Ah, Jay, I believe you're right. I would agree that one would have a hard time actually finding a LiFePO4 chemistry battery that met the requirements simply because they are typically considered safe enough to not need it, even for aeronautical applications. I was mistakenly thinking that several companies that offer them with balance boards had the management luxuries built in.
I could see those protections needed for some of the other...more volatile cells, such as the lithium polymer which have a tendency to burst in the flames from merely pronouncing it's name wrong, but again, even for highly stressed, high reliability requirement applications this is uncommon restrictions for the LiFEPO4 chemistry. It may or may not be a good idea to ban people from building their own packs for IC teams. On one hand, why not trust someone with a handful of cells when the EV cars are running many magnitudes over that and usually with cell C ratings that are in the upper echelon of the double digits (triple?). On the other, we've all seen how quickly something small, such as a battery deciding that its day has come, can start a fire and Kevin's story may contribute to that argument.
From my experience we tend to balance charge our batteries approximately every week or two, but we've had problems with people undervolting them in the past from cranking the engine too long and quickly killing them and so we try to care for them as much as possible. I thought Pulse built high performance polymer batteries packs or am I mistaken?
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