Nissan Leaf battery upgrade

unkel wrote: »

Very informative, thanks for sharing!

For a bit over €2k this job sure makes sense if it means you do not have to upgrade to a more expensive / newer EV. I estimate that the car after the job would be worth about €2k more, presuming there are no insurance issues. Not often that you would get all your investment back from an upgrade.

@pszemo My Leaf SOH is 86% so i would not consider replacing the pack, but i would consider an 'extender battery pack' in the boot as done by some companies. Would you offer that?

The OP has not been on here for a year so I don't know.

There is another group offering battery upgrades for leaf.

Details and pricing here

https://rangetherapy.org/

https://www.irishevowners.ie/guest-post-leaf-battery-upgrade-quadruple-the-range-part1/

https://mobile.twitter.com/rangetherapy1

Range Therapy

We extend the range of your EV, enhancing both its usefulness and longevity, reducing your carbon footprint.

And then we dance ....

> Range Trailer

-- we design and build portable power units on our portable power platform [PPP]

> Circular Economy

-- we reuse Irish owned batteries and battery technology in Irish EVs and as solar project "powerwalls"

Barry McMahon at Muxsan

Get To

Know Us

 Barry McMahon and Eamon Stack, both experienced engineers, have been driving EVs for 14 years. They have upgraded battery packs on multiple Vectrix motorbikes for over 8 years. They now upgrade electric cars!

Range Therapy Mission  

We respond to the Climate Change crisis by extending the range of Electric Vehicles to enhance both their usefulness and their longevity in order to reduce their carbon footprint.

We leverage this tangible action to generate a vital conversation concerning EV Range, a key blocker to EV adoption and use.

The transition to sustainable transport is one of the three primary requirements to meet our CO2 targets and halt Climate Change.

Social Enterprise

Eamon and Barry are offering this service in Ireland as a Social Enterprise called “Range Therapy”. Range Therapy’s primary object is to significantly reduce the carbon emissions of Irish transport. They will also run educational workshops and plan a conference on sustainable transport and energy for the regular citizen.

Climate Action Plan 2019

“… switching to Electric Vehicles (EVs) is set to more than payback the higher upfront costs over their lifetime through fuel savings, and thus delivers emission reductions at a negative cost.” [Page 10]

Range Therapy: What We Do

First Service: New life for your Leaf

Eamon and Barry both drive Gen 1 Leafs. They have found a partner in The Netherlands, Muxsan, with a battery extension kit to double the car’s range. They are certified to install Muxsan kits in Ireland for all Nissan Leaf cars and eNV200 vans.

Services for Leaf

• NEW in October [delayed from Aug] – 11kw, 22kw and 33kw extensions giving extra range +75km, +140km and +210km,
• Cost: €4500, €7900, €10,000 [including installation, suspension upgrade and warranty];
• Active cooling for extension pack [option needed with the fast CCS charging];
• Main Battery Pack swap e.g. 40kw for 24kw or 30kw for 24kw [your have to source the pack]

Charging Boost

• CCS charger for Leaf [upto 175kw]
• Three-phase charger [22kw]

Coming Soon – Range Therapy Products

• Range extending portable power products, designed and manufactured in Kildare, using second life and new batteries and components. Build on Range Therapy PPP [portable power platform] we will offer a range of products for wide range of uses.

Coming Soon – Battery Extension for:

• Renault Zoe, Kango ZE
• Peugeot iON, Partner Electric
• Mitsubishi iMiev and Outlander
• Citroen C-Zero

Range Trailer:

What we are doing

We have been cofunded by Local Enterprise Office in Kildare to develop this amazing project.

Building on our “portable power platform” and creating a range of products from use in four key areas: 

• Emergency Range Trailer
• Green Toursim portable power
• EV range extender
• Event portable silent power

There is an argument in an environmental context that its better for the environment to upgrade the older Leaf.

Rather then build a new EV.

Secondly - if you've got an old Leaf that's usable except for needing more range.

Then this may work out more cost effective then a newer car.

That would be up to Range Therapy to prove it's ok with insurance, rather than someone trying to disprove it in theory. It would be worth their while getting it in writing from the insurance companies that this type of mod is ok by them and sticking it on the website. Not good enough just to take their word for it.

Well a manufacturer fitting a replacement part and a third party fitting non-standard parts to a car aren't the same, especially extender batteries in the boot requiring upgraded suspension components. Don't get me wrong, I'd love if it were the case that this was exempt from notifying your insurance but written confirmation from the people doing it would put minds at rest.

There is a mention of engineers report in the YouTube video on their website around the 16 minute mark. So I think you get or need an engineers report to say car is safe and ok.

In terms of battery kW vs kWh they replied to an email I sent saying they wanted to make website easy to use and understand and use, and even Nissan uses wrong/simpler values on brochures. Anyway they said it will be changed/fixed.

They do ordinary battery swaps too, same size for same size but new cells, or bigger size in same housing.

If you have a 2015 L24 and it's worth around 8k, have an upgrade to add a 33kw battery at a cost of €10k then you've got a great little car that has a range of around 340kmish. If it's written off a few months later how would the insurance company know what to pay out? There's no way they'd be paying close to 18k surely?

The sums don't add up for sure. Only makes sense if you do it for non-financial reasons, like being emotionally attached to the car or an environmental urge to keep your car on the road as long as possible

That's exactly what I'm using my Fluence Z.E. for (basically a very first gen Leaf underneath)

It can do about 80km local range in optimal conditions, so it's a perfect Dublin city car. We do ultra low miles in it. Now and then on a blue sky day when my home power wall battery is full already and I'm exporting to the grid (for no reward), I plug it in, so it has been charging pretty much 100% on the sun since we got it

It makes more sense (not only from a financial but also from an environmental point of view) if you have a degraded Leaf to just sell it on to someone like me who will use it as is. It's a waste to spend money on a battery upgrade, this money will go mostly to profit and labour costs. Only a tiny bit of your money is actually getting you the battery (€100 per kWh, so from the above figures 25% of the costs goes into your battery, 75% goes into labour, profit and other materials)

I am assuming that these battery renewales/upgrades require the firmware in the car to be udated also? Or at the very least, the parameters adjusted so the ECU can manage the different battery appropriately? How do you manage this end of it op?

I'd be wondering would Nissan dealers, or indeed any OEM agent, simply refuse to have anything to do with third party modifications and deny services which would facilitate such modifications?

I am sure a manufactuer would not want people tinkering with vehicles in case something like a fire or electricution resulted, causing bad publicity, liability issues, impacting sales of new EVs by extending the life of older cars. There are many reasons why an OEM would want to prevent such modifications, and they could enforce it by engineering the vehicles such that modifying is either ourtrightly impossible, or so that it would be so impractical and specialised that it would not be worthwhile.

Would OEM be able to send a brick command to a modified car remotely via the GSM network to disable it if the ecu reported an interference event by unauthorised persons?

It depends on each use case. Add a battery to solar and you’re saving otherwise wasted electricity when the house is empty and running a low base load.

even without solar, you can charge the battery at cheap night rate electricity and use in the day. And in the event of a power cut, you still have power as long as your system is isolated from the grid in such an event.

Fair enough, it works for you because you have the interest and knowldege. But it is fringe stuff. It is not going to be viable for the average joe who has neither the intersts or knowledge and only cares about convenience and the bottom line being as cheap as possible.