Battery worth more than the car

[Usaverageguy]

I have a 2013 Leaf with 86k miles and many issues. Pealing paint, bad air bag sensor, clock can not be set to local time, heater does not work, etc. But the battery was replaced in 2018 and still has 10 bars!.

I have been thinking of pulling the battery and using the cells for backup for my solar panels. Is there anyone selling a kit with necessary parts and instructions to do this conversion?

I hate to tear this car down. But it seems the car is worth more as parts than as a vehicle.

 

[Stanton]

Dala has posted videos, etc. on a similar project...so I would check him out (he posts on this forum quite a bit).

 

[cornbinder89]

You'd likely be money ahead to sell the battery exchange and take their old battery for solar storage. EV use is much harder on batteries and you could get good money and a set of cells that still have some life in them. If the pack you exchanged for, h.as one or two bad modules, they can be removed and replaced with other used modules fairly cheap. More effort than just keeping your battery I agree, but it is worth a lot more as a traction battery than as a solar storage battery

 

[Usaverageguy]

Dala has posted videos, etc. on a similar project...so I would check him out (he posts on this forum quite a bit).

I appreciate the information. But I do not have the technical skills to build a set up like his without someone programming the electronics and matching wires for me. I was hoping someone saw a market and designed something more plug and play.

 

[Usaverageguy]

You'd likely be money ahead to sell the battery exchange and take their old battery for solar storage. EV use is much harder on batteries and you could get good money and a set of cells that still have some life in them. If the pack you exchanged for, h.as one or two bad modules, they can be removed and replaced with other used modules fairly cheap. More effort than just keeping your battery I agree, but it is worth a lot more as a traction battery than as a solar storage battery

I don't think you could get a 24KWH battery back up for the current value of the Leaf battery. 8 - 11 KWH units seem to run around $9K and have half the capacity. Leaf battery's are about $4500 on Ebay. And this battery pack is in pretty good shape.

 

[cornbinder89]

What I was proposing was to sell yours "exchange" to someone who needed one for a car. You'd still get another pack to use as back-up storage, and the money could go for your "system". Power storage is a lot less demanding that EV use. Cars easily hit the 20 Kw load (briefly) when driving, a house wouldn't see the load much over 7 kw (peak) so can function quite well with the degraded pack.
If the exchange pack has one really bad module, you could replace that one, they are not expensive.
So you end up with a pack and some cash.
Green tec is selling used pack like yours for $6k exchange, no reason you can't ask for similar.