Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

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Dala
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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 29. Feb 2020 11:44

The MUXSAN CAN-Bridges are now available to the public to buy. I just received a pack of 10 that I will put into use over the next few months.

The final version has 3-ports, the pre-production version that I've been using had 2-ports. So the new version will allow for even crazier modifications :)

v1.0 [2-port]
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v2.5 [3-port]
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Here's a link to where you can buy them, in case you have a car that needs modifying :)
https://www.tindie.com/products/muxsan/ ... rt-rev-25/

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 08. Mar 2020 14:13

So this weekend I finished up a quick customer job, and then had some spare time to mount the Brink towbar that I bought a few months ago. Here is a brief overview of the installation.

Started with removing the rear diffuser. Lots of 10mm bolts and plastic clips.
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Next on the list was the rear bumper. I also removed the rear taillights. Check out the amount of mud that had been collecting there! Had to pressure wash it before re-installation.
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The towbar uses the stock location for the RH hook used to strap down/pull the car. This is a very sturdy place to bolt it in. Here is the old one removed.
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Next up the bar can be fitted up, and holes drilled on the LH side chassi rail. The kit mounts it with beefy inserts and 10.9grade bolts. It was a bit tricky to drill the 18mm holes needed, but I finally got it done after about an hour of drilling!
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The diffuser needed a tiny section cut out to make way for the protruding towbar. The instructions were really good here, a pair of metal scissors did the job.
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And here is the final result
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The ball is quick removable with a key. The whole construction is really, really sturdy. Keep in mind that this towbar is officially only rated for 52kg when fitted on the Leaf (bikes only), but the exact same towbar when fitted on other Nissan models are rated for 750kg, hmm. Do what you want with this information :) I still need to hook up the electrical outlet, but that was enough tinkering for this weekend.

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Sammyboi » 09. Mar 2020 13:07

I guess it is due to the electric drivetrain(maybe even cause of batteries?) and car manufacturers not wanting people to tow large amounts of cargo with EV's, even though an full electric car should do it better with the instant torque. Seen plenty of the same thing with Hybrids, but i think it is more down to the drivetrain(eCVT's) limit on towing as it could potentially wear it prematurely or it not working with longs hauls towing anything outside of bikes. :D

This is just guesswork, but if you take the petrol version of the same car it bumps up the towing capacity quite a lot. Only now we are starting to see Hybrids with decent towing capacities.

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 09. Mar 2020 18:15

Sammyboi wrote:
09. Mar 2020 13:07
I guess it is due to the electric drivetrain(maybe even cause of batteries?) and car manufacturers not wanting people to tow large amounts of cargo with EV's, even though an full electric car should do it better with the instant torque. Seen plenty of the same thing with Hybrids, but i think it is more down to the drivetrain(eCVT's) limit on towing as it could potentially wear it prematurely or it not working with longs hauls towing anything outside of bikes. :D

This is just guesswork, but if you take the petrol version of the same car it bumps up the towing capacity quite a lot. Only now we are starting to see Hybrids with decent towing capacities.
Yeah they were overly cautious when they released the Leaf. The Nissan e-nv200 can tow 450kg with the same 250Nm motor and 24kWh battery as the Leaf has. Now that I have the upgraded 40kWh battery, towing would stress it even less! Oh, and the new Volvo XC40 all electric can tow 1500kg! So the myth that EVs cant tow will soon die :)

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 18. Mar 2020 11:31

Bit of an update to what I've been up to the last week. I helped remotely to upgrade a customer car in Estonia. The upgrade was physically performed by a local garage that I sent detailed instructions to and a CAN-bridge that was pre-programmed for the specific car.

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Feels very cool to do these remote support missions :) And due to the coronavirus it's definitely best to avoid human contact!

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 21. Mar 2020 13:41

Hope everyone is staying at home during these times!

To stay creative this week, I pushed firmware updates to all battery upgrade customers. I've done some general bugfixes, but more importantly increased the maximum voltage the car charges to.
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The 2011-2013 Nissan Leaf originally charges to max 394V with a cell maximum of 4.1V. I've overridden this, and the on-board charger will now happily go to 404V with a cell max of 4.2V. This will unlock a bit more capacity out of the battery, with the downside being that if you leave it fully charged for a long period of time the pack will degrade faster. But this can be managed with smart charging, timers etc. Anyways, me and the customers are seeing quite substantial range improvements, so I'm quite happy :)

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by coleafrado » 22. Mar 2020 21:47

Dala wrote:
21. Mar 2020 13:41
The 2011-2013 Nissan Leaf originally charges to max 394V with a cell maximum of 4.1V. I've overridden this, and the on-board charger will now happily go to 404V with a cell max of 4.2V. This will unlock a bit more capacity out of the battery, with the downside being that if you leave it fully charged for a long period of time the pack will degrade faster. But this can be managed with smart charging, timers etc. Anyways, me and the customers are seeing quite substantial range improvements, so I'm quite happy :)
Interesting - they are aware their pack degradation will be faster now, right? And there is marginally higher risk of thermal events... seems like this is one of the most daring upgrades that has been done on Leaf packs so far.

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 23. Mar 2020 10:24

coleafrado wrote:
22. Mar 2020 21:47
Interesting - they are aware their pack degradation will be faster now, right? And there is marginally higher risk of thermal events... seems like this is one of the most daring upgrades that has been done on Leaf packs so far.
So if you are worried, let me do some more technical explanation on this.

Here are some snippets from the datasheet that Nissan did not provide. First, here is the state of charge for open circuit voltages.
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As you see, true 100% state of charge for LiMNO2 cells are at 4222mV. Note that we taper off the charge AND do emergency stop if one cell hit 4200mV whilst charging (incase a heavy imbalance would occur). When you stop charging, the cells don't stay at high voltage, they usually sag down by a few ten mV's. So we are not having "higher risk of thermal events" due to this, we are still far away.

The LBC will throw overvoltage DTCs if you would reach the 4260-4400mV range, and there is no chance for this since we also limit regenerative braking when we get into high SOC.

But what about situations other than 25*C you might ask? Here is the max charge current and temperature come into play.
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Note that for slowcharging (0.01->0.20 [if you charge with 6.6kW]) the max voltage is almost always also 4.2V or above. This table is being backported into the conversion software.

The 2011-2013 ZE0 LBC is filled with bugs in the lookup tables, the charging behavior doesnt follow characteristics at all. We are actually going to manage the battery better than Nissan did! And remember that we also provide the BatterySaver functionality to limit the charge-%. So you will have more usable battery and the ability to preserve your battery for longer.

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 25. Mar 2020 10:49

I recently found this excellent video taking a deep-dive into the Nissan Leaf reduction gear housing


There seems to exist two versions of the Leaf reduction gearcase.
7.94:1 for 2011-2013 ZE0 (White interior)
8.30:1 for 2013-2017 AZE0 (Black interior)

This information was missing from Wikipedia,only the 7.94:1 ratio was mentioned, so I added it.

What can we do with this newfound information? I initially got my hopes up that I could swap in the older gearbox for quicker acceleration, but after consulting with the Leaf forum we came to the conclusion that it's the other way around. The AZE0 ratio is better for quick accceleration, but has a lower topspeed. Topspeed is irrelevant for the Nissan Leaf, since it is software limited to max 150km/h, so if you have a ZE0 Leaf and want a 4.5% increase in torque, you can swap in the newer reduction gear :)

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Kasvain » 25. Mar 2020 22:08

Great information about EVs again, please continue the posting :thumbsup:

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 26. Mar 2020 16:01

So something that I bought a while back and forgot to even do was the exciting service point that is -> replacing the windshield wipers. This is long overdue, the car had the original wipers from 2015! The rubber section was really stiff, horrible noises, and they left streak marks on the windshield.

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I went with the pricier but more aerodynamical "Bosch Aerotwin'AR16U' and 'AR26U'". These cost 16€ per piece. I wish I had done this last year already, what a difference!

I'm not really driving the car while on lockdown, so I'll have time for some boring maintenance tasks now. But there is barely anything to regularly service/inspect on the Leaf, so I'll probably work more on the programming side for now :)

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 28. Mar 2020 18:36

Ok so here is something most perhaps wouldn't share.

I've made some mistakes with the charging algoritm. Or rather say ignored a potential issue.

If you remember my 500km roadtrip story a few posts back, you could see that I hit some pretty high temperatures. Here's a flashback picture to the last charging session.

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When Nissan launched the 40kWh battery back in 2018, early users quickly noticed that the lack of a thermal management system could lead to the battery throttling the charge speed after rapid consecutive fastcharging sessions, aka a roadtrip scenario. This led to the term 'Rapidgate'. People complained, and Nissan eventually launched a firmware update for the LBC to allow for a bit more power at higher temperatures (at the cost of battery health).

So, how does this relate to my 40kWh battery? I've been running WITHOUT any kind of limiter, allowing for the full 125A at any temperature. Although speedy, this is unacceptable for battery longevity. So let's see how Nissan did the original 40kWh implementation. I've formatted the data in two tables, one temperature and one for the instrument cluster dash-bars.
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Afaik, this is the original data pre-rapidgate fix. So this is the safest known set of parameters for quickcharging a 40kWh pack. I've tested that I can successfully manipulate the charge speed on the fly, and now taken the OEM map into use. I'm pushing this firmware update to all customers aswell.

But what's next? With some thinking, we can create sets of better maps depending on usecase.

Example 1. Say you are preparing for a long roadtrip, care about your car, want it to last a long time. You also don't care if you need to charge 5minutes longer at each stop. Then an even more relaxed parameter set would be perfect.

Example 2. Another use case, you are in a rush to get somewhere. Every minute counts, so you want to minimize time spent charging, and don't care about long term battery health. Then a more aggressive set of charging parameters could be used (temporarily hopefully!).

The possibilities here are endless, and maybe quickly switching between charging speed profiles could be the solution. I'll have to consult with my customers :)

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 31. Mar 2020 13:10

Here's something mildly interesting to say the least.

The 30kWh LEAF, sold between 2016 to 2018 have some controversy going on with the warranty replacements. Normally, a LEAF has warranty for capacity loss overtime, this means if it looses more than 30% capacity before the warranty runs out, Nissan replaces the battery with a new one. Early adapters / owners have longed for Nissan to replace the aging 24kWh packs with some larger ones when doing warranty, but Nissan has stood firm on only replacing 24kWh packs with newer 24kWh packs. But, the 30kWh LEAF is different! Nissan has been silently using 40kWh packs when they are doing warranty work on 30kWh LEAFs, and I kinda understand why.

Here is some inside information i got from a friends friend. It's the internal price list for all the packs.
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24kWh - 17666€ 0%VAT
30kWh - 22730€ 0%VAT
40kWh - 20871€ 0%VAT
62kWh - 28897€ 0%VAT

First of all, the prices are silly high, and Nissan won't let you buy a battery. These are only for warranty work. Note that the 40kWh pack is cheaper to get compared to the 30kWh pack. So there is a pure profit in using 40kWh packs instead of 30kWh ones. Also, Nissan still makes 40/62 packs, the 30 size was only used for a brief period, so it makes sense to streamline the production. But here is the real question, why not allow the same warranty upgrade for old 2011-2016 24kWh Leafs?

Speculation time:
- Upgrading the 24kWh Leaf to 40kWh makes the car so much more usable, that it would hurt newer sales. Can't have people using older cars for too long! Upgrading a 30kWh->40kWh doesn't hurt the sales as much.
- It is hard to upgrade the oldest Leaf. This I noticed myself too, the communication between the LBC->VCM is really different on the 2011-2013 ZE0 Leaf. If you drop in a 40kWh pack into a 2014+ AZE0 Leaf, the communication is mostly the same, and Nissan can get away with doing a minor firmware update. But if they try to do the same on the oldest ZE0, the pack wont even be recognized properly, and ALL the modules on the CAN-bus in the car would need a firmware update to cooperate. Nothing impossible (since we hobbyists are doing it right now!), but hard to do it officially.

I don't like Nissans strategy, since it promotes a throw away culture. End of rambling :)

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Sammyboi » 31. Mar 2020 16:43

That's car business in a nutshell. To add to the speculation. Are they still letting the updated packs work with the full potential of 40kwh or do they limit that aswell to mimic the old range of the 30kwh? That would be fubar.

I believe that would be easy to do aswell with just limiting the batteries capacity with a software update.

E: I also read that one of the tow limit reasons is due to the way EV's are produced with plastic rear ends and no metal to hook the tow bar into. Was it like that in this? Normally you just hook it into the crash beams.

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Re: Dala's Leaf buildthread (2015 Nissan Leaf)

Post by Dala » 31. Mar 2020 17:15

Sammyboi wrote:
31. Mar 2020 16:43
That's car business in a nutshell. To add to the speculation. Are they still letting the updated packs work with the full potential of 40kwh or do they limit that aswell to mimic the old range of the 30kwh? That would be fubar.

I believe that would be easy to do aswell with just limiting the batteries capacity with a software update.
Thankfully the warranty 40kWh works like it should and gives the user more range for free :)
E: I also read that one of the tow limit reasons is due to the way EV's are produced with plastic rear ends and no metal to hook the tow bar into. Was it like that in this? Normally you just hook it into the crash beams.
The Leaf is a standard Nissan vehicle, quite similar to a Nissan Note/Sentra/Versa/Tiida. So it has the chassi rails running all the way to the back, which is what the tow bar attaches too. There is a fastener there already from the factory, which you can pull the whole car with (1500kg), so there is no mechanical weakness. Dunno from where you heard that :P

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