Old Nissan Leaf Gets About 180 Miles Of Range (Video)

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

What do you do with an old Nissan Leaf that still runs well but has limited range? Just get a new battery or new battery modules to more than double the range.

If the original Nissan Leaf had a range of about 80 miles for some people back then, it was enough for a shorter commuter and some around town driving.

People are still driving old Leafs because they were well built aside from the battery thermal management issues. In this particular case, a 50 kWh battery pack from VIVNE is installed after removing the old 24 kWh battery. In looking at the VIVNE website, it appears the new pack costs between $6,000 and $7,000. They actually have battery modules that can deliver over 60 kWh for a Nissan Leaf. Would the new range be something like 220 miles?

The old, smaller battery has almost 90,000 miles on it and provides about 70 miles of range, if I heard the owner correctly.

The video commenters imply it’s ok to charge an EV battery to 100% if it is constantly used. The owner also said he ‘granny’ charged to 100%, but did not fast charge often.

When the new battery is installed, the range is about 92 miles estimated at around 50% charge. When the owner drives away, the range is estimated at 90 miles on less than 50% charge.  So, it appears the new extended range is about 180-200 miles, though it has not been road tested at that point.

Enough Nissan Leaf owners like these older EVs and may be pleased to upgrade their batteries for increased range and for the potential to diminish or eliminate battery thermal management issues.

If they don’t want to buy a new, much more expensive EV it might be a viable option to get a new battery with much expanded range and pay far less. With this older Leaf, it might be driven another 90,000 miles without extensive repairs after the battery upgrade.

What to do with the old Leaf battery? I was wondering if there is a way to keep the old battery modules and use them for a home energy storage battery. VIVNE has a product for that, though I have no experience with it.

VIVNE has a kit for converting an old EV battery into a home storage battery. 

“Please note that  this solution does not include old cells, as this is a solution designed for you to reuse your own existing old cells.

“Our storage system adopts a 12S (44.4V) setup specifically 8P12S) primarily to maximize the utilization of the entire battery cell set. With this configuration, all 96 cells (8 parallel × 12 series = 96 cells) can be fully used, that’s a good solution for old leaf battery cell.

“We also provide BMS, wiring harness, Busbar, Screws, Other necessary accessories etc. If you would like to know what accessories are included, please feel free to contact us to get the specifications of the kit.”

I don’t know how much of the old battery is usable and what can be configured with the kit. The video does not go into such details.