Building an Electric Car - EV Parts - Nissan Leaf Motor running on open source inverter logic board

[@madhatmassarani6]

Well done Shane, huge milestone to get the motor turning with your own board. We have full confidence in you to get it working properly. Keep on it and you shall prevail.

[@ShaunOReilly]

I never thought of replacing a perfectly good Porsche engine with a Nissan EV motor, but now you have corrupted me too much!! Thank you Shane!!. I am going to buy a $10K Porsche boxter, and move my Nissan Leaf components into it, and maybe move the Porsche components into the Leaf... Will freak many peaople out!!... But I was thinking, I want to drag race a few bullies on the road with this Sleeper EV Porsche, and its top speed only needs to be 120 km /h after which I slow down to 100, and watch the other guy zoom by with a defeated bad temper.. So maybe, the 62Kw battery pack with the 160KW inverter and a differential that is purposely built for max 120 km /speed? I want to achieve 0 - 100km /h in 3 or 4 seconds, with a 50km ev range after whichI will fully charge it for free at the next charging station for the next race.... Any ideas?

[@nano996]

great profesional, congrats!!

[@청동이-u6p]

it looks the phases are not completely aligned to see vibrations and noises... how do you think?

[@IfItAintBrokeStillFixIt]

did you ever make a detailed video on the config setup ? having real problems trying to get the motor spinning

[@wiwatar]

Hi, Did you set up your test using the lead-acid battery ? How many voltage the you use ?

[@ItisImarko]

Do you have any idea of continues power on motor.. Of course with bigger kooling sistem

[@blackterminal]

Hello is this the cheapest way to use a Nissan motor? Ie cheaper than one of those resolver boards with a Nissan inverter? What it the minimum voltage you could drive this motor with in a car?

[@TFMsnavy]

Would it be easier to repackage the entire leaf wiring into a vehicle? I'm looking to ev a clasic mini

[@PerformanceEV]

There are a couple of options around this, one is to use the full leaf wiring loom, of which there is quite a lot. This has been done a few times, I recall a discussion on the diyelectriccar form that went into this in depth and I have seen a few KZbin videos of this working. I think the challenge is that it's not just the wiring you need, but quite a few of the ancillaries need to be plugged into the wiring for the Leaf VCU to actually send commands to the inverter. These can be things you may not necessarily need in your car. But if you have a full donor leaf, then may be the most cost effective route as you have all the parts. Another option is to keep the inverter intact and use a third party VCU like the Thunderstruck one or the OpenSource one from EVBMW. These send the same commands to inverter as the Leaf VCU, but without needing all the other wiring. In both of these case you are limited to the 80kW output from the inverter even though the inverter and motor are capable of more power. I ultimately want to try for more power, so I decided to go for the third option of the drop in logic board, which gives me much more control over the inverter power stage.

[@mikehotchkiss8975]

You eluded to the power that nissan tuned the motor inverter combo to produce not being the limit....what would it be in the real world, in your opinion, without drastically shortening the life of the inverter motor group?

[@PerformanceEV]

Based on the work of others. I have seen a figure of about 160Kw (215hp) using the stock inverter. This would require me to push the max current and voltage that the inverter can handle, so I would need to up the pack voltage a bit to around 450v. It seems like the motor can handle more, there's a guy in Canada pushing around 225 through the motor with a custom built inverter.

[@mikehotchkiss8975]

Many thanks for doing this. My application mirrors yours to a point and all your hard work will save me huge. The open source logic board is to back door all the nissan specific safeties (key fobs etc)? I was hoping to use the motor without the trans but putting a side load on the motor bearings would most likely end in engine failure.(sprocket on output driving another sprocket with a motorcycle chain) Any feedback from yourself or your well informed viewers would be great

[@InvokePerformance]

im looking to use the Nissan leaf motor in a project can you tell me what the length of the motor not including the shaft? thanks so much!!

[@xXZ31t6esTXx]

I'd love to make a single gear conversion!!! Teach me

[@stephenwylie1654]

Nice work well done lad are u Irish ☘️

[@jamest.5001]

What's with the audio when the motor is spinning?

[@Tore_Lund]

So does the leaf motor have permanent magnets in its rotor? What current does it draw at full rpm unloaded ( I do understand you're only running it on 50V)?

[@PerformanceEV]

Hi Tore, yes the magnets are in the rotor. I found this site quite interesting on the inner workings: www.marklines.com/en/report_all/rep1104_201209 I'll get some detailed current data when I next have the motor hooked up and report back.

[@leaf_for_life]

Hi! I may lost some info in Your last videos, but why don't You use original nissan wiring and control?? Isn't it easy too decode dashboard signals against invertor signals?

[@PerformanceEV]

I made some progress on that front, but then ended up going around in circles trying to get it actually to work. I didn't want to lose any more time on the project so decided to move on to using the drop in board. I may have been able to get it working with the can messages, but I realised as I was testing that there would be a lot more effort needed to do something that would be safe for use on the road. Damien Maguire just released a few videos of an Open Source VCU he is building to do this for the Leaf inverter and it is much more detailed than what I would have come up with.

[@MrPon4ik1974]

здорово, молодец. у меня в какой-то момент промелькнула мысль: не стоит ли у лифа шаговый двигатель?

[@vladimira.shestakov2493]

Good luck !!

[@richardmarkham8369]

Is it true that OpenInverter can only run the motor to 3000rpm? Seems like a significant limitation if that's true?

[@PerformanceEV]

There were some limitations when they first started trying it with permanent magnet motors (like the leaf one) due to the the software not being optomised to support Field Oriented Control. A couple of people in the open inverter community are working on Leaf conversions so there was a lot of work going on over the last few months to enhance the software to support FOC. I think that version of the software is still in beta but the results are looking good.

[@richardmarkham8369]

@@PerformanceEV Just read about Paul Holmes setback, but looks like he's progressing really well with field weakening and his processor board for the leaf inverter. Lots of good work going on!

[@tiborkiss9186]

@@PerformanceEV DO you think the inverter is also working on 3-phase induction motor? Grat succes btw, with the leaf, I am trying a similar manouver with a chevy volt inverter runnning an AC induction motor out of an EV.

[@jamest.5001]

Doesn't anyone make aftermarket motor controllers for motors like these?

[@richardschofield2201]

Yes, but if you want real power is will set you back about £7k

[@garyhoffmann1615]

openinverter dot org sells ready-built controllers.

[@ramialdawahik]

An engineer, I have an idea. Is it possible to put electrical generators that work with the movement of the wheels of the car with solar cells and then connect this electricity to the car engine without an adapter? Please answer 😂

[@doobedoobedo1]

Are you using the FOC code?

[@PerformanceEV]

Not yet. I took a look at it, but I haven't got my head fully around the additional parameters so wasn't sure of all the changes I would need to account for the much lower voltage I was testing with. I rolled it back to the current released version to at least get the basics working and be certain the inverter and motor were functioning. I'll try the FOC code again when I have 350v+.

[@doobedoobedo1]

@@PerformanceEV I have mine running with FOC now :)

[@murraymadness4674]

Are you going to up the power? A 100hp 911 is not what I'd call a performance car. Would be good driver sure, but just not fast.

[@yousiflakho1771]

Why not make a windturbine from this motor

[@richardschofield2201]

If I can get my hands on a cheap second hand leaf controller do you know if it will contain key components like the half bridges that will save some money on an open source build? Any reason not to do it this way?

[@PerformanceEV]

The leaf inverter includes the IGBTs, however the driver board is soldered directly on top of them with dozens of pins. If you are planning to do what I did, keeping the leaf driver boards, current sensors, capacitor etc. Then it's fine. If you just wanted to reuse the IGBTs and use your own components for those other pieces, then you may struggle.

[@pomonabill220]

Can't stand the camera handling noise!!!!

[@berdia0305]

!!!! )

[@tabaks]

Jesus f-in christ, record sound as Mono if you can't keep the mic centered.