Evo Battery Graveyard

[jcommstudios]

Had one of the first EVO 1 Rugged bundles purchased in 2018. Love the drone but the lack of being able to monitor the batteries is ridiculous. I have other DJI and Yuneec drones that you can discharge the batteries to storage level that still have no problems. All of these have cell variance problems. I just picked up 2 more for a total of 3 that still function. I've spent $700 on batteries alone. Not bitching just saying Autel could do better than this.

 

[RCAdik]

Had one of the first EVO 1 Rugged bundles purchased in 2018. Love the drone but the lack of being able to monitor the batteries is ridiculous. I have other DJI and Yuneec drones that you can discharge the batteries to storage level that still have no problems. All of these have cell variance problems. I just picked up 2 more for a total of 3 that still function. I've spent $700 on batteries alone. Not bitching just saying Autel could do better than this.

Curious how many cycles your bad batteries have? What do you consider advantageous in the DJI & Yuneec drones that Autel could do different?

 

[jcommstudios]

Curious how many cycles your bad batteries have? What do you consider advantageous in the DJI & Yuneec drones that Autel could do different?

@RCAdik a couple of them had as few as 19 cycles. If Autel would make a charger that would take the EVO's batteries down to storage level they would not end up unbalanced and cause battery failures. The discharge setting in the Explorer app is useless.
I have batteries for both other drones P4 and H480 that are fully functional at 3 years old because they were discharged and stored properly.

 

[ducatstrada]

Are the P4 and H480 batteries LIPO? Just curious, I don't know.

 

[jcommstudios]

Are the P4 and H480 batteries LIPO? Just curious, I don't know.

@ducatstrada Yes they are all Lithium-Ion polymer aka LIPO

 

[RCAdik]

@RCAdik a couple of them had as few as 19 cycles. If Autel would make a charger that would take the EVO's batteries down to storage level they would not end up unbalanced and cause battery failures. The discharge setting in the Explorer app is useless.
I have batteries for both other drones P4 and H480 that are fully functional at 3 years old because they were discharged and stored properly.

@jcommstudios
Like you, I also have a P4 purchased in 2016 and the batteries are still doing well. I do make a effort to get it out every few months and charge the batteries, (3) and fly it 18 to 20 minutes each. I was unaware that DJI made a charger that discharges or charges to storage voltage. I'll need to do a search.
My EVO 1's batteries, (3) have over 50 cycles each and still provide close to original flight time. It does get used fairly frequently. The EVO batteries can be discharged using a modified Mavic/Platinum car charger lead, but as you say Autel dropped the ball.

 

[tuxontodd]

I had 3 out of 4 batteries go bad within 15 months. Only had 35 cycles on them. I will never by from Autel again. Remember when they were going to let you self program those A/B buttons at the bottom of the RC? Props in the shot. Tracking modes suck. Few to none 3rd party options. And good luck finding batteries in the future.

 

[Daniel Tao]

The battery discharge function is not in the charger, also DJI's charger does not have a discharge function. The automatic discharge is controlled by the chips in the smart battery, and autel evo batteries discharge function works normally. The cause of damage to the Autel EVO battery is not due to long-term keeping high voltage, but poor quality control of the battery, they are using the LG battery cells. In addition, Autel added an optimized current over-discharge problem in the final battery firmware, but it was too late, because when the firmware update was received, many people’s batteries had begun to slowly deteriorate and were irreparable.

 

[Buster McCray]

The battery discharge function is not in the charger, also DJI's charger does not have a discharge function. The automatic discharge is controlled by the chips in the smart battery, and autel evo batteries discharge function works normally. The cause of damage to the Autel EVO battery is not due to long-term keeping high voltage, but poor quality control of the battery, they are using the LG battery cells. In addition, Autel added an optimized current over-discharge problem in the final battery firmware, but it was too late, because when the firmware update was received, many people’s batteries had begun to slowly deteriorate and were irreparable.

I started out with 5 batteries and I’m down to 2. The other 3 all showed damaged battery on my screen and this happened in about a week. 16 cycles on all of my batteries. Never been below 25% on any of my batteries. I been really careful to keep up with recharging them as the manual says to. They were all out of warranty by about 4 months.