2018+ ZE1 Battery Extender

[arthur8]

Hello friends,

I live on Brazil and here we have very few EV options, the only solid choose available here is 2018+ (ZE1) 40kwh nissan leaf. They can be found cheap even with a good battery condition.

Since i have solar offgrid system in my home it makes total sense to dump the extra power into the nissan leaf. The issue is that the leaf have a low range (even with a healthy 40kwh battery) for my needs. And i don't have other options to buy on my country. I know leaf's can be hacked for a increased range.

I saw this video on YT that shows that you can upgrade the battery bank very easily:



Since i do high voltage for a living and i know how to do this safely.

The thing is: He is doing this mod on a Gen1 leaf and i want to do it on a newer 2018+ ZE1 leaf.

Searching about increasing the range for the 2018+ ZE leafs i found this. They say they can increase the range for 2018+ ZE1 leafs: products | MUXSAN

"Muxsan's main product is the luggage space-mounted extender battery for the Nissan Leaf. We can install battery extenders in any Nissan Leaf, including the models post-refresh (2018+, a.k.a. ZE1)."

The question is: How exactly this muxsan's mod works? It's impossible to import this extender kit to my country because of the price and customs taxes, so i would like to know how exactly this mod works and how i can do it myself.

It's just plug the additional battery before the contactors like seen on the video and leaf range will be increased? Even with a newer 2018 ZE1 leaf? Anyone has done this mod on a newer leaf?

Thank you.

 

[Bombastinator2]

I’ve thought about off grid being very useful with a leaf. One of their oddities is they have a particularly old system called chadmo that I think can make the leaf usable as what is effectively a powerwall. It requires a fairly expensive adaptor though. Might be useful for you might not. It’s possible it ties into that somehow.

 

[arthur8]

This is something possible for sure. We just need to know better how to manage the Leaf's battery pack. In my case i want to increase the default 40kWh battery with about 20kWh additional batteries tied into the main car DC BUS (about ~400v DC).

Sadly, looks like no one tried this battery upgrade yet on 2018+ Leaf's. But it's something i want to try in the future when i buy one of those cars.

I plan to dismantle the battery pack and tie the DC BUS to additional batteries, the thing is: If i upgrade my battery storage will be my range be extended too? Or its needed some hack into the car computers?

 

[TronJockey]

This is something possible for sure. We just need to know better how to manage the Leaf's battery pack. In my case i want to increase the default 40kWh battery with about 20kWh additional batteries tied into the main car DC BUS (about ~400v DC).

Sadly, looks like no one tried this battery upgrade yet on 2018+ Leaf's. But it's something i want to try in the future when i buy one of those cars.

I plan to dismantle the battery pack and tie the DC BUS to additional batteries, the thing is: If i upgrade my battery storage will be my range be extended too? Or its needed some hack into the car computers?

Interesting idea. However, adding additional batteries in a manner that allows for them to come under the control of the existing BMS hardware and software would be most difficult. You'd likely have to treat the additional battery pack as a completely separate entity especially when charging and calculating GOM and SOC. For this reason the additional pack would likely need its own BMS. I don't know if attaching an external 400Vdc pack to the existing 400Vdc rails (inside the battery case) will allow the Leaf's own GOM and SOC calculation software to function properly. I can see how tying into the existing battery pack and use the existing BMS could be done though. I believe the 40kWh battery pack has a 96S-2P cell arrangement employing 56.3Ah cells arranged in 24 Double Modules (192 total cells). If so you could get away with using the existing BMS by attaching a 3rd cell in parallel with each of the existing two parallel cells in each module (I've attached a drawing of this showing the revision in RED). To do this would require using 96 identical 56.3Ah cells. This would be expensive and require a lot of work to essentially replicate a 62kWh battery pack.

But anyway, (if the additional battery pack is treated like a completely separate entity) I believe an additional 400Vdc battery could be added by providing a second path to where the 400Vdc power is fed into the 3-phase inverter under the hood. This could be done with a high-power Double Pole Double Throw (DPDT) electrical contactor in front of the inverter. You'd have to engage the additional battery pack manually after the 40kWh pack is exhausted but it should provide essentially the same extra range.

Either method would be an interesting project. If you endeavor to try this, I hope you'll keep us up to date.

 

[cornbinder89]

And god help you if you are rear-ended by a truck!