How easy would be a battery upgrade in the future?

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DrRocket

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 21, 2010
Messages
96
If battery technology improves to the point where the 100 mile Nissan battery could be replaced with a similar sized/weight 200 or 300 mile battery, how easily would the car upgrade be?

It looks like dropping the battery pack would be easy but what about the software and wires? Someone has already mentioned that the 6.6 charger upgrade wouldn't work because the wiring is too light in the car.
 
DrRocket said:
If battery technology improves to the point where the 100 mile Nissan battery could be replaced with a similar sized/weight 200 or 300 mile battery, how easily would the car upgrade be?

It looks like dropping the battery pack would be easy but what about the software and wires? Someone has already mentioned that the 6.6 charger upgrade wouldn't work because the wiring is too light in the car.
I think it would be easy to swap battery because it's located at the bottom and is designed to be easily replaced in case of warranty work anyway.

There's a company called Better Place that is trail blazing a battery swap use model called "Drive-Switch-Go" where instead of recharging, you simply drive into a swapping station and a robot will take out the old battery and put in a freshly charged battery within 3 minutes and you simply drive a way. Check out their website, http://www.betterplace.com. Of course you can also charge the battery at home or at public charging stations, too, if you want. The swapping station is just another option depending on whether you need the instant exchange or not.

That use model also will eliminate the need to own your battery. You'll instead be working out a leasing deal with a battery company or car company and basically only buy the car but lease the right to a swappable battery model through a contract. This allows several things to happen:

1. It lowers the cost of electric car purchase because you'll only be paying for the car and not the battery. It's just like buying an ice car with an empty tank of gas and you buy the gas yourself. When this happens, the price of EVs will be very competitive with ICE cars.

2. It frees you from being stuck with older battery technology. As battery technology matures and gets cheaper and more capacity in the same space (better energy density), you'll simply inherit the new technologies automatically by virtue of swapping to newer batteries that have the newer technologies.

3. It spreads out the cost of energy consumption, with the battery cost being part of the total energy cost, so that you don't have to pay for the battery cost up front and only pay for electricity cost afterward. This way, when battery technology enables it to be more cheaply built in the future, you can enjoy the new cost savings and not get stuck with the older but more expensive technology.

Maybe I'm going out of scope of your question here. But I think it's not too far out of scope. So the Leaf is not Drive-Switch-Go yet. But let's say you buy a Leaf today, and in 8 years or 100K miles you need a new battery. I'm sure Nissan can easily take your old battery out and simply put in a newer, possibly less expensive, longer range, longer life battery very easily. Not Drive-Switch-Go easy, but not any harder than if they had to swap your battery today for another one at the dealership due to a warranty issue. Not any different than taking your car in to have new tires put on when the old tires are worn out.

As for the issue with the smaller wiring to the 3.3kW charger limiting an easy swappable upgrade to the 6.6kW charger, that's an entirely separate issue because this is the wiring to the charger and not the wiring to the battery. If the current battery pack can accept CHAdeMO type current, that means the wiring to the battery is already beefy enough for fast charging. If the capacity of the battery were to be doubled in the future, the speed of charge will not have changed although the length of charge will also be doubled. Unless the speed of charge can be doubled to keep the length of charge the same. But that's still a charger capacity issue and not a battery capacity issue.
 
DrRocket said:
If battery technology improves to the point where the 100 mile Nissan battery could be replaced with a similar sized/weight 200 or 300 mile battery, how easily would the car upgrade be?

It looks like dropping the battery pack would be easy but what about the software and wires? Someone has already mentioned that the 6.6 charger upgrade wouldn't work because the wiring is too light in the car.
In theory, depending on how the software is designed, an upgraded pack would be a drop-in replacement. No wire changes, no software changes (as long as the number of cells don't change).

Once warranties start expiring, I expect to see us start opening the battery pack up to see what it's capable of. By then Nissan will probably have other electric vehicles with better cells installed that we would be able to buy for our vehicles. There will probably be a few 3rd party companies by then too making drop-in compatible replacements.

Could be a lot of fun!
 
DarkStar said:
In theory, depending on how the software is designed, an upgraded pack would be a drop-in replacement. No wire changes, no software changes (as long as the number of cells don't change).

In theory, yes, but what is the likelihood that Nissan will do this? There really isn't any significant profit for Nissan to design backward compatibility into the next version of the battery pack. Their focus will be on optimizing that new pack/BMS for the next Gen Leaf (and other models) that it will installed in.

I don't doubt that some of the clever people on this forum could hack the BMS to accommodate the new battery, and upgrade the harness to accommodate a 6.6kw charger. But for us poor slobs without an EE degree, the chances of a drop-in replacement are pretty poor.
 
I really hope Nissan takes care of the early adapters by offering longer range battery options for legacy cars. If they are smart they will as we will serve as their most loyal core of customers... there is a rule called the 7-11 rule. One happy customer brings 7 new customers.... one upset customer chases away 11 potential customers.

The trade press reviews on this car is positive with the exception of the range. Nissan could accelerate sales, IMHO, if they announced future expanded battery options, even without a date. I worry for nissan once the "early" demand has been met and they attempt to expand their customer base.
 
DrRocket said:
As for the issue with the smaller wiring to the 3.3kW charger limiting an easy swappable upgrade to the 6.6kW charger, that's an entirely separate issue because this is the wiring to the charger and not the wiring to the battery. If the current battery pack can accept CHAdeMO type current, that means the wiring to the battery is already beefy enough for fast charging. If the capacity of the battery were to be doubled in the future, the speed of charge will not have changed although the length of charge will also be doubled. Unless the speed of charge can be doubled to keep the length of charge the same. But that's still a charger capacity issue and not a battery capacity issue.


The charging ports for ChaDeMo L3 (400-ish volts Direct Current) and L1/L2 (120/240 volt Alternating Current) use separate wiring that you can see under the hood of your car.

Any larger battery pack will be with 6.6kW chargers starting with the 2013 models. For 2011 and 2012 models, if the battery pack is coming out, virtually all the wiring for the charger is exposed. Therefore, swapping the wires that go from the L2 port at the front to the charger just behind the right rear seat, and then back to the battery would be quite easy.

Believe me, SOMEBODY will put together a kit to upgrade the chargers on the 2011 and 2012 if Nissan doesn't !! I predict you'll have chargers faster than 6.6kW. Heck, I checked out an instant on hot water heater for my house that draws 240v/110 amps. L2 can is spec'd up to 80 amps, I believe (19.2kW), so I can see something close to 19kW chargers being eventually installed.

That will be 5 - 6 times faster than our 3.3kW. So, my thoughts are that a 5 - 6 times increase in battery capacity will still fit in the overnight charging scenario we currently have... plus, the car's range will be 5 - 6 times further. We just need the battery technology !!!
 
Lots of moving parts in that question. Here is the irony.

A cost effective upgrade requires the economies of scale that mean EV demand is a huge success. With a large variety of advanced electric vehicles and batteries on the road there will not be alot of business demand or competitive economics in upgrading "obsolete" cars.

However!

The niche garage tech tinkering will be fantastic! Just think about all the cool off the shelf parts that will be available. This is where the custom upgrade action will be happening... but these kind of things are not done for money and rarely make economic sense. But boy they are fun!

The real question is... would your upgrade be for business or pleasure???
 
TonyWilliams said:
< cut >

Believe me, SOMEBODY will put together a kit to upgrade the chargers on the 2011 and 2012 if Nissan doesn't !! I predict you'll have chargers faster than 6.6kW. Heck, I checked out an instant on hot water heater for my house that draws 240v/110 amps. L2 can is spec'd up to 80 amps, I believe (19.2kW), so I can see something close to 19kW chargers being eventually installed.

That will be 5 - 6 times faster than our 3.3kW. So, my thoughts are that a 5 - 6 times increase in battery capacity will still fit in the overnight charging scenario we currently have... plus, the car's range will be 5 - 6 times further. We just need the battery technology !!!

I recently emailed the Kolibri battery (DBM Energy) guys about a Nissan Leaf replacement but they didn't reply back to me. Perhaps more of us in MNL need to prod them? email to: [email protected]
 
charlie1300 said:
In theory, yes, but what is the likelihood that Nissan will do this? There really isn't any significant profit for Nissan to design backward compatibility into the next version of the battery pack. Their focus will be on optimizing that new pack/BMS for the next Gen Leaf (and other models) that it will installed in.

Of course Nissan can make $ from upgrade retrofit the older LEAF. The way I see it, an upgrade path would be additional revenue stream for Nissan, and for their dealers too since there's no "repairs and maintenance" left they can make money from like the old ICE cars. You're not going to throw any a perfectly good body and drivetrain after 6-8 yrs. I would spend $15k for a 200-miles bat -same as if someone would buy a Nissan ecconobox for that amount -they have a fully captured consumer base for battery upgrade right now! This is money in the bank for Nissan with caveat that bat. tech continue to improve or price lower.
 
Dropping out and lifting in a replacement battery pack is a fairly quick and easy job.

Assuming the new battery pack has the same battery-cell chemistry (same voltage curves), and same number series-cells (same pack voltage), but just larger cell capacity, it is possible that the LEAF would run fine.

However, since the "cell" capacity would be off, some of the car's estimates (like range, charging time estimates, etc.) would not be correct.

However, that is most likely an "easy" firmware update.
 
Having swap-in battery packs would require cars programmed to "learn"
(or adjust to) the new pack's capacity, I suspect.

Getting an "older" battery on the day when you NEED the longer range
of a "good" battery ... will not fly well.

Battery swapping is generally expensive, and usually requires
a LOT of "spare" batteries in the system to maintain the 3 or 4 minute
swap over variable rush-hour customer loads.
 
There will be plenty of EV tweaker shops that will happily upgrade your Leaf to larger capacity batteries, fuel cell, Mr. Fusion, or whatever else is available. I predict the VCM will be hacked no more than 2 day after the warrantees start to expire (if not before) and an open source alliance will be full swing. Maybe, just maybe, we'll finally be free of the CarWings nag screen, too. :D
 
OK, I have two questions :

There seems to be an assumption that a new battery pack//BMS/6.6kw charger is scheduled for MY2013. Can some one cite me an official Nissan announcement on that?

As far as backward compatibility of an upgraded battery pack, can anyone cite a technological advance on a new model car that was designed specifically to be retro-fitted on older models? This just isn't the paradigm in the auto industry. You want the new features, you trade-in for the new model. Remember that Nissan has repeatedly said that the Leaf is being designed and marketed as a mass market model, not a niche product. I think any idea that assumes that Nissan is planning to treat the Leaf significantly differently from any other Nissan model in the long run isn't in line with what Nissan has explicitly stated as their plan.
Nissan has made an investment in the Leaf because they are gambling that EVs have a profitable future, and they can be the long term market leader, much like Toyota is with hybrids. Despite our pride in being early adopters, in the long run we don't matter. The Leaf will succeed or fail based on how it is received in the mass market.
Whenever the better battery pack/BMS/Charger is available, Nissan will welcome the early adopters to trade-in and buy the new model.
 
charlie1300 said:
OK, I have two questions :

There seems to be an assumption that a new battery pack//BMS/6.6kw charger is scheduled for MY2013. Can some one cite me an official Nissan announcement on that?
Nissan never said anything about a new battery pack for MY2013. They only said that a 6.6kw charger will come with MY2013.

charlie1300 said:
As far as backward compatibility of an upgraded battery pack, can anyone cite a technological advance on a new model car that was designed specifically to be retro-fitted on older models? This just isn't the paradigm in the auto industry. You want the new features, you trade-in for the new model.
Yeah, but the EV is already a new paradigm shift for the auto industry, so you can't compare the paradigm that comes with ICE cars to the new paradigm that comes with EVs in the first place.

If you really want to do apple to apple comparison, you need to treat the battery as part of the fuel source and therefore a replaceable commodity. So let's say if somebody comes out with a new gas type that has twice the energy density as the current gas type but is compatible and can be burned the same way in the same engine, you simply swap the old gas out with the new gas and make some minor adjustment to the fuel injection to inject less gas each time. Or the introduction of 15% ethanol into the gas mix is another good example of introducing new technology to save money.

The battery is not any different in this scenario. You simply swap for a newer fuel source that feed into the same motor. You're not replacing the motor just like you're not replacing the ICE. You're only replacing the fuel source.

charlie1300 said:
Whenever the better battery pack/BMS/Charger is available, Nissan will welcome the early adopters to trade-in and buy the new model.
This really depends on how the industry will treat the use model for battery in future EVs. If the use model continues to be one where the battery is an integral part of the car and is not easily swappable as in the Drive-Switch-Go model, then it may be true that they will not offer a swap option but instead offer an upgrade path to a newer model.

But the question by the OP for this thread is not whether Nissan will offer it or not. The question by the OP is "How easy wold a battery upgrade be in the future?". So the answer is even if Nissan doesn't offer a battery only upgrade, third parties will if there's profit to be made in doing so. And if there's profit to be made in doing that will entice third parties will do it, why would Nissan be dumb enough not to do it? And who needs Nissan anyway if you can go to a third party to get it done faster and cheaper?

By the way, the Renault-Nissan alliance is working with Better Place on what they call the Quick Drop solution (Better Place's Drive-Switch-Go) to build Quickdrop charging stations which will be opened in Israel and Denmark in 2011. See this link for more details. So it's very likely that Nissan as a company will embrace a battery swapping use model in their future cars.
 
Charlie1300 is right. It is very unlikely that Nissan will offer or even condone Leaf battery or charger upgrades. However, I think it is very likely that there will be a healthy market for used Leafs and third-party mods. Leaf will always be the first high volume EV and so far it looks like Nissan did a great job. So these will be lovingly upgraded and modded for many years to come... but not by Nissan.
 
I'd hope that improved battery would retain the same form factor as the current battery modules, which are already swappable. I can't see how higher capacity "cells" would cause much of a problem.
 
TickTock said:
Charlie1300 is right. It is very unlikely that Nissan will offer or even condone Leaf battery or charger upgrades.
No, I disagree with this view. I don't wont to be overly optimistic, but you are comparing the Leaf to consumer electronics, which is not fair. Yes, it's all-electric, but it's still a car. Automotive applications have much higher tooling costs and longer planning horizons than consumer electronics. It makes economic sense for Nissan to plan ahead and keep things if not compatible, then at least very similar. This will help them amortize their investment better.

Nissan has been very tight-lipped, but it's a competitive industry and they have lot to lose. However, I believe that things will not change as rapidly as some people on this forum predict, and even if there are changes, it should be possible for a 3rd party to make the necessary modifications to make things work. The big question mark for me is software, but hopefully it will be possible to hack it. It's happened before with other cars and their onboard computers.
 
Since there have been a couple of mentions of the battery-swapping approach recently, specifically that of Better Place, I thought I would also point at this quote from the NY Times that I read a while back: "The economics are challenging. Each station costs “a couple of million Euros” — about $3 million — to build, Mr. Hansen said." Another report, by the "British consultancy Trend Tracker", estimates that "that equipment required for each battery swap station is likely to cost around $1 million."

There is also a contention that "Better Place's scheme requires an uneconomically high inventory of batteries".

Further reading can be had by Google'ing for "renault battery swap millions".
 
aqn said:
Since there have been a couple of mentions of the battery-swapping approach recently, specifically that of Better Place, I thought I would also point at this quote from the NY Times that I read a while back: "The economics are challenging. Each station costs “a couple of million Euros” — about $3 million — to build, Mr. Hansen said." Another report, by the "British consultancy Trend Tracker", estimates that "that equipment required for each battery swap station is likely to cost around $1 million."

There is also a contention that "Better Place's scheme requires an uneconomically high inventory of batteries".

Further reading can be had by Google'ing for "renault battery swap millions".

IMHO, I don't see Better Places biz plan working. Making the battery subsystem field upgrade-able will be very difficult. Plus, the cars will be more expensive to build... look at what Apple had to do with their Macbook pro/airs. The forklift industry continues to struggle with battery swaps in factories for continuous operations... very challenging and expensive.
 
surfingslovak said:
TickTock said:
Charlie1300 is right. It is very unlikely that Nissan will offer or even condone Leaf battery or charger upgrades.
No, I disagree with this view. I don't wont to be overly optimistic, but you are comparing the Leaf to consumer electronics, which is not fair. Yes, it's all-electric, but it's still a car. Automotive applications have much higher tooling costs and longer planning horizons than consumer electronics. It makes economic sense for Nissan to plan ahead and keep things if not compatible, then at least very similar. This will help them amortize their investment better.

Nissan has been very tight-lipped, but it's a competitive industry and they have lot to lose. However, I believe that things will not change as rapidly as some people on this forum predict, and even if there are changes, it should be possible for a 3rd party to make the necessary modifications to make things work. The big question mark for me is software, but hopefully it will be possible to hack it. It's happened before with other cars and their onboard computers.

I hope Nissan takes the mindset of being like Apple and other tech leaders. Tesla is taking the Apple approach of fanatical support and end user loyalty. This is what made Sun, SGI, and Apple so successful in Silicon Valley. The first core owners prime the pump.
 
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