Nissan Leaf/Renault battery replacement

100kwh-hunter

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Good evening all...
Nice and warm in front of the fire place....cold windy raining outside, dogs are walked, i love to have the insulation of my house done.....

Before i am going to buy a (cheap) electric car and tackle all the regulations in my country, i would like to ask:
Is there someone ableand willing or can help mein the right directionon the following:
The worse the battery pack gets on a ev the cheaper they are.
Or if the radius is small they are cheap also.
Renault sells them even without battery pack.

Can someone guide/tell me orpoint me in the direction of upgrading/swap or expand the total capacity of the battery pack with cells of my own choose.

The wish is simple, i buy a cheap ev with no battery or bad battery (Renault or a Nissan) strip it completely make it hard again and with new big battery pack, like a bit what Dala did.

Thanks in advance best Igor
 
Igor,
a bit into this, as I sell 24/30/40/62kWh leaf batteries to companies and private buyers for swaps
and working with Daniel, for the can-bridge & software support.
easiest/cheapest is finding a scrap battery on a salvage yard yourself, instead of building one.
performing a Nissan Gen2-Gen3 LEAF upgrade shouldn't be a problem

Lot's of examples to have a working, well performing car this route.

Zoe is bit more difficult, due to the software hack, mostly performed by bribed Renault mechanics,
officially not supported by Renault.
There's little to no info available about the software.
Finding batteries, is more difficult too. since so many are on lease with Renault,
it makes it very easy to find a repairable ZOE without a battery, so yes tempting...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLA67uDID8MwZN4JdVzd0FA
This guy makes excellent battery upgrade packs for LEAf'sfrom 18650 cells,
one issue here is the thermal management....

best Carel
 
Carel,
Clever thinking, it did not think about this option.
Thanks.
Probably i will buy a old leaf and rattle your chain when i am ready for swapping/upgrading the cells.

Thanks in advance, Best
 
The issue with custom battery builds, 18650s, LG cells, etc. Is that the original BMS is not able to handle these chemistries. The charging curves/temperature limits, internal resistance measurments, capacity algoritms etc. all will be broken if you install some other chemistry than the original LMO.

I quickly looked at that youtube channel Carel, and they drive with --- km remaining for most of the trip. This is very bad, I have also tried this and would never recommend a custom build.https://github.com/dalathegreat/Nissan-Leaf-Bruteforce-Upgrade/
 
My intention was to use lifepo4 cells 3c.
As you also pointing out the bms is programmed for lmo, in my understanding it is very similar to lifepo4?
To be honest i must dive into that chemistry deeper, probably i am very wrong?

I still must look on both the links you provided.
Thanks for the thoughts, Best Igor
 
100kwh-hunter said:
My intention was to use lifepo4 cells 3c.
As you also pointing out the bms is programmed for lmo, in my understanding it is very similar to lifepo4?
To be honest i must dive into that chemistry deeper, probably i am very wrong?

I still must look on both the links you provided.
Thanks for the thoughts, Best Igor

Umm, no offense but if you can't say the difference between LMO and LiFePo4 you shouldn't be building a custom battery.

I'm gonna explain why this is a baaad idea

LMO (2011-2013) ZE0 Nissan Leaf, 3.7V nominal, 4.08V fully charged, 3.50V empty, flat discharge curve that is leaning towards high voltage

LiFePo4 cells, 3.2V nominal, fully charged 3.65V, empty = 2.5V

Arrange 96 in series just like the OEM BMS needs, and you get a nice campfire going.
 
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