Good job. You have got to have the record for the longest living original battery in a Smart EV. What was the date code on that old battery? It should be stamped into the top of one of the terminals.

Len

 

I'm not sure. Maybe 11/14?
Oddly enough, since replacing the 12v battery, the display is telling me I have a 89mi range. I'll find out tomorrow how long it stays like that. I suspect disconnecting the 12v battery made the range calculation get out of whack.

 

So, if anyone was wondering what the desiccant of a 2014 ED with 81,000miles on it looks like, here you go.
I have no idea what it looked like 11yrs ago but I know the new stuff I poured in was clear and weighed .5 grams less.
While I was at it, I went ahead and replaced the original 12v battery and original cabin filter (didn't know it had one of those either!).
Should be good for another 80k miles, eh?
Good day.
Bill

Looks like silica gel

 

shhhhh it is

 

I’m due to change my dessicant cartridge before the winter. I bought one original replacement, and when it came around the second time to change the cartridge, I bought a gallon sized container of dessicant beads from Amazon. That should last a couple of decades so I just dispose of the old beads and pour in new ones.

I’ve never noticed much change in the look of the beads so I assume even in our damp NW environment, it stays pretty dry inside the battery pack.

 

or your pack is extra well sealed?....im thinking less condensation build up on the inside as our temps dont swing as far? and your garage kept

 

So, if anyone was wondering what the desiccant of a 2014 ED with 81,000miles on it looks like, here you go.
I have no idea what it looked like 11yrs ago but I know the new stuff I poured in was clear and weighed .5 grams less.
While I was at it, I went ahead and replaced the original 12v battery and original cabin filter (didn't know it had one of those either!).
Should be good for another 80k miles, eh?
Good day.
Bill

According to MB you're already rolling hot dice. They claim 10-20 years of battery life. I hope you DO get another 80,000 miles but if so you may be the one and only. Proper charging and maintenance is key. Sounds like you're on it like white on rice? I leased a home made EV from the Mad Professor here in Fort Pierce FL a few years ago. It was a 1988 Toyota Tercel 3 door hatchback with 18-6 volt golf cart batteries. It was a 50/50 EV. It caught fire, I put it out. A battery exploded, I replaced it. A different battery suffered a broken plate causing a lack of continuity shutdown, I found the defective battery and replaced it. MP provided replacement parts during the year that I leased it. I had an option to buy but declined because the firewall was leaking water inside the cabin creating a mildew/mold issue. It was an excellent overall experience. It taught me much, especially that there's NOTHING like a factory EV!

 

From what little I've gathered, it seems to me that 90% (100%??) of the bricked ED's are from the owners storing the car with 30% or less SOC for extended periods of time. There's some sort of parasitic drain on the 12v battery. The car uses the main pack to keep the 12v charged and eventually the 12v eats the 400v. Two things I don't understand:
1) why would anyone ever leave their car just sitting there at 30%?
2) why would anyone NOT charge their car and leave it plugged in after driving it...for ANY distance?
Baffles me. The longest my car has ever sat without being plugged in is maybe 3 days but it was at 100% SOC before I moved it away from the plug.
Since changing the 12v battery, my guess-o-meter has consistently shown 70+ miles range. I drive 40mi/day and when I get home it's just under 50% SOC so I'd say it's about right. One thing that is confusing is that it's recording an energy consumption of about 3.5mi/kWh. With a 17kWh battery pack, that's only 60mi range. Something isn't mathing. It doesn't matter, I never push the capacity.

I've been driving and building/converting EV's for more than 11yrs. I've start-to-finish converted 3 cars and completed or re-converted two others. Most with a simple AC induction motor kit and two with Tesla drive units using salvaged Model S parts. I've also converted one motorcycle, 3 garden tractors and an old Kawasaki Mule side by side. I've never used lead acid batteries and would urge anyone to avoid them like the plague. Lead acid batteries were never designed for and are absolutely not suited for EV use. Look up Peukert Effect if you want to go down a nerdy rabbit hole.

EV conversions make no financial sense in 2025 with all the cheap factory EV's in the used car market. Hell, even new EV's don't cost much more than a well done home conversion. No, the only reason to do a conversion at home is for the shear enjoyment of the build and the almost out of body satisfaction you get the first time you back it out of the garage and go for a drive.

If any of my rambling interests you, feel free to check out my YT channel to watch videos of my builds.

Bill Bayer

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

www.youtube.com

Bill

 

From what little I've gathered, it seems to me that 90% (100%??) of the bricked ED's are from the owners storing the car with 30% or less SOC for extended periods of time. There's some sort of parasitic drain on the 12v battery. The car uses the main pack to keep the 12v charged and eventually the 12v eats the 400v. Two things I don't understand:
1) why would anyone ever leave their car just sitting there at 30%?
2) why would anyone NOT charge their car and leave it plugged in after driving it...for ANY distance?
Baffles me. The longest my car has ever sat without being plugged in is maybe 3 days but it was at 100% SOC before I moved it away from the plug.
Since changing the 12v battery, my guess-o-meter has consistently shown 70+ miles range. I drive 40mi/day and when I get home it's just under 50% SOC so I'd say it's about right. One thing that is confusing is that it's recording an energy consumption of about 3.5mi/kWh. With a 17kWh battery pack, that's only 60mi range. Something isn't mathing. It doesn't matter, I never push the capacity.

I've been driving and building/converting EV's for more than 11yrs. I've start-to-finish converted 3 cars and completed or re-converted two others. Most with a simple AC induction motor kit and two with Tesla drive units using salvaged Model S parts. I've also converted one motorcycle, 3 garden tractors and an old Kawasaki Mule side by side. I've never used lead acid batteries and would urge anyone to avoid them like the plague. Lead acid batteries were never designed for and are absolutely not suited for EV use. Look up Peukert Effect if you want to go down a nerdy rabbit hole.

EV conversions make no financial sense in 2025 with all the cheap factory EV's in the used car market. Hell, even new EV's don't cost much more than a well done home conversion. No, the only reason to do a conversion at home is for the shear enjoyment of the build and the almost out of body satisfaction you get the first time you back it out of the garage and go for a drive.

If any of my rambling interests you, feel free to check out my YT channel to watch videos of my builds.

Bill Bayer

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

www.youtube.com

Bill

Excellent points to consider. When ED owners fail to charge after usage it's nearly always due to three reasons or a combination thereof. They didn't modify their behavior enough switching from ICE to EV and a false sense of security/complacency due to a lack of emphasis by their sales person. Reason #3 is laughable but true. A lack of information and/or pure laziness. A quote from Clint Eastwood; " You have to be smarter than what you're dealing with" Using more than 75% of your pack's capacity can be dicey too. Most EV's have integral safety technology to prevent 100% draining. Converted golf carts do not. As far as the parasitic drain on the 12v house battery is concerned I would suspect that the controller is the culprit. Since I don't own one it's speculation. Had the range been close to 150 there would already be an ED or EQ in my fleet. BTW, the home made POS Tercel only cost about $10,000 to build. You couldn't even buy a New battery for a Smart ED or EQ for double that amount.

 

I've owned three 451 EV's - still have two of them. I pretty much never charge the cars until the charge is in the 30% range. Sometimes the car will sit unused for several days. Never an issue in the ten years I've owned them. I never leave the charging cable connected once the car is back at 100%. Range has stayed at around 70 miles.

Len

 

Good reminder thread to change my dessicant beads, which I last did in 2023 so right on schedule. Here's my kit.

The beads in there were from the last time I changed the cartridge. The new beads were just a little lighter in color. The beads that came out were maybe just a hair darker in color.

Five minutes and I'm done until 2027!

I also stopped being super careful about charging our ED. We pretty much charge it when it gets below 40% or when we know we are driving it a longer distance the following day, and we will then charge it up no matter what its current SOC is.

Our battery degradation over 57+k miles is about 3%, and we regularly get over 80 miles of range during the late spring to fall time frame.

 

Why do you only charge when it gets below 40%? Why not just plug it in after every drive?

 

Here's a pic from just the other day when we hit 57k miles:

We've driven 37.5 mixed freeway/city miles while also occasionally using the A/C and have used 42% of the SOC. If my wife drives it only in the city and temps don't need A/C, she gets very close to 1 mile per 1% SOC.

The range remaining resolutely calculates about 6 miles per 10% SOC no matter what our previous range has been. It fluctuates slightly if we drive it below 10% and then charge, but doesn't change or reverts back if we charge it when the battery is more full.

 

Why? Why don't you charge more often? Why don't you leave the cable connected?

 

First of all, the battery does a self test a reset only after the charge goes below 40% and the car is off for at least three hours. And once the car is charged to 100%, I see no reason to leave the charger plugged in. That's the way I've done it since I owned the cars and it has worked well. But obviously with the mileage you have on yours as well as the age of the 12v battery, what you are doing seems to be working for you.

There have been a few times when I knew I was going to need a full charge that I'd charge the car when it was more than 30%. But with more than one EV available that rarely happened.

Len

 

We had a very busy day today, with a bunch of errands followed by a drive out to a hiking trailhead. Afterwards, I cleaned, buffed, and ceramic coated the smart. Some more errands later and this is where we ended up, at 9% SOC after having driven 77.4 miles that included some freeway and A/C usage.

Gas is $5 a gallon here, and this will take about $1.70 to fully charge since we pay just under 11 cents a kwh. We love this car!

 

at this moment, subject to instantaneous change, it's $2.78 here for regular

 

Washington state has the most expensive gas in at least the 48 contiguous states from what I read a couple of weeks ago, even more than California. We don’t have a state income tax and do have a number of climate and transportation initiatives.

Any discussion of that is destined to become highly political so I’ll just leave it at that. Our electricity is partly hydroelectric so it is relatively inexpensive. Cost is not the reason we drive our smart as much as we do, but just the incredibly great convenience that a small electric vehicle provides in a crowded urban environment.

 

YES, parking is so much easier than when we had a Honda Pilot. We replaced that with a Mini Cooper, but the Smart is still much easier to find parking with

 

COST is the major reason i drive my ICE Smarts, the mileage i get on everything else sux...