Nissan Leaf Motor Powered from Batteries - How many volts?!

I was able to scrounge up enough extra batteries to get the Leaf motor to power up. You won't believe what the voltage is to make that happen!
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I pulled 6 Nissan Leaf cell modules out of my old wheelie tractor project. Adding those in series with the 18 in the Vectrix allowed me to get to high enough of a voltage to power the Leaf inverter. After that, I used fewer and fewer Leaf cells until the Thunderstruck VCU would error out. This let me find the approximate minimum voltage needed to run the unit.
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Most Popular Playlists:
Build Your Own Electric Car: bit.ly/2zMufmN
Build Your Own Electric Motorcycle: bit.ly/2AT7eOF
Solar Garage: bit.ly/2KgQpS5
Contact Ben Nelson:
Please just leave a comment for me at: 300mpg.org/about/
and I'll get right back to you.
Music by:
"Shaving Mirror" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons...
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Amazon links help support this these videos.

[@offgridwanabe]

The versatility of those Nissan Leaf batteries is totally amazing

[@SirTragain]

Great! Now you know what to program EMPTY on the fuel gauge...

[@NeonSoundSolution]

buddy this is the most intresting video playlist that i want in the moment .. thank you keep up your bloody good work

[@ThisRandomUsername]

It's very interesting that the system worked on rectified AC without any external smoothing capacitors. I guess there would be smoothing capacitors in the inverter keeping the voltage high enough, but you'd probably have to add extra capacitance if you were to use rectified AC with a usable amount of power. Also, when rectifying AC, you take the peak voltage not the RMS voltage, as that's what the capacitors will be charged up to. Rectifying 240VAC and smoothing it with capacitors will yeild ~340VDC, so that gets quite dangerous.

[@TRYtoHELPyou]

Outstanding work! TKS for sharing.

[@stevenpleasant5834]

Hello I have been watching your video on this Nissan Leaf motor stuff I want to put on in one of my Buggy builds I am trying to learn all about this controller and Battery stuff -ok I was thinking on using a 12 volt battery and a 250 volt inverter to run my set up but is this a AC volts if so all I need to do is use that ac to dc little block you showed I am trying to come up with a way not to have to use all those battery cells and as for charging the battery I have a plan for that too hope to hear back from you on this and I hope I can do this. and I am glad that you are making these videos thanks.

[@fredflintstone1428]

As the early Nissan Leaf's (the 24kWh battery ones) used Li-ion batteries, could the latest 304Ah, 3.45V Prismatic cells from say EVE or Envision be connected in series to have a LiFePO4 battery instead?

[@joeabad5908]

Ben, I always love your videos.. What are you up to theae days?

[@stevenpleasant5834]

Hello also can I run this motor in the reverse all the time I am asking this because of were I want to place the motor in the rear of my buggy. please let me know thanks.

[@BushImports]

Is it water cooled? I just wondered what the hoses coming out of it are for and that's the only thing that makes sense. Thanks Ben.

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

Yes, the Leaf inverter is liquid-cooled. I have a 12V electric pump on there circulating water from a 5-gallon bucket.

[@blackterminal]

Hi if you have a lower voltage battery but feed through a motor controller can you get a higher voltage output enough to drive the leaf motor? The leaf motor is a AC motor right?

[@Farmergroup1]

Which motor best for tractor conversion ac or bldc

[@Alex_Bessinger]

I would be very interested to see what amount of power you are able to get out of this setup with the Thunderstruck VCU. It seems as though the LEAF motor and inverter should be able to handle quite a bit more power than stock with no problems... I haven't been able to find any definitive info online as to what the Thunderstruck VCU will actually let to inverter do (is it limited to basically "stock" LEAF parameters?). LEAFs are so cheap and plentiful that I have thought about getting ahold of one sometime to use as a parts donor for a conversion.

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

The Thunderstruck VCU "tricks" the motor an inverter into thinking they are still in a Leaf. It's stock performance.

[@KSA-wo7dh]

Ben, I've been inspired by you to go with the Leaf motor in a 4x4 project I'm making for Guyana, SA. I have plenty of solar and gas is $8 per gal when available. I'm presently trying to figure out how many batts I need? Using EVE 3.2V 304 AH but just how many do I need is the Q? Thanks

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

You need enough in series to get the voltage high enough to run the inverter. That's somewhere above 200VDC. I believe that Thunderstruck recommends at least a 250VDC battery pack.

[@KSA-wo7dh]

@@BenjaminNelsonX Wow, that's over 70 batts or cells. Was afraid of that... money wise. Thanks for your help.

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

It's very common for commercially built electric cars to use 96 cell modules. Home conversions will often use smaller cells, but more in series to get to higher voltages.

[@KSA-wo7dh]

@@BenjaminNelsonX Yes, I'll need to purchase cells with lower AH than the 304s I have now, ie. cheaper cells. I have 16 - 3.2v LF304 AH now because I originally wanted to use a DC forklift motor, but I need about 150 ftlbs torque. Can the 16 304AH be mixed with same voltage, different AH?

[@kmuralikrishna1582]

Ben I need your help to make or use components for mini tractor.. On list of parts required Steering module setup etc... please help me Note I'm not looking for existing or old tractor I wud like to make from scratch.. I have some plan for frame but I want to know what kind of motors needs to use for mini tractor.. Please reply Ben ..

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

That's a pretty open-ended question - "How do I build a tractor from scratch?" Take a look to see what other people have done. Commercially, there is an electric tractor called the Solectrak. Take a look at that: www.solectrac.com/ You can also look at projects on the EV Album. There are some small electric tractors on there. Look to see what components other people use, and it should give you a good idea of what you may want to use for your project. evalbum.com/type/TCMW Good Luck!

[@RoadnTech]

Ok, so I have a question. Is there anything stopping me from using one battery pack to run two motors with two controllers? Would I have to double the amperage to run both simultaneously? Im sure I'm overthinking this.

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

You're probably overthinking it. If you ran both motors at the same time at full power, you would need to make sure that your battery pack could handle that. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with powering many things all off the same battery. A pair of Leaf motors would be a straight-forward way to build a four-wheel-drive Electric Vehicle.

[@RoadnTech]

@@BenjaminNelsonX right! What about taking 2 or more sealed leaf batteries tied together in series to extend range… space isn’t a concern in this particular build

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

@@RoadnTech Tied together in PARALLEL! You would want to keep the voltage the same, but increase the capacity. I'm sure it could be done, but there are probably some "Devil is in the details" that you would need to figure out. I've never hooked together two Leaf battery packs, so I really couldn't tell you. Dig through some DIY electric car forums and you might find somebody who has done that.

[@fookutube501]

Is patreon video longer then 4 min?

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

I post all my videos early on Patreon, along with some behind the scenes and other goodies. There will be more videos including longer ones still coming on this project.

[@neliosamch3195]

So, you need a minimum of 50 Nissan batteries to run that motor. 3.2 x 50 = 160v

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

No, Nissan Leaf cell modules have 4 cells inside each - two in series, two in parallel. Nominal voltage is 7.6 volts. Looks like 22 Leaf cell modules will run this fine.

[@SirTragain]

@@BenjaminNelsonX To reiterate: Four cells inside each Nissan Leaf cell module at 3.8 Volts per cell; two in series for 7.6 Volts and two in parallel doubling the potential amperage of those in series. Then 22 Nominal (theoretically equal) Leaf cell modules are placed in series to equal 167.2 Volts. In your other video I believe you stated that the cells you have are the series #1 cell packs which are 60 amp hour.

[@t.shonoiki563]

3.2 is half of one battery. A 24kwh Nissan leaf battery is 400 volts when fully charged. 48 modules hold 400v dc which means each module has 8.3v but because they are not new then we can 8v

[@SirTragain]

@@t.shonoiki563 That math does not add up; 3.2*2=6.4 not 8 and Ben said the "Nominal" voltage of his cell packs are 7.6 volts which if you divide that by two gives 3.8 volts for the two in parallel. Maybe a new cell pack is rated for 8 volts but these are not new. With that said; a car battery is rated as 12 volts yet they normally have a resting state of 12.7 volts.

[@neliosamch3195]

@@SirTragain It appears that the voltage for the second generation module fully charged is around 8.3v but the software is set to charge the modules to 90% of the capacity which must be around 7.8v

[@JeremyAkersInAustin]

158 volts with 24 modules... isn't that under 3.3v per cell? Those cells were at pretty low state of charge I'm guessing?

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

I started with the 18 cell modules in the Vectrix PLUS the 6 I pulled from the tractor for 24 total. That ran the Leaf setup just fine. Then I progressively connected it to fewer and fewer modules until it errored out again. When the voltmeter shows 150V, the setup is connected to the Vectrix plus 2 additional modules (150 / 20 = 7.75V per module or 3.75V per individual cell.) At 158V, I just had one more cell module in series for a total of 21.

[@JeremyAkersInAustin]

@@BenjaminNelsonX ahh, ok. Thanks! That makes much more sense. I must have not been paying attention at that part of the video.

[@jamest.5001]

What is the maximum voltage?

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

Based on the number of cells in the generation of Nissan Leaf this equipment was pulled from, times the maximum voltage of those cells, the maximum voltage is at least 400VDC.

[@jamest.5001]

@@BenjaminNelsonX great, thanks, I'd like to have a leaf motor to play with, for a project, connect it to a 5-6speed transmission, with something like 96s lithium battery, a small truck, van, car, i don't really care, i need to study up on what you have controlling this thing, I have missed a few videos lately, anyway, thanks!!

[@troyguererro0898]

@@jamest.5001 Hey mate, good day. Any progress on your project? I saw a wrecked Nissan leaf 3 weeks ago and I'm planning to scrap some of its parts.