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Golf GTE Battery Disassembly

Having deliberated over battery pack options, I was convinced I would go for a pack from a BMW plug in hybrid or the Outlander PHEV, but a pack from a Golf GTE popped up on eBay for £500 delivered, which was too good to let pass by, at 8.8kwh it works out at £57 per kilowatt hour, a bargain.

Tearing it down wasn't the easiest task, and with 350v - 400v under there, a little nerve wracking. The lid was glued down with some serious adhesive.

The pack consists of 4 modules, each module is 2 strings of 12 cells, with a cooling plate between them for liquid cooling. Each of the 12 cells has a BMS slave board, which reports the voltage of cell cell to the BMS master, along with the temperature of the string. Each module can store just over 2 kwhs.

The modules communicate with the master via a CAN Bus network that's internal to the battery. I've put up a GitHub repo with a DBC file for interpreting the reported frames https://github.com/jamiejones85/DBC-files if you are looking at these VW modules.

The main HV control board is housed with the contactors and fuse, this board is responsible for pre-charing before closing the main contactors, this prevents a massive inrush current to the large capacitors in the inverter. 

The HV controller board also measures the current and reports this over the CAN BUS, it looks like at also measures the high voltage isolation for safety, it also looks to be able to measure the voltage at various locations, leading to the assumption it can report on stuck contactors or blown fuse. I accidentally destroyed my board before being able to get more information on the CAN BUS messages figured out. It would have provided some nice to have information for my project, so I'll keep any eye out for a replacement or attempt to diagnose at some point.  





HV control board



Pre charge resistor

2 main contactors and a precharge relay

One of the 2 main contactors

BMS slave board.

2 of the modules.


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