Quadrupling my Nissan Leaf's Range! 62kWh Battery Swap

Buying a testing a 62kWh battery from a wrecked Nissan Leaf to swap into my 2016 30kWh Leaf and hopefully quadruple the range of the car.

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[michaellippmann]

Great video!
I lucked out...bought a 2017 Leaf that was at 8 bars, called Nissan Canada with the VIN and they confirmed it was still under warranty (in 2024).
Picked up the car, took it to the local Nissan dealer, they confirmed it qualified and ordered a new battery, took about 8 weeks for it to arrive and they did the swap June 2024, new battery was a 40kwh. What an improvement! We have put on about 10, 000km since then. Winter range was in the high 190's to low 220's (km) and last summer we saw many 300km days!
Because we lucked out it was $0.
The 62kwh will be killer in your Leaf!
Cheers
Mike 🇨🇦

[insAneTunA]

Here in Europe you can go to an EV clinic, for example the EV clinic in Berlin, and they take the battery apart and diagnose each individual cell, and those that are bad or about to go bad get replaced, and then you end up with a battery that is up to spec as if it was new. And the costs for that are about a 1000 euro for taking apart the battery from a tesla model S, and 50 Euro for each cell that needs to be replaced. On average the costs are around 1200 Euro for the entire refurbishing, depending on how many cells that need to be replaced. And they do every brand of car. But you can also do an upgrade from the battery with a complete replacement. There are different options that you can pick from. And there are different locations across Europe that you can go to. And on average the refurbishing takes about 3 days.

[byeagjermq]

👍 happy to see it covered. i have cleared the info from my end. stay safe! (9:30 five times, 2 days ago)

[LoveOfMules]

Whoever had the leaf before you really missed the boat on getting that battery replaced. It was almost certainly below 67% health before the warranty ended sometime in 2024.

[Mladjasmilic]

1:40
I have Renault Zoe, distant relative of Leaf.
Under trunk area there is 2nd AC unit with air chiller and PTC heaters to condition the battery. Zoe has closed loop air condition for the battery.
Zoe was designed to use motor as part of AC charging circuit and Q210/Q90 models can do up to 43kW AC (3x230Vx63A), so it needed active cooling. Later models R135 could do 50kW DC fast charge (43kW in practice peak), without damage to the battery. All can regen brake up to 40kW.
It would take less room if it had liquid for heat exchange, but this was cheaper. My Zoe is 2018, 120.000km and it is 88% SOH, so battery degradation is not a concern.

[JHulce]

1, 000 cycles is insanely conservative. I'd expect much closer to 4, 000 cycles before range is unusable.

[nc]

Seems to be the most economically sensible commuter EV option. (But those longevity calculations are conditional, on various additional parameters, such as, ambient temperature.)

Look forward to seeing how the physical and firmware, differences are addressed? Since there are a few different options. Have fun.

[TronJockey]

What tends to accelerate degradation are often simple things like letting the vehicle sit for extended periods with 100% (indicated) charge. Nissan's NMC chemistry doesn't like this. I used to do this every night with my 2015 Leaf after coming home from work. I'd plug in as soon as I arrived home and the car would reach 100% charge in about 3 to 4 hours. It would then sit overnight until 7 am the next morning, resting for roughly 10 to 11 hours at full charge. This would occur on weekends as well sitting from Friday evening until Monday morning. This behavior was slowly killing my battery, just a tiny bit each time but the effects are cumulative. Many owners incorrectly assume that since the BMS indicates 100% when the battery is actually only at 90% (done to protect the cells) it's OK to leave it sit at 100% indicated. For the Nissan Leaf (especially the early models) it's best to charge to 100% only when you intend to use the vehicle promptly. Keeping it under 80% (90% indicated) is probably the best for a long battery life.

[leggysoft]

Solar energy companies have starting taking these batteries to use for grid storage. Hopefully that does not cause supply to run out causing cars to get thrown out.

[MrNameloc]

I'm impressed on how all this stuff is so easy for you 😅 If the battery swap is a cake-walk, do the kei truck

[francistheodorecatte]

the calendar degredation would probably be more accurate taken as a percentage of the cycle degredation.

[kcaa]

It's frustrating there aren't better places to buy those batteries. This place does list batteries, but they give no information about the battery health or even size. If you want to roll the dice, you could just go to local junkyards. Hope that battery works out for you

[kipdennis]

Any plans for battery cooling? I mean passive cooling in 2025 not good

[aaronbounds]

Too bad Nissan did such a poor job with BMS and cooling. These packs could last a lot longer, several thousand cycles.

[mikeccpu]

It looks like the 60 kWh packs at LVQ are $7-8k. Have they gone up in price since you bought yours, or were you able to negotiate from the online price?

[Mladjasmilic]

Is there something like this for Renault Zoe Q90 or R90?

[dougabbott]

I didn't think a second generation Leaf battery would fit into a first gen. Leaf
62 kWh battery is a lot heavier?
Suspension will be ok or will you have to get heavier springs etc? I guess we wait and see.

[kudynski]

I dont have the DuPont housing for the DuPont connectors. Could I just use some electrical tape?

[Mladjasmilic]

So this is MK2 Leaf battery into MK1 Leaf body?

[calvinbarnes]

The space under the trunk floor was for a wireless charger that never made it to consumers.