Can you really bring a dead lead acid battery back to life? In some cases, this is possible but there are a few factors to consider. The main factor is the state of internal condition of the battery and the reason why the battery has been taken out of service.
A homemade electric car would need from 15 – 20 units of deep cycle batteries as its on board power source. Let’s say after a couple of years, you start to notice the driving mileage of your EV is getting lesser before you need to recharge.
Can you recondition the batteries so it will give you the same driving distance when you first install it? In most cases, this is not possible.
The success of battery resurrection depends on the state of sulphate on the battery plates. The idea is to de-sulphate the plates by adding special chemical into the battery and using high frequency pulse. If you can break up the hardened sulphate, more plate surface will come into contact with the sulfuric acid therefore creating electric current.
But there’s another problem, not all batteries die from sulphation on its internal plates. In reality, most batteries go through a slow natural death from internal plate disintegration. You can try your best to recondition the deep cycle batteries of your electric car, but your attempt will be in vain.
This is a hard fact because some DIY enthusiasts will try to rejuvenate a dead deep cycle battery. The battery can be used on electrical equipment that requires low voltage supply. But to reuse it on your electric car which requires constant high amperage from the battery bank, the reconditioned battery simple could not do the job.
So in conclusion, you can try to recondition a weak or dead battery from your EV, but you can’t use it to power your DIY electric car anymore. You can use it for other low power demand usage. Nonetheless, by doing reconditioning and reusing the battery, you can still save some money.
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