Nissan Leaf Motor Test with my homemade controller

[MPaulHolmes]

I got a Nissan Leaf motor (2011) for $550 on Ebay, and here it is, being tested on my homemade controller. I'm going to stick it in a car, and hopefully have a nice little budget EV conversion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzlLh8xxx1g

The resolver took a little figuring out. There was not much published info on it, but I made a little resolver to encoder board, and it works great! Man, I love it when a plan comes together. haha. So, if anybody needs any info on resolver specs, I can now help out with that. It's field oriented control, so you just basically control the torque. 50% of full throttle means 50% of full torque. 50% of throttle in the negative direction gives 50% "negative torque" which regens the batteries. (and makes you fly into reverse once you come to a stop unless you deal with that case in the code! haha).

[miscrms]

Very Nice!

[keydiver]

Nice work! I'm really hoping that someone soon puts all these parts together in a nice turnkey kit for anyone that wants to build an EV. Every kit I have seen still uses a DC motor and the associated 1980's technology. After a few years, there should be tons of used Leaf parts that could be used for conversions.

[MPaulHolmes]

I put together an instructables for it here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/200kW-A ... ctric-Car/

It's all doable with only a hand drill, although sort of annoying. Right now I'm plan on getting one of those cut out machines (cricut or sizzix big shot pro) and have custom dies made so that I can punch out the copper sheets and nomex isolation pad. Then all the drilling that's left is the base plate.

-Paul

[NavyCuda]

I'm very interested in this project!

[MPaulHolmes]

I got the control working better. It's a lot smoother now. Also, I added the correction for an interior permanent magnet motor. This test is at 120vDC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTn4fKNVbGc

[NavyCuda]

Would this controller be able to handle two Leaf motors and have a bais to which one gets more power until wide open throttle?

[miscrms]

As mentioned elsewhere, I'm also following this project with much interest. Although I'm doing a conversion using Leaf parts, I'm currently retaining the complete Leaf control system. That might make an interesting test bed to see whether this kind of upgraded inverter could eventually be retrofitted back into a stock Leaf. I would think the main difference from a non-Leaf application would be making the controller talk and respond to Leaf CAN messages. That's not trivial perhaps, but seems like it should be doable.

From a quick look at the service manuals, the basic messages seem to be:

Inverter->VCM
- HV power supply preperation complete (condensor charged, VCM can close Main Contactors and turn off pre-charge)
- HV discharge permit (ready to power down?)
- Motor Speed signal
- Motor Torque Limit (derived from conditions like IGBT Temps, Cap Temps, Motor Temps, etc)
- Motor Temp High (power limited)
- Voltage Low (<240V) (power limited)
- DTC Detected (various failsafe conditions)

VCM->Inverter
- Target motor torque (positive or negative I believe for drive / regen)
- Pulse signal off
- HV supply status
- System cut off
- Vibration control switching
- Motor charge preparation request
- Motor discharge request
- Regenerative torque command signal (so maybe not same as negative target torque?)
- Shift Position

ESC->Inverter
- Shift Position

There's already considerable evidence that both the Leaf battery and motor are capable of much more than what they do in the stock configuration. The motor appears to be rated to operate continuously at the 80kW output that is the max in the Leaf. As I understand peak ratings for short duration are often 2-3X continuous rating. The batteries have also been characterized as having ~44V droop at 600A, which is not bad at almost 3X the max current in the stock configuration.

There might be other complications, with other controllers complaining about excessive current draw, or just not ever requesting more than stock torque, or the larger voltage droop freaking the SOC calibration, etc. And as with any performance enhancements, there would likely be impacts on reliability and longevity. Still, pretty interesting possibility

Rob

[minispeed]

So would I be correct in assuming you are Paul from "Paul and Sabrinas EV stuff"?

Found this controller kit for sale here:
http://www.paulandsabrinasevstuff.com/o ... y=16287308

Any more info on specs, ie what voltage range can it handle, max Amps continuous and peak?

[MPaulHolmes]

Here's a first vehicle test:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUioVe_ ... e=youtu.be

I think his little home made race car only weighs around 1000 pounds, so I bet it will have good acceleration. He has the peak phase current set to 300amp for this test, and the battery voltage is just 200volt (using part of a chevy volt pack from Ebay). The controller is liquid cooled, but I think he was just running it without that set up yet. I don't know what the continuous and instantaneous current ratings are, but I've made a few DC controllers with IDENTICAL power section (3 600v 600amp IGBT half bridges in parallel. the 3 phase cables all connect to the DC motor), which have been run at 1550amp, doing drifting around a roundabout in Amsterdam. So, My guess is with liquid cooling, 400ampRMS continuous? That's a guess. Oh yes, I'm Paul Holmes and that was my website. Sorry, I wasn't trying to sell stuff on here. I'm just excited that it's working.

The voltage range it can safely handle is probably about 0-400Volt with the 600volt IGBTs. The control/driver board doesn't really care about the voltage and can handle higher volts. So, just get 1200v IGBTs and a higher voltage ring capacitor if you want to run at 700v or whatever.. I have just recently made a new control/driver board that does voltage monitoring and contains the precharge circuit. So, with that board you will be able to change the Proportional and integral constants on the fly for the PI loop for Id and Iq, depending on the battery voltage sag. In practice it doesn't matter that much, since it's pretty forgiving. The rate of convergence of Id to IdRef and Iq to IqRef would be slightly slower under voltage sag, but we are talking 1.4millisec convergence time for a 50amp step compared to 1.1millisec (or somewhere in that ballpark).