Trailer batteries or gensets for Leafs?

[VitaminJ]

We all hope that useful aftermarket products will become available. But...

The $6500 mod takes a used battery from a wrecked Leaf and fits it in your trunk so that your vehicle now only has a 195lb passenger/cargo limit. It's not at all an aftermarket extended range battery that anyone can buy and just plug in themselves with the help of an instruction pamphlet. But as long as there are wrecked generation 1 Leafs that might work. It's not a solution for someone like me who has to transport more than one person in the vehicle.

So far our best bet is either a used battery from a wrecked Leaf with in the car, as in the $6,500 mod, or on a trailer, or a new $5,500 plus core charge battery from Nissan that someone hacks into himself to integrate into his Leaf either in the car or on a trailer.

The aftermarket sector isn't even closer to doing better than that. Right now you're looking at $10,000 or better just for 24kW with of aftermarket cells. That's not including all the hardware, software and such to make those cells actually work. How are you supposed to get that down to $5,000 or less within 5 or 6 years and still make the car useful for hauling around more than just the driver?

Well Tesla's gigafactory will be at full production in 2018 if they stay on schedule. When at full capacity it will be making more gigawatt-hours of lithium batteries than are currently being produced in the entire world. The world's production is also increasing year after year. Lithium batteries used to be obscenely expensive, you'd spend $300 and get a battery that would run your RC car for 10 minutes 7-8 years ago, the same battery today is $30. That's how you get it down to $5000.

The only part of the Leaf that needs upgrading is the battery, everything else is hunky-dory and the motor doesn't care as long as it gets 360 to 395 volts.

This isn't a fender. It also isn't a turbocharger that can be used on any engine within a broad range of sizes and only requires a cast manifold to fit a certain car like a Honda Accord. It's more like building an engine and drive train (which it literally is in the case of the ICE range extender) and trying to sell the whole set up for $5,000. That isn't going to happen. Even a simple long block with no emissions and no carburetion/fuel injection costs $4,000 or better. Add on a transmission ($4,000) or a 30kW generator ($2,000) motor controller ($2,000) and motor ($2,000) plus frame, wheels, driveline, cooling system, fuel injection system, sensors, tuning, mapping, emissions systems, etc, or a battery they haven't gotten down cheaper than $10,000, plus balancer ($3,000) and whatever controller or interface or drive system your looking for ($$$).

Yes, which is why a commercial range extender trailer is never going to happen, that's been literally my #1 point this entire thread.

 

[IssacZachary]

Yes, which is why a commercial range extender trailer is never going to happen, that's been literally my #1 point this entire thread.

I'm glad to hear that lithium prices should go down. But then what? If nobody is going to produce a plug and play range extender then we're back to battery hacking or 100 year old polluting ICE technology. Aren't we?

 

[VitaminJ]

I'm glad to hear that lithium prices should go down. But then what? If nobody is going to produce a plug and play range extender then we're back to battery hacking or 100 year old polluting ICE technology. Aren't we?

I think you are totally underestimating where EVs are right now, the Leaf is really basic. If you have a Tesla right now you can drive almost 315 miles according to the EPA and it takes as little as 15 minutes to add 180 miles' range at a Supercharger. That's nearly the same as a fuel stop. That's a car you can buy right now so what do you think Tesla will have in a few years? There are almost twice as many CHAdeMOs in Europe, if Trump has his way we might see CHAdeMO become far more prevalent here, but at the cost of being powered by even more coal. Why shouldn't a gas station also have 4 or 6 CHAdeMOs? Most gas stations don't make much profit on the actual gas, they sell stuff in the store. All us EV drivers are cruising on past, but we're stopping at Wal-Mart for 30 minutes and paying $5 for the CHAdeMO. The SAE just settled on a wireless charging standard, only a matter of time until Wal-Mart or Kohl's and the rest of the places that have chargers right now throw a couple wireless pads in parking spaces. I bet in some places like Norway in 5 years there will be more wireless charging stations than plug-in stations.

Anyway this is all pretty far off topic. The point is there's no reason to believe in 5 years there won't be someone like Optima or Summit that specs out a couple batteries from Tesla to sell as upgrades to existing cars. Along with that all the new tech benefits we just talked about will be available in the aftermarket. You can already install an aftermarket 16.7kwh charger on your Leaf that will suck down all the 240v you can provide.

In the mean time, we have cargo racks and generators to mess with.

 

[IssacZachary]

What I don't understand is how you can upgrade the battery pack that much. It takes 15 minutes to charge a Leaf battery up to about 40%. The Tesla seems to have about the same charge rate. So you take 600lbs of a Tesla battery and put it in a Leaf and you have another 24kWh or 30kWh battery that takes about 30 minutes at the CHAdeMO station to charge up to 80%. So what would be the gain in doing that?

If you want more range you need more kWh's. If you add more kWh's you need a heavier battery. The 48kWh modded Leaf is basically a overweight motorcycle, absolutely useless to a guy with a wife and a child or two.

So the only logical solutions would be to get more kWh's without increasing weight or put the batteries on a trailer. There are air batteries that are lighter than lithium batteries but there still aren't any that are rechargeable. So then I guess Summit is going to have to put them on a trailer to bear the weight. That's about the only solution. Isn't it?

 

[VitaminJ]

What I don't understand is how you can upgrade the battery pack that much. It takes 15 minutes to charge a Leaf battery up to about 40%. The Tesla seems to have about the same charge rate. So you take 600lbs of a Tesla battery and put it in a Leaf and you have another 24kWh or 30kWh battery that takes about 30 minutes at the CHAdeMO station to charge up to 80%. So what would be the gain in doing that?

Tesla superchargers are 120kw max and they are discussing 350+kw next. CHAdeMO is 50kw max and on a Leaf you actually only get about 20-30kw peak, at least in my experince. So, no like I said you are way underestimating things. Also if you double the battery capacity with the same voltage you can now take on double the charge rate which means it takes the same time to charge double capacity from a CHAdeMO.

If you want more range you need more kWh's. If you add more kWh's you need a heavier battery. The 48kWh modded Leaf is basically a overweight motorcycle, absolutely useless to a guy with a wife and a child or two.

So the only logical solutions would be to get more kWh's without increasing weight or put the batteries on a trailer. There are air batteries that are lighter than lithium batteries but there still aren't any that are rechargeable. So then I guess Summit is going to have to put them on a trailer to bear the weight. That's about the only solution. Isn't it?

No, you have better batteries that have more power for the same weight. The 30kwh Leaf battery is only 46 lbs heavier than the 24kwh version because they are more energy dense. There is also a fixed amount of weight in casing, BMS, etc that you don't have to double to double the capacity.

 

[IssacZachary]

So the battery is 1.1 times heavier and holds 1.2 times the amount of energy. Mmm... I still don't see how it would be possible to double the energy capacity of a Leaf using lithium ion technology without making it weigh so much it's worthless.

Teslas are designed to hold the weight of their huge batteries. They are also more aerodynamic which gives them more range with less battery. The only way you're going to get that in a Leaf is with an air battery technology, by gutting the thing and lightening it, by beefing up the suspension and putting on truck tires, or by putting the extra lithium ion battery on a trailer. There's no way there'll be 600lb 48kWh lithium ion batteries any time soon. Sorry.

 

[VitaminJ]

Renault Zoe launched this year has a 41kwh battery that weighs 672lbs:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/10/11/details-renault-zoe-ze-40-battery-packs/

 

[IssacZachary]

Renault Zoe launched this year has a 41kwh battery that weighs 672lbs:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/10/11/details-renault-zoe-ze-40-battery-packs/

That is an improvement. We'll still have to wait and see if first, the price comes down on that battery technology and second, if someone will actually make it for the handful of first generation Leaf owners who stuck it out waiting for this thing. It's still hypothetical that you'll be able to get one of these modified and cheap to throw into your Leaf anytime within the next few decades.

 

[VitaminJ]

That is an improvement.

That's it? A second ago you were telling me something I said was an impossibility and now you find out that impossible something you didn't even think would exist for decades actually exists right this moment and this is your reaction? Well at least we can both agree we're having a hypothetical conversation

 

[IssacZachary]

That is an improvement.

That's it? A second ago you were telling me something I said was an impossibility and now you find out that impossible something you didn't even think would exist for decades actually exists right this moment and this is your reaction? Well at least we can both agree we're having a hypothetical conversation

Yes. Maybe I'm just pessimistic about aftermarket future high energy density batteries. I think you feel the same way, only about trailers.

The battery technology in the Leaf already exists, is compatible with the Leaf and is available both used and new. The problem is you can't just keep adding them inside the car. But on another set of wheels you can. The 41kWh Renault battery would nearly double the range of a Leaf. But a Leaf can also pull 1,500lbs of batteries on a trailer with little effect on it's range, practically tripling its range with no new expensive lightweight battery needed. Now imagine a 41kWh battery under the leaf and an 82kWh battery on it's trailer, 123kWh total.

On the other hand here are a few other technologies I hope come to the aftermarket world for our Leafs:

1. Aluminum air batteries. These puppies can store some 10 times the amount of energy as in a lithium ion battery, even though they're not rechargeable, at least not conventionally. Imagine a 300kWh battery that only weighs 600lbs. If you could make the Leaf's lithium ion battery half the weight (300lbs) then you could add a 150kWh 300lb aluminum air battery. And whenever you want to do 500 miles in a day you could. you'd just have to have a way to change the aluminum plates to go another 500 miles once the aluminum air battery is dead.
2. Ultra capacitors. Batteries are getting better about recharging and discharging at faster rates. But nothing beats an ultra capacitor in discharge and recharge times, as well as efficiency. A small ultra capacitor pack could be added in addition to the lithium ion battery, which would make regen more efficient, and allow for a much more powerful motor, without having to push the lithium ion battery to it's limit.
3. Aeromods. I'd like to see aftermarket aeromods for the Leaf. Technically you could get double your range right now by reducing the aerodynamic drag by more than half. The Leaf's coefficient of drag is horrible for a modern car, around 31. That's not much better than a 1955 VW Beetle! A tail, wheel skirts and smaller mirrors and you could see 17, maybe 15.

 

[VitaminJ]

You live in Gunnison and don't think 1500lbs will impact your range? That's rich.

 

[IssacZachary]

You live in Gunnison and don't think 1500lbs will impact your range? That's rich.

There you go again with your trailer phobia.

A battery trailer is a proven concept. A 1,500lb trailer obviously won't triple the range even with triple the battery capacity. I already stated that and never said it won't have any effect on the range. But getting a lot more than double, even in Gunnison, is perfectly possible. It's all in the math. A 4,200lb vehicle towing a 1,500lb trailer will weigh 1.35 times more and yet have at least 3 times the battery capacity. And even in the mountains, the major energy loss is still aerodynamic drag, not weight, which a small trailer doesn't contribute very much of.

In fact it is theoretically possible to construct an aerodynamic trailer that also improves aerodynamics to the point that the overall losses from the trailer are null, meaning that 3 times the batteries could theoretically still get you three times the range inspite of the added weight. This is also a proven concept.

On the other hand the 41kWh Renault battery just came out. We have no idea how long it will last and if it will actually even work or how long until they work out all the bugs that could possibly cause it to fail quickly. For all we know, until it has been used in real life and proverb itself it could be a failed attempt at making a lighter lithium ion battery that possibly losses large percentages of capacity quickly or even fails completely under certain circumstances. We just don't know yet.

And whether that will end up on Leafs for cheap is still another wait-and-see. If the ICE world has taught us anything it's that if you want a real upgrade you have to pay more than what the car's worth and then some. Otherwise you get cheap Chinese parts that are worse than the originals. Ya, there have been guys who put Subaru engines , with all their modern emissions, fuel injection, and such, in their classic Volkswagens but ended up spending $8,000 or more even with used parts and hack mods.

 

[Firetruck41]

You live in Gunnison and don't think 1500lbs will impact your range? That's rich.

There you go again with your trailer phobia.

A battery trailer is a proven concept. A 1,500lb trailer obviously won't triple the range even with triple the battery capacity. I already stated that and never said it won't have any effect on the range. But getting a lot more than double, even in Gunnison, is perfectly possible. It's all in the math. A 4,200lb vehicle towing a 1,500lb trailer will weigh 1.35 times more and yet have at least 3 times the battery capacity. And even in the mountains, the major energy loss is still aerodynamic drag, not weight, which a small trailer doesn't contribute very much of.

In fact it is theoretically possible to construct an aerodynamic trailer that also improves aerodynamics to the point that the overall losses from the trailer are null, meaning that 3 times the batteries could theoretically still get you three times the range inspite of the added weight. This is also a proven concept.

On the other hand the 41kWh Renault battery just came out. We have no idea how long it will last and if it will actually even work or how long until they work out all the bugs that could possibly cause it to fail quickly. For all we know, until it has been used in real life and proverb itself it could be a failed attempt at making a lighter lithium ion battery that possibly losses large percentages of capacity quickly or even fails completely under certain circumstances. We just don't know yet.

And whether that will end up on Leafs for cheap is still another wait-and-see. If the ICE world has taught us anything it's that if you want a real upgrade you have to pay more than what the car's worth and then some. Otherwise you get cheap Chinese parts that are worse than the originals. Ya, there have been guys who put Subaru engines , with all their modern emissions, fuel injection, and such, in their classic Volkswagens but ended up spending $8,000 or more even with used parts and hack mods.

Renault/Nissan Alliance new 41kwh battery, should be as good as Leaf batt, as it is likely an improvement on it.... but this is all pie in the sky stuff for the near future anyway

 

[VitaminJ]

There you go again with your trailer phobia.

A battery trailer is a proven concept. A 1,500lb trailer obviously won't triple the range even with triple the battery capacity. I already stated that and never said it won't have any effect on the range. But getting a lot more than double, even in Gunnison, is perfectly possible. It's all in the math. A 4,200lb vehicle towing a 1,500lb trailer will weigh 1.35 times more and yet have at least 3 times the battery capacity. And even in the mountains, the major energy loss is still aerodynamic drag, not weight, which a small trailer doesn't contribute very much of.

In fact it is theoretically possible to construct an aerodynamic trailer that also improves aerodynamics to the point that the overall losses from the trailer are null, meaning that 3 times the batteries could theoretically still get you three times the range inspite of the added weight. This is also a proven concept.

On the other hand the 41kWh Renault battery just came out. We have no idea how long it will last and if it will actually even work or how long until they work out all the bugs that could possibly cause it to fail quickly. For all we know, until it has been used in real life and proverb itself it could be a failed attempt at making a lighter lithium ion battery that possibly losses large percentages of capacity quickly or even fails completely under certain circumstances. We just don't know yet.

And whether that will end up on Leafs for cheap is still another wait-and-see. If the ICE world has taught us anything it's that if you want a real upgrade you have to pay more than what the car's worth and then some. Otherwise you get cheap Chinese parts that are worse than the originals. Ya, there have been guys who put Subaru engines , with all their modern emissions, fuel injection, and such, in their classic Volkswagens but ended up spending $8,000 or more even with used parts and hack mods.

A Nissan Altima has a maximum tow rating of 1000lbs with a V6 engine. Nissan does not have any tow rating for the Leaf but you can use your imagination. Conversely I used this calculator and my roof box will only require an extra 3kw of power at 60mph. I also oversized the box by quite a bit and used an industry average of .45 cd for the roof box, though there are lower drag ones available, so in reality (and at high elevation) it will be less than that.

My idea is dangerous and unsafe and inefficient but your 1,500lbs (lol) trailer is just dandy?

 

[Durandal]

I would certainly run a trailer before putting anything on the roof. In addition to increasing the drag, you would be altering the center of gravity. I do not know what the load rating for the roof is, but from what I've read from others, it doesn't take much weight to cause the roof to dent in on the Leaf. A trailer is something that has been done by a number of Leaf owners on this forum, including that one guy who hauls hay with his. With electronic brake assist on the trailer, the additional stress on the body from the trailer if kept under 1,000 lbs shouldn't be bad.

 

[VitaminJ]

He specifically wants to use it to drive 200+ miles through the Rocky Mountains over several mountain passes at highway speeds, not tow a trailer around town 30 miles. I'm not just worried about the brakes, but also the motor stress. Climbing up Kenosha Pass gaining 3200 vertical feet over 20 miles for instance, that's enough to burn out the motor. That's not even mentioning the 107hp might not even be enough to climb the pass at more than 40mph. It's hard enough already to get up those hills without towing anything. On a road that has 55 to 65mph limits, that's dangerous. Then if you make it to the top you have to go down the other side and rely on brakes not meant for towing anything at all and skinny eco-tires.

Oh yeah and I haven't even addressed the part where he criticized everything I said for almost 2 pages as being impossible, unrealistic, improbable, etc. until I finally beat him down with facts and the undeniable truth that what I said actually was realistic and probable and exists at this moment--

But he wants to use aluminum air batteries and ultra capacitors, both of which don't exist in any commercial capacity, which he can't buy if he wanted to or could afford to, which are still years from commercialization if they don't become abandoned like the 1000s of other types of battery tech that comes and goes year after year.

He tells me with a straight face that something doesn't exist and never will, and when I show him it does he says it's unreliable and not very impressive anyway. Then with that same straight face tries to sell me science fiction.

 

[Durandal]

Apologies regarding me not reading the entire thread. In regards to battery types, I would use anything but lithium, but my comment wasn't intended to back him up on the matter but simply to say that I think a trailer would be better than anything roof mounted for additional power.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

I've used an aftermarket Thule roof box on multiple cars now to expand my trunk space. Those racks typically have a maximum load of 150lbs or less. Have you looked into where you can find a rack that can hold the kind of weight you are talking about? I'll admit I haven't tried, but it seems questionable.

 

[IssacZachary]

This is like arguing that bees can't fly and then speculating that spiders will evolve wings.

Leafs and other small cars can tow trailers. 1000lb trailers, fully loaded, without trailer brakes. Trailer brakes allows you to tow more safely. Battery trailers have already been proven to work. Pusher trailers have been proven to work. Ultra capacitor packs are off the shelf products that have been used and tested before and work just fine. I really don't have anything to prove. It's all been done before successfully. There's nothing science-fiction about it.

Yet speculating we'll have cheap super high capacity battery upgrades in the near future. Technology that hasn't been proven. No one has done it before.

 

[VitaminJ]

Curious if you can link me to the pusher-trailer you know about that's proven to work.