2012 Leaf upgrade to 40 kwh battery pack using EV Enhanced battery translator

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Bigboler

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 24, 2012
Messages
50
Location
Vancouver BC
Hello All, I purchased my Leaf back in 2012 and like all the early adopters watched the battery degrade faster than I had hoped it would. I purchased a Model 3 to replace it but had a chance encounter with research organization in Canada that wanted to purchase a Leaf battery with a known history. So I went looking for a 40 Kwh to replace it and a translator that would make it work, there are a couple of options but I liked the one from EV's Enhanced the best, but it wasn't ready. So I picked up a battery from a wrecker in Tennessee and waited for the solution to be ready. Well it took over a year but I now have the first Leaf in North America with a 40 kwh battery in it using the translator from Ev's Enhanced in New Zealand. They provide a translator and also reprogram the VCM to make it all work, and yes it does work. The car runs like it had a 40 kwh battery from the factory. I made a video about the process you can view it here: https://youtu.be/22LMt49_1yo
 
Well it took over a year but I now have the first Leaf in North America with a 40 kwh battery in it using the translator from Ev's Enhanced in New Zealand.

Congratulations. Just to clarify: you have the first 40kwh battery in a Gen I Leaf that uses that translator. There have been quite a few conversions in the last year that use translators developed by members here, like the MUXSAN CAN Bridge. Nissan has also been using new 40kwh packs as warranty replacements for 2016-2017 30kwh Leafs with degraded batteries.
 
This is the first in North America using EV's Enhanced solution, I explored the other ones but they all seemed to have some challenges, especially when it came to the 2011/12 Leafs. I don't believe that the other solutions involve going to the point of reprograming the VCM
 
Wow, nice to see that they used my open souce pairing process! :D (Timestamp 3:20)

To keep cost down, neither me nor Muxsan does any changes to the VCM. Interesting to see that EVs Enhanced goes to this lenght to get the final cosmetic bugs sorted out!
 
Great work on the documentation! I considered doing the same with my 2012 but ultimately couldn't accept the cost and lack of thermal controls.

I guess your all-in cost was around 20% lower than selling the car and buying a newer used EV. So, a good deal too.
 
Back
Top