Any news on anyone doing 2015 battery upgrades?

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Joined
May 30, 2015
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I see some older threads, but was curious if there are any leads on anyone (in the US) who can do battery upgrades on a 2015 e-Golf.

Will any larger OEM batteries work? Are there any shops doing cell swaps with better cells, etc?
 
1. If your pack is under warranty and has less than 70% NET capacity, then VW owes you a replacement pack.
2. I suspect it is possible to install the 35.8 kWh pack in your car, but do not know if VW or anyone else will do it.

What is your goal?
 
f1geek said:
What is your goal?

When we bought the car new, it suited our daily drive life perfectly. In the last 7 years, things have changed a little, and even having 10-15 extra miles of range for a single trip would be hugely freeing, and not just "it would be nice"...like..."considering changing to another car"-level freeing.

Of course, the other option would be trading up to a newer model year. Ours is the pleb-spec "Limited edition" so it's the super cheap-o model without cruise control, etc. And the newer info-tainment would be awesome (good god, the 2015 one suuuuucks). But there's a big jump in price between what we'd get for ours, and the price for a similar-condition newer used model with the higher range.

And aside from just the possibility of a newer-gen e-Golf battery, I was also wondering if someone respectable and with a business model had figured out how to shoehorn a 40+kw battery into a 2015 with, like, new cell chemistry/shape/etc.

To provide a bit more context of our mindset, I'm 100% well aware that car modifications rarely improve resale, and how even on a guitar, paying someone to do major surgery costs so much it's better to just sell it and get one with the feature you want without the risk of ruining it. I'm not expecting to get a new battery with 200 miles for $3k, or something equally ridiculous. In my head, a 25% range increase for $7k-$10k would be do-able, and still possibly reasonable for consideration...but at anything more than that, I fully understand there surely wouldn't be a market for it, nor a reason for someone to do it.
 
Totally understand how even 15 miles of range can make a huge difference, and the main reason why I returned my leased 2015 to get the larger pack.

"shoehorn" is the right word. If you look at the physical layout of the e-golf pack, you will see that VW crammed the cells into every nook and cranny made available by the ICE Golf architecture, and that isn't a lot of room. The VDA PHEV2 cell format now comes in higher energy density, I believe, but I have no idea where to get them. If you could find, say 50 Ah VDA PHEV2 cells ( would equate to 48 kWh pack), I suspect you would need to reprogram the VW BMS. I am guessing buying the cells, removing and installing the pack, and programming would cost enough that you wouldn't want to pay it.

Best of luck!
 
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