Battery Upgrades are very possible

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Wow, I'm surprised that mux is selling those! That definitely provides some hope for DIY retrofits of newer packs in older LEAFs!!
 
Dala said:
Update, the Man-in-the-middle CAN boards from Muxsan arrived today. Purchased a 30kWh pack, gonna figure out shipping next, and I'm also always on the lookout for any 40kWh packs :)

Here is where the magic happens:
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very cool! Do keep us all updated on your progress with this, my 24kwh pack has at least another couple of years left but this is exciting progress.
 
Today I took delivery of a 30kWh pack, time to take it apart hopefully this weekend :)
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It was really dusty, the car must have been thoroughly crashed! 2017 with 14k miles on it!
 
As a software engineer and leaf owner, I am really interested in seeing how you are going to write a functional CAN bridge between your 24kwh car and the 30kwh battery.
In your case, reverse engineering the 24kwh protocol seems doable, since you can observe your current battery communicating with your car in all kinds of situations.
However, I wonder how difficult it will be to understand what the 30kwh battery outputs and expects as you are missing a piece of the puzzle, the car with which it communicates.
I hope CAN messages are not too different, please keep us informed of all the gory details :)
 
He doesn't need to hack the CanBUS, because he already purchased a "Man-in-the-middle" CAN board from Muxsan:

https://youtu.be/hLJefVNS8JA
 
@alozzy: What I am wondering about is not the physical aspect of interfering communications between the battery and the VCM, but rather how to alter the messages (So how to program the firmware of the board mux is providing).
For this, you need to understand what each battery sends and expects to receive, unless of course they use exactly the same protocol.
 
Presumably muxsan provides some documentation with the product, or he has open sourced the firmware and it's available on GitHub or whatever.

A Google search of GitHub reveals quite a few code projects:

"nissan leaf" canbus site:github.com

This one in particular looks promising:

https://github.com/johnmacmillan96/CAN

One would hope that, rather than having to interpret the CANBUS raw data yourself, muxsan has provided a simple to use API for manipulating specific days such as battery capacity, battery temperature, etc but that still be a work in progress.

Perhaps @muxsan will weigh in here at some point with more information.
 
I am now driving with the hybrid 24/30kWh pack, will do a shakedown before diving into the CAN-bridge properly.

Beefy cells!
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On the road after 3 days downtime.
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More info here: http://www.japtoys.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3613&start=15#p71210
 
Thanks for the update and nice work!

I thought you were going to put the CAN bus man in the middle adapter between the battery and the VCM in order to avoid having to open the packs and do the cell swap.

I wonder whether this approach is feasible, if it was, and if 40/62kwh batteries are electrically compatible with leaf gen1, it would mean that you could upgrade a gen1 with a gen2 battery quite easily, by just translating the protocols on the fly.
 
Kebin, if a remember correctly, muxsan said to it will be possible eventually to add gen 2 batteries int leaf 1 using only the CAN man in the middle bus with is latest video of his projet. But I will be tested later this year.
 
kebin said:
Thanks for the update and nice work!

I thought you were going to put the CAN bus man in the middle adapter between the battery and the VCM in order to avoid having to open the packs and do the cell swap.

I wonder whether this approach is feasible, if it was, and if 40/62kwh batteries are electrically compatible with leaf gen1, it would mean that you could upgrade a gen1 with a gen2 battery quite easily, by just translating the protocols on the fly.

EVs Enhanced over in NZ is working on this. They will offer OBD2 flashing to make the 30kWh pack work with a 24kWh VCM, without having to open it up. I am doing this the bruteforce method, and there will surely be better methods available in the future. 40kWh is the next step, but 62kWh is afaik mechanically different. We don't know how different yet, there aren't many crashed 62kWh packs floating around yet...
 
I subscribed to Nissan Publications for a short time to look at the service manual for 2019 because I am considering replacement of my 2015 with a new SL+ and want to know some of the technical details. There are a lot of differences between the 40 kWh and 62 kWh versions. The number of modules is completely different between the 62 kWh and 40 kWh packs. Also, the 40 kWh packs have fewer modules than the 30 kWh and 24 kWh packs so upgrading by just swapping cell modules will not be possible. I will be watching developments in this thread.
 
I now have some data! Did a lot of driving over the past days to get a feel for the new pack. I managed a comfortable 205km at 15-13*C with no AC or heat. I averaged 7.3km/kWh, due to me slowing down after going past 0.0% SOC.

The first 100km I drove 85-100km/h. The second 100km I drove between 60-85km/h. Here is what the 24 LBC instrumentation said:

16% dash, 114km travelled. Low battery warning!
8% dash, 135km travelled. - - - km remaining
- - -% dash, 142km travelled, - - - 3.66V min cell voltage (Leafspy 12.3% SOC)
150km travelled, 3.64V min voltage (3.61V under load), (Leafspy 7.6% SOC)
165km travelled, 3.58V min voltage (3.53V under load), (Leafspy 0.0% SOC)
205km travelled, 3.37V min voltage (3.30V under load) (Leafspy gave up a long time ago...)

I could probably have kept driving until turtle, and waited for the contactors to open, but I really didn't want to strand myself. Taking it slow, it would probably been possible to drive 220-230km on a single charge. I love the 30kWh battery, but the instrumentation needs fixing asap, Half of the range is left after it indicates the first low battery voltage lol!

So, question to you leaf-gurus, what is the turtle cell voltage on a 24 LBC? And how low would you comfortably go? I chickened out at 3.30V under load, but it might be possible to squeeze more out of the pack?
 
I think that's what happens when a older leaf battery is repacked with 40kwh modules.
A good portion of the range you gain is between LBW and turtle.
 
Oilpan4 said:
I think that's what happens when a older leaf battery is repacked with 40kwh modules.
A good portion of the range you gain is between LBW and turtle.

I think the 40kWh is even better when you do it the bruteforce method. Theoretical calculations would be ~150km before low battery warning, and possible to drive up to 300km (150more) between LBW and turtle.

I actually just got a message that a 2018 ZE1 40kWh was crashed this week, and I got first dibs on the pack! Will be interesting to look at a 40kWh pack too, and perform that bruteforce upgrade too!
 
I've been road-tripping and taking a proper vacation the last week. The Leaf is performing excellently! We've had a proper heatwave, the all black Leaf with black interior showed +34C as highest temp!

A benefit of the warm weather is better battery performance. The Guess-O-Meter showed as high as 203km fully charged. Does the stock 24kWh Leaf even show that high estimates when new?
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State of health has capped at 103.27%. It hasn't budget at all in a week. Maybe it doesn't go higher?
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I still remember that when I picked up our 2011 LEAF the dealer said that it did not matter how much he tried to charge it, the car did not go above 128 miles that is 205 km. The real world range was 80 something miles in the summer.
 
Dala said:
Oilpan4 said:
I think that's what happens when a older leaf battery is repacked with 40kwh modules.
A good portion of the range you gain is between LBW and turtle.

I think the 40kWh is even better when you do it the bruteforce method. Theoretical calculations would be ~150km before low battery warning, and possible to drive up to 300km (150more) between LBW and turtle.

I actually just got a message that a 2018 ZE1 40kWh was crashed this week, and I got first dibs on the pack! Will be interesting to look at a 40kWh pack too, and perform that bruteforce upgrade too!

Yeah if we could get a BMS that could read the 40kwh cells properly.
I say get the 40kwh cells in there now, then maybe if we are lucky some one will build or reprogram our 24kwh bms to work more correctly with 40kwh cells later on.

The absolute max range I have seen on mine was 124 miles in eco mode.
Thats when I was stuck level 1 charging and driving it like a grandma.. SOH was around 90% then too.
Around this time next year I will start seriously looking for a 40kwh pack.
I wouldn't mind having a 103.27% SOH that doesn't move for like 7 years.
 
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