EVDRIVER said:
No way is anyone going to swap the 6kw charger form a 2013 into a 2012, there are easier ways to do this. Secondly, If Phil is looking to make a possible charger kit does anyone expect him to give step by step directions? Some common sense and courtesy would be appropriate here. This project reminds me a long time ago of when everyone understated how long it took and cost to do an EV conversion and then a guy posted all his ACTUAL time records and parts costs. I expect some white lies on this project about the actual time and cost to do this. I am surprised people are buying chargers before they have the complete strategy for implementation. I also hope that anyone that attempts this is very experienced in HV work and very skilled because one can easily damage some very expensive parts doing this, not to mention get hurt. This is not 240V.
I haven't found any 2013 parts information online but I recall the 2012 charger to be around $3600 from Nissan. I'm sure the 2013 isn't far off from that given that it's made stateside. Given the cost of the Brusa and other efforts to potentially make a CAN bridge, I am guessing replacing the OE charger may not be that far off cost-wise. I know it was moved up front but would hope that the guts would be retrofittable to the 2012. My bigger concern would be the communications, I am still surprised there's not a secondary monitor of the charger/battery current to make sure there isn't more current available than the supplied on-board charger can produce.
I agree with the concerns on the HV bus, ESPECIALLY if the Brusa is just paralleled with the existing on-board. That's some frightening stuff. I am sure the Brusa is built to withstand some abuse but when you're talking about this voltage and current I would not want to attempt just tying those outputs together and hope the OE on-board is tolerant of an additional supply being paralleled to it.
My thought on the 2013 OE charger is that if the 2012 BCM requests more current than the OE on-board can supply, and there is no secondary/supervisory control, the 2013 on-board may be plug and play (electrically), and leave only mechanical mounting and cable upgrades to solve. The latter I think are relatively simple. Chances are the 2013 on-board is not even in the parts pipeline yet, though, and won't be for a while.
Does anyone have any under-hood shots of the 2013 or the new charger mounting location?