Extra Battery, How to Integrate with 24kWh Traction Battery?

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Hi,

I not calculating internal resistance, and min max C before start a project but just setup a battery 96S22p and working fine.
(internal resistance is lower in main battery then additional battery - this is simplify a lot of think)

some pic in link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04PcmVkF34&t=1s
 
Nice work, I'd still be concerned about running your leaf below VLBW, if you take the 82% current sharing that I found empirically, you could be doing up to 10.8A/cell discharge in full throttle or 4.7A/cell charge in quick charge at 50kW. Have you been able to get any current measurements in-use to see how much power the extender pack is providing under normal driving conditions?
 
Atkam said:
Hi,

I not calculating internal resistance, and min max C before start a project but just setup a battery 96S22p and working fine.
(internal resistance is lower in main battery then additional battery - this is simplify a lot of think)

some pic in link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04PcmVkF34&t=1s
You have been quietly working on this for some time, excellent work :D
Keep us informed ,
 
Alright, for the EU people who want an extender battery and don't mind giving up some trunk space, I've now just cleared all the major hurdles to commercialize my extender battery and offer something decently professional and not-immediately-explody. I'm gauging interest with preorders on this website:

http://muxsan.com/

If all goes well (and that is a big if, there is still lots to do) I'll be converting cars in Q4 2018. When all the kinks are worked out, I'll also try to sell the electronics, possibly the batteries (not quite sure yet) and have tutorials on how to mod your own car for non-EU people.
 
Very exciting. Still settling in after my move, but I'll be happy to be one of your first US beta customers for the electronics package (I'll be supplying my own battery and a few other components that I've already bought).
 
mux said:
Alright, for the EU people who want an extender battery and don't mind giving up some trunk space, I've now just cleared all the major hurdles to commercialize my extender battery and offer something decently professional and not-immediately-explody. I'm gauging interest with preorders on this website:

http://muxsan.com/

If all goes well (and that is a big if, there is still lots to do) I'll be converting cars in Q4 2018. When all the kinks are worked out, I'll also try to sell the electronics, possibly the batteries (not quite sure yet) and have tutorials on how to mod your own car for non-EU people.

Great news and congratulations! I'm not in the EU but I am interested in the whole concept and will be following your progress in the future. Best of luck with the endeavor and business. My 2017 Leaf will fulfill my needs for as long as I can imagine but I'm an EE and looking at retirement in a few years so I will need some sort of projects to keep myself busy. Your work is encouraging, exciting and is one of the few parts of MNL that is most useful and interesting to me. Thanks!
 
EVDRIVER said:
LEAFs also don't end up being scrapped they in many cases go to auction and are shipped in very large numbers to Russia, Ukraine, the EU, etc. The export numbers are incredibly high for used LEAFs, one single private party alone ships many thousands of cars yearly.

This is what really sucks, historically this practice was all but impossible and it kept used cars cheap with plentiful parts.

But do to trade imbalance and empty supertankers we now export (in some cases) over 90% of specific models of junk cars.

It means getting a junk car is many times more expensive than buying one that runs.

It isn’t limited to leaf, it’s almost everything under 20 years old.

To me it almost needs a ban in place,
it means that the age of a cheap car is getting older every day and it has wide spanning consequences since folks on the low end are ending up further down the spectrum at a higher price.

It went from bad to worse during cash for junkers where many cars were exported,
now it’s just gotten crazy.

Ah well
 
Around here, it's really gotten crazy. I recently had the opportunity to buy a crashed Leaf (front/side collision, smashed quarter panel, mashed front-right suspension and dented/scratched side all over. Cost: 8000 euros. You can buy a perfectly good Leaf for 9500ish, I bought mine for 9000. It's just not worth it, and they're obviously exporting it.
 
mux said:
It really depends on where you draw the line. Want to keep the battery in tip-top shape? Blanket, PTC heater, pretty high temperatures. Want to just barely scrape by? Probably keep it insulated or in a garage at more than the rated minimum temperature (which is -25C in this case).

My understanding was that 18650 are rated for discharge at -25C.
But how can we change our batteries at -25C? Or -17C?
Or we must keep range extender battery always above 0C (in case car starts charging)
 
Hi mux and all,

We are considering adding a range extender to a LEAF and have most of the resources to do it (small capital budget, a shop with lift and tools, CNC machinist, software developer, competent master mechanic, access to salvage LEAF's to use as test vehicles, etc). What we lack is experience and we would like to tap into the combined knowledge of the LEAF community if possible. Also if there are components of your work that we can purchase to speed our effort along we'd like to explore them.

One question I have for you is why did you choose additional batteries instead of adding a small ICE range extender similar to BMW i3 REX design?

Whatever we do we will post and share the discussion here at the forum.

Thanks for your input. I've been thinking about this for years, and now just starting to do the research to determine if it's feasible.

Best regards,
Ravi at CarPortal
 
Noal said:
mux said:
It really depends on where you draw the line. Want to keep the battery in tip-top shape? Blanket, PTC heater, pretty high temperatures. Want to just barely scrape by? Probably keep it insulated or in a garage at more than the rated minimum temperature (which is -25C in this case).

My understanding was that 18650 are rated for discharge at -25C.
But how can we change our batteries at -25C? Or -17C?
Or we must keep range extender battery always above 0C (in case car starts charging)

This is really dependent on the chemistry, and the only way to know for sure is to consult the datasheets or ask an applications engineer. Samsung SDI and Panasonic have very friendly FAEs if you e-mail their battery divisions.

As a general rule, you don' t want to charge the battery under 0C. It will charge, but it will be relatively inefficient and certainly much slower than at above-freezing. For most car-sized batteries, it is actually more efficient to simply pre-heat the battery to about 10C and charge from there; there is not that much thermal mass in the cells and the efficiency easily compensates the losses in heating.
 
So as of now is there a 3rd party product or DIY recipe to extend the range on a 2011 leaf? I am down to around 40 mile range with 7/12 bars. Do not really want to spend the over $8k for a new 24k battery at the dealership. Would be willing to spend $3-4k for another 30-40 mile range. I am pretty good with tech and can put something together myself if there is a working design people have successfully used.

I had emailed Hybrid Industries, since they advertise a $4500 solution but they never replied to me. Anyone used them?

I am in the Bay Area close to San Francisco.
Any suggestions.
 
bbhangoo said:
So as of now is there a 3rd party product or DIY recipe to extend the range on a 2011 leaf? I am down to around 40 mile range with 7/12 bars. Do not really want to spend the over $8k for a new 24k battery at the dealership. Would be willing to spend $3-4k for another 30-40 mile range. I am pretty good with tech and can put something together myself if there is a working design people have successfully used.

I had emailed Hybrid Industries, since they advertise a $4500 solution but they never replied to me. Anyone used them?

I am in the Bay Area close to San Francisco.
Any suggestions.

I would steer clear of Hybrid Industries; heard some negative reports of scams or sloppy workmanship from them.

From this article it sounds like Nissan have begun rolling out their new pricing ($2850) for a refurbushed pack (as opposed to new replacement at $6500), I would contact your dealer to see if this is an option: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1116722_nissan-begins-offering-rebuilt-leaf-battery-packs

Otherwise there is no commercially available solution, but users like Cor here have had success buying salvage Leaf packs and installing them into cars (I had mine done for $3500 including labor, I went from a very sad 5-bar, yes 5-bars not 5-bar loss, battery to an almost new ~90% capacity pack on my 2011). Otherwise Mux is still working out the details on an external range extender pack to fit in your trunk, but it'll be a while before that makes it here to the US I think.
 
Yeah, I'm busy starting up my company Muxsan to build trunk extender packs for the Leaf, but for the time being that's a Europe-only thing. There are people on my preorder list from the US and other non-European country, but for the time being (at least half a year) I will not have a way to service these clients. I hope to be able to offer a DIY pack or, worst case, pool some people together and fly over for a conversion party, but absolutely no concrete plans for that yet. So although I'd love to help and I guess I have the technical solution to your problem, geography prohibits supply and demand coming together here.
 
I would jump on the $2,850 refub option, if it was available. Called my dealer, he said they have not heard of it. The only option from Nissan is at $8,700 (including labor, parts and tax), yes the cost of the battery went up. Would love to explore the salvage Leaf packs option. If I can find someone who can make that happen in the Bay Area (Northern California).

Guess Mux is not offering a USA option. Hey mux if you need a dealer in California I can make that happen, let me know. Guess you need to get to your production version first, I did check the status on your website ;)
 
Yeah man, going to take a while. We don't even have the battery box designed yet and literally at this moment I'm still working on preproduction electronics hardware design. Firmware isn't done either. And even if that all works and the car's good, we still need official regulatory type approval before we can start servicing customers. So it's pushing november-december before we have our first customers in the EU, and likely months after that before we can ship out kits IF that is even legal and possible.

If by some form of arcane magic all of this goes well and we can offer a US option, we'll need an EV specialist garage to do the conversions and handle complaints. But that's so far off and uncertain... don't get your hopes up yet. If you have any way of getting a cheap refurb or otherwise improve your Leaf stateside, don't wait for me and just do it.
 
Mux
mux said:
Yeah man, going to take a while. We don't even have the battery box designed yet and literally at this moment I'm still working on preproduction electronics hardware design. Firmware isn't done either. And even if that all works and the car's good, we still need official regulatory type approval before we can start servicing customers. So it's pushing november-december before we have our first customers in the EU, and likely months after that before we can ship out kits IF that is even legal and possible.

If by some form of arcane magic all of this goes well and we can offer a US option, we'll need an EV specialist garage to do the conversions and handle complaints. But that's so far off and uncertain... don't get your hopes up yet. If you have any way of getting a cheap refurb or otherwise improve your Leaf stateside, don't wait for me and just do it.
Please tell us at what stage the development of the adapter for the CAN bus? I have an extra battery Azeo 24kW, however the car does not display real mileage. Can you help in solving this problem?
 
It's done, we're about to hit mass production. CAN bridges aren't going to be available to buy from us for a few weeks (basically: until the next revision hardware has been assembled, takes about 3 weeks), but around end of september you should be able to buy these electronics and mess with your Leaf's CAN bus to your heart's content.
 
mux said:
It's done, we're about to hit mass production. CAN bridges aren't going to be available to buy from us for a few weeks (basically: until the next revision hardware has been assembled, takes about 3 weeks), but around end of september you should be able to buy these electronics and mess with your Leaf's CAN bus to your heart's content.

Tnanks! Will this work with right-hand drive for the Japanese market?
 
Electrically, there's no difference between the Leafs. The only difference is in where you can put the CAN bridge. In the 2010-12 ('japan leaf') generation, you need to cut and solder onto the harness. On later leafs, you can use a connector intercept which we also supply to put in the can bridge without any tools (except maybe a cutting plier to cut tiewraps to length)
 
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