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Comment by pwr-electronics | Hacker News Reader

From a user perspective, it protects you from the battery (by protecting the battery), increases the performance and longevity, and informs you about the state of charge. It connects to the battery at the cell terminals and to temperature sensors. A charger is a separate thing from a BMS.

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So can it detect if I replace the cells myself?

If you replace with the cells with the same type, it probably won't notice the difference.

I have no idea about commercial e-bike BMS specifically. But in general, some BMS can, while others won't but maybe should because replacing cells can reduce the safety of the product. It depends on a combination of the cells, BMS, charger, and load. You shouldn't mix old and new cells in the same pack.

Of course, but as an educated consumer who likes to repair their own things I would get all matched high quality cells and replace all at once. If their battery packs don't detect or prevent this somehow then it wouldn't really matter to me.

There's an awful lot of DRM talk in this thread so that was my concern. The cells theoretically are the only parts that need to be replaced sans physical damage

I don't know about DRM. Be careful when joining batteries in parallel. You might not get full performance without the factory procedure for mating the battery and BMS together. Datasheets aren't enough to fully match cells, so the reliability and safety might be less.

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