water tanks to drop the ev into for storage. In my state, water that has been in contact with lithium batteries is considered toxic for the environmental and must be treated as a hazardous waste. That adds a lot of cost.

And on top of that it seems in many states ev road taxes are coming. Gone are the days the ev is mooching on roads paid by gas taxes. We're slowly starting to see the true cost of ev ownership. And it certainly ain't as cheap as the tesla sales brochure makes it out to be.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Actually, there is a simple and easy solution to this.

Use a single string of large AH LiFePO4 chemistry batteries, with an initial bottom balancing, dumb charger, and no BMS.

This is a setup that entails minimal electronics, using a chemistry that instead of catching fire will instead simply melt and produce toxic smoke should it go into thermal runaway, and which is so simple that your average high school dropout could locate and swap out a bad cell should one develop and have the pack working again for about $50-100 per bad cell(there might only be 100-250 of them in the entire car in this sort of setup, and a problem will arise if just one cell goes bad, and it will usually be one at a time in this configuration). It's also a very reliable way to build a battery system. Jack Rickard of evtv.me used them in the conversions he built, and 10 years after installation, the batteries were all within 0.001V of each other, with five-figure and six-figure mileages on the packs and never a BMS used. In fact, a BMS can destroy these batteries prematurely if you let the car sit long enough unused. The CALB CA100FI in my Triumph GT6 conversion are also all within 0.001V of each other, initially installed in 2014, also with no BMS.

You can only get away without a BMS if it is a single series string, so this does require large prismatic cells. If you have two or more parallel strings of batteries, they will go out of balance over time and will need a BMS. Do not do this with any other LiIon chemistry, only LiFePO4.

Thank you for posting that.
Do you have any more information/references on this issue?
I have PV and soon will install a windmill on my property and I am looking for some energy buffers.
I have an access to cheap Chinese LiFePO4 cells and idea you have posted might be relevant to my needs.
Property is large enough that an odd fire, even on EV scale won't do much, so I can experiment.
In particular how many cells you can connect in series without BMS?
I would need at least 30 of them in series to get into range of 120 V, so my existing inverter/charger can handle that but 200+V or 50 or so cells would be even better.

[The_Toecutter]

Do you have any more information/references on this issue?

Yes, but I'll have to do some digging to find them again. Jack Rickard of evtv.me is the first person I was aware of to discover this. He passed away in 2020. He had hundreds of videos on his site, but only two of them I am aware of addressed this issue. His custom LiFePO4 powered vehicles did not use BMS and none of them went out of balance when kept as a single series string, even a decade later. The ones in my Triumph GT6 are within 0.001V of each other, and they were installed in 2013.

In particular how many cells you can connect in series without BMS?

As many as will work for the voltage requirements of your components. If you need more capacity, you will need larger AH batteries. Most DC to AC solar inverters operate with anywhere from 12V to 48V nominal packs and have an appropriate input range. With 3.2V nominal per LiFePO4 battery, a 48V inverter would use 15 of them in series. I've seen large cells up to 800AH for sale.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Do you have any more information/references on this issue?

Yes, but I'll have to do some digging to find them again. Jack Rickard of evtv.me is the first person I was aware of to discover this. He passed away in 2020. He had hundreds of videos on his site, but only two of them I am aware of addressed this issue. His custom LiFePO4 powered vehicles did not use BMS and none of them went out of balance when kept as a single series string, even a decade later. The ones in my Triumph GT6 are within 0.001V of each other, and they were installed in 2013.

In particular how many cells you can connect in series without BMS?

As many as will work for the voltage requirements of your components. If you need more capacity, you will need larger AH batteries. Most DC to AC solar inverters operate with anywhere from 12V to 48V nominal packs and have an appropriate input range. With 3.2V nominal per LiFePO4 battery, a 48V inverter would use 15 of them in series. I've seen large cells up to 800AH for sale.

The more of them in series, the lower out of balance permitted voltage deviation.
If they REALLY go only 0.001V off and no more then even 100 in series would not be a problem albeit the longer the string, the more generous limit on nominal charging voltage and hence following capacity loss trade off is required.
But should they deviate for example 0.05V then well, you can quite easy imagine one of them crossing permitted voltage limit during charging.
Unless I am sure of all cells keeping parameters, I would at least install safety device measuring voltage across terminals of all cells together with circuitry switching off charging of string once ONE cell for whatever reason crossed permitted range.
It is also not easy at all to measure properly voltages difference of 0.001V. Loads of artifacts can interfere.
If you have any comments or materials and experimental data about construction of such batteries, I would appreciate it very much.