I spent extra money making sure I wouldn't overcharge my batteries and kill them. That's the most common cause of battery death among EV owners, after all.

Meanwhile, my YellowTops have self-discharged over the long period I've been ignoring the car. When I finished wiring them up today, everything looked fine; but when I turned on the charger, all the regulator warning lights came on.

A quick check of the most accessible batteries (the four under the hood) showed voltages around 6V each. That's dead, dead, dead: 10V is regular dead. 6V is irreversible damage.

It's odd, because there was no load hooked up to those four batteries. The others had regulators attached, but I haven't checked them yet. The E-Meter registers 72V, which is consistent with 12 batteries at 6V each. (The E-Meter was disconnected, along with the DC/DC converter, at the emergency disconnect switch -- it wasn't a load while these batteries discharged.)

It's possible I can get them back to half their capacity. I'm talking with the EVDL to find out how. That may actually be sufficient: since my workplace installed an electrical outlet for me, I only need 6 miles of range or so.

Otherwise, I'm going to need a new battery pack.

It's so depressing.