Extending range of 24kWh Leaf with LeafBox

[Piro]

Thomas,

I just found your post about the Nissan Leaf range extender. We have a 2011 Leaf with only nine lights on the battery, so I think a range extender would help us a lot. Do you have any of the beta tester modules left? I would like to help you out by testing one in our situation, where the battery is not in the best of health to start with. Do you think there would be any improvement?

All the best for you and your project.

Alan

Alan - I have already 2 testers with 2011 Leafs with battery worn - I will soon have results (actual reports are promising, I did special setup for 2011-2012 Leafs, (see LeafBox Manual: http://vtechtuning.eu/leafbox.html?file ... manual.pdf) but after 2 weeks I do not have enough results to have clear average gain. I need 1-2 weeks more.

[Piro]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Py6jNEyEU

172,8 km, or 107,3 miles till turtle with 24kwh 2013 Leaf.
- winter tires, drive in hills (I have no flat terrain ) heat on but minimal possible, seat heating on (LO), ECO mode,
average speed of 62 km/h, I tried to drive not faster than 75, and not slower than 55 km/h
rural area, small cities and villages, maybe 5 stops because of lights, rather smooth drive.
Last 15 km done in higher mountains, as I wanted to be able to return home, so I drived high hill up and down till turtle (I know this is bad for range, but I have no alternative at all - at my home village there are no flat areas longer than 40 m...), and then - I returned home (luckily turtle came 200 m from home).
LeafBox range extender installed.

In 2 weeks I will install normal tires, so I expect improvement, even in our hills.

[sparrow79]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Py6jNEyEU

172,8 km, or 107,3 miles till turtle with 24kwh 2013 Leaf.
- winter tires, drive in hills (I have no flat terrain ) heat on but minimal possible, seat heating on (LO), ECO mode,
average speed of 62 km/h, I tried to drive not faster than 75, and not slower than 55 km/h
rural area, small cities and villages, maybe 5 stops because of lights, rather smooth drive.
Last 15 km done in higher mountains, as I wanted to be able to return home, so I drived high hill up and down till turtle (I know this is bad for range, but I have no alternative at all - at my home village there are no flat areas longer than 40 m...), and then - I returned home (luckily turtle came 200 m from home).
LeafBox range extender installed.

In 2 weeks I will install normal tires, so I expect improvement, even in our hills.

I'm following you on Facebook

Your'e having great results!

[powersurge]

I watched your range video and did the calculations to miles.... I do not care about finding the final range to a dead battery... I stopped your demonstration at 30%. From a 100% to 30% battery, the car traveled 68 miles. At my current general range on my car, I get 1 mile / percent of battery. So if I travel 70 miles on a good day with my current car, I will have about 30 miles of range left (at 30% battery)-------

Your numbers are not much different than I get on my stock Leaf?? I understand that you used heat, so those numbers are good. However, where is the real benefit in this product? I do not see a significant difference in buying/ using an additional electronic product.

This strikes me like all those ICE car engine "chips" that are supposed to increase mileage.....

[VitaminJ]

So if I travel 70 miles on a good day with my current car, I will have about 30 miles of range left (at 30% battery)-------

He is travelling on a bad day, cold. Using heater. And using chunky snow tires. Oh yeah and driving in the mountains.

[jjeff]

I have already 2 testers with 2011 Leafs with battery worn - I will soon have results (actual reports are promising, I did special setup for 2011-2012 Leafs, (see LeafBox Manual: http://vtechtuning.eu/leafbox.html?file ... manual.pdf) but after 2 weeks I do not have enough results to have clear average gain. I need 1-2 weeks more.

Did you ever mail out any of the LeafBox's? I was the first one to respond to this thread and PM'd you my address, if I haven't got one I wonder just who has

[sparrow79]

Hi Thomas

I've received it yesterday. In your facebook you say we should update it. How is it suposed to be done? or the version I received doesn't need to be updated?

I will install it this weekend.

Thank you.

Hugo

[Piro]

Because I'm a bit confused, who received, and who did not recieve LeafBox, please write me to priv, if not received. I will check all sendings, maybe our secretary did a mistake or so.

BTW, Update 1.1
[added] even a bit better regen in D-mode, Better characteristics for 2011-12 (Gen1) Leaf.
[fixed] stepness with power at D-mode in program nr 3, and 4 - corrected.

I have now second delivery of plugs for Nissan Leaf, so all delayed orders (and unsend test boxes, if any) will be send almost immediately. We sit day and night at production of wiring cables. All boxes sent from today have update 1.1 installed (no need to update).

Thomas
----------------------------
Thank you all, who sent me LeafSpy logs and spend generally a lot of time driving Leafs with LeafBox and collecting information for me. Thank you for ideas - I try to add all, that are possible.

Results until now:
It seems that it is absolutely fair to say, that LeafBox extends range by 10%. There are some better results, even one guy, who drives few Leafs in Uber reported, that that one with LeafBox is 20% better in range than others, but I think that he personally drives that one Leaf and is a better driver than other hired drivers (it is my theory, I havent directly asked) so I do not rely on this one report. It sounds like miracle.
Back to Earth - people, who drive in cities have better results (10-15%), people who drive mostly highways have improvement only, when they drive in cities or slower speeds (sounds logical, as power needed to maintain constant speed at highway does not change with LeafBox, so car should use exact same amount of energy).
Compiling information from all LeafSpy logs, it looks like 60% of savings comes from gliding/coasting, next 30% from alternative power demand, and maybe 10% from extended regen (mainly - faster start of full regen).
Among testers we have found one issue - it was not possible to unplug the factory plug from Acc pedal. It was probably glued or so (in factory?).
Have anybody seen such situation, that plug (any) in the car was glued?

--------------------------

I plan do explain also a bit more about that, how it is possible to go over 80kW limit (by poor 3kW, but still better than factory power, this functionality is NOT ENABLED yet) and how it is possible to invoke higher regen (again about 3kW better regen, as it bases on the same trick - exploit of factory PID_R algorythm for power demand stabilization). Maybe this will be boring for most of you, but for some it will be interesting. For me personally this exploit is a well known trick, because I have observed it in many ECUs of gasoline cars years ago, while working at reverse engineering them (as Im car tuner, all in all). I checked that in Leaf just for fun, believing in maybe 5% of chance, that this will work - and tadaaam - it works. Also for regen. I will prepare some pictures (graphs) to explain that better.

[jjeff]

Follow up PM sent.

[Stanton]

Back to Earth - people, who drive in cities have better results (10-15%), people who drive mostly highways have improvement only, when they drive in cities or slower speeds (sounds logical, as power needed to maintain constant speed at highway does not change with LeafBox, so car should use exact same amount of energy).

This is what I originally suspected, so glad to see it proved out. Unfortunately, the times I need range extension are on trips that are (mostly) highway, which reduces the value of LeafBox for me. There's no range-killer like speed for an EV