Battery Vehicle Society

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01sfmb4

Very interesting programme about the Sunderland Nissan factory starting to make the LEAF. On iPlayer until the 14th May.

Two days left folks

Its well worth a watch, if only to get a small insight as to how the batteries fit

ChrisB

It is interesting to see the battery. It looks like it is a complete all in one part that just bolts to the underside of the car. I wonder how long it will be before an aftermarket replacement is made available to the older leaf cars?

mattcarr wrote:It is interesting to see the battery. It looks like it is a complete all in one part that just bolts to the underside of the car. I wonder how long it will be before an aftermarket replacement is made available to the older leaf cars?

If you use the prius as an example, you will be waiting a LONG time. The prius went on sale in 1997, and has used the same format nimh module since then, right up to today. the same modules are in the auris, yaris, prius+, camry, ct200, gs450, and rx450 hybrids. There's 3 million+ toyota hybrids out there, and as of yet there's no good quality drop in replacement battery for it. If we consider energy density is increasing around 8% per annum we have to wait at least 6 years for a battery with +50% capacity in the same form factor. At that point an eight year old Leaf will be worth, what, £3-£4k? Would you spend £10k on a new pack for it....? Tesla will hopefully have a £30k 300 mile car on the road by then.

In my mind the prius is not a good example to compair I think. It is great that there are millions of hybrid battery packs out there - and Johnson Controls are now making lithium packs for hybrid vehicles as well now. But these are small packs that are truely buried within the car. I mean, to change out a pack in a prius is pretty intensive. From the looks of the BBC filming at the Nissan plant in Sunderland - the Leaf battery it held in by 4 big bolts, and looks like a complete system.
In 6 years times - who knows what the cost of a reconditioned battery pack would be ? In my car, 4 years ago the battery pack cost 8k. I could get a replacement pack for about 3k now. In years time, I would like to think that that cost would come down even more. 3k for an old leaf? good price, 6k for an old leaf with a reconditioned battery pack? sounds like a good deal to me as well.
Who knows how the full electric car second hand or reconditioned battery pack will progress? I mean, if they can work to recycle the modern lithium as well as they recycle the current lead acid packs?

It certainly will be interesting to see how it pans out in the next few years.

I mean - look at the Renault model - they lease the battery with the car - how long before some one creates a pack you can purchase?

From memory the prius battery is held down by about 8 bolts, and you can do it alone, you don't need a ramp or anything, and it lifts out as a single unit. My point is that even with a large user base there isn't sufficient demand/good business case for a high quality, fully integrated, aftermarket replacement. How much work alone is required to reverse engineer the BMS hardware in the Leaf to be able to trick it into seeing, using, and charging a larger capacity battery than the one it shipped with. Is that even possible? We simply don't know.

Users of the Leaf in the UK haven't experienced one bar of charge capacity drop in 3 years over 40,000+ miles. Aminorjourney can tell or correct me here. The fastest capacity drop on this cell type happens from new then the drop slows to a steady decline. Which isn't much; we are talking about 30% loss in >1,000 @ 100% recharges.

Recharging to 100% for 90 miles per charge over 1,000x is for the life of the average car. Most people will be recharging at 10A at night to 80% and going nowhere near empty. The car's only weak link is the BMS and pack capacity weakening due to overheating in very hot climates. I've read of one guy who needed a cell changing and a new board. Drive one of these cars, they are a revelation

But I do like the idea of a spare couple of packs in a trailer paralleled to the car for that odd long distance trip.