No really. With all the expense and distraction of complex BMS systems, I found myself wondering.
Are
lithium batteries really so frail that their life would be radically cut if they were simply operated without a BMS, using limited
charging voltage and amperage? Plus, perhaps, a low voltage cut-off (like the
cheap Battery Buddy/Brain) to ensure they weren't pulled down below their lower limit?
Or, is the only really critical purpose of the BMS really to prevent a thermal incident? If a cell fails and shorts out, in theory it could overheat and start a thermal incident. But that could be prevented by a simple thermal
sensor, no need for complicated
electronics to prevent that.
So...is the BMS really just a horribly complex way to get the last 10 or 20% of the battery's useful life out of it? Or really, just to prevent runaways, which could be managed as simple thermal management? (Cutting
power when something overheats, something like the
battery post or top, not just the
cables and connectors.)