New Lithium battery RowPow. Thoughts?

[MCJEFE]

Thanks for posting. Looking forward to seeing what it can do. I'm glad you had the foresight to get those baseline numbers.

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[fstop]

Originally Posted by Jkerle

Install was extremely easy and straight forward. Clears the seat base by 2in. It weighs about 100lbs. That's quite a bit more than my gen 3 leaf pack. It's only about 55-60lbs. This is the 105ah version. My leaf pack is 82ah.

First test runs where a bit flawed. When the power was removed the from the controller it had a hard reset and we lost all of our preprogrammed settings.

Once this was fixed the cart came to life easily lifting both front tires off the ground.

I am on the road this week so I havent had first hand experience with it. When I do I'll get more into the specs and the amp output we are seeing. The cart did 0-20 in 3.84 seconds. FLA (new trojan 875s) the cart did 0-20 in 5.9seconds.





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Very interested to hear more about this install.

I just recently put the Navitas 5KW AC conversion in my otherwise stock 2018 Onward factory lifted cart (but has HD solenoid / 2AWG wiring) with the factory 23" all terrain tires. PD Plus batteries (should be comparable to T875 I think).

My initial take on the install is pretty much what you noted - it seems to be starving for voltage and tops out around 30, maybe 31. Accel is fair to 23 or so maybe, but pretty flat up top. It takes a good bit of road to get to top speed.

Voltage once you finally reach top speed is around 44-44.5v, under full accel it drops to 42. All this with battery at 100% SOC, flat paved roads.

I think for my purposes (not trying to build an extreme gear shredding, record top speed setting machine) of "spirited" neighborhood transportation, maybe I should have gone with the 4KW motor - not sure but perhaps it is the better choice for standard FLA installs where you aren't doing much else to the cart, like more than 48v power or changing gear ratios etc...

Anyway, at 72 lbs the 5KW motor is just a beast (I put it in by myself, from below, and it was a minor engineering miracle to do so I thought...) and I just have to think it is capable of shredding a stock Club Car rear end if you put some voltage to it.

I never was able to find much info on the 4KW vs 5KW versions, but I'm guessing maybe the 4KW version is the better choice if you aren't going with more than 48v?

Anyway, I'd be happy with the 30ish top end I have now if it was more responsive / quicker in the midrange. Don't need axle snapping low end either - I feel like a 58v pack that doesn't sag much under load would do it, and with a significantly lighter pack weight, that would only help.

Anxious to see your further results - Thanks for posting.

EDIT: Not on topic, but the thought also crossed my mind to consider 6x 12v FLA batteries (like the EZGO "Freedom" 72v AC cart), but I think range would be minimal. I do think this motor would operate more efficiently with more voltage though, so who knows....

[fstop]

Originally Posted by Jkerle

Install was extremely easy and straight forward. Clears the seat base by 2in. It weighs about 100lbs. That's quite a bit more than my gen 3 leaf pack. It's only about 55-60lbs. This is the 105ah version. My leaf pack is 82ah.

First test runs where a bit flawed. When the power was removed the from the controller it had a hard reset and we lost all of our preprogrammed settings.

Once this was fixed the cart came to life easily lifting both front tires off the ground.

I am on the road this week so I havent had first hand experience with it. When I do I'll get more into the specs and the amp output we are seeing. The cart did 0-20 in 3.84 seconds. FLA (new trojan 875s) the cart did 0-20 in 5.9seconds.



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Have you had a chance to test it out any further for range, speeds, voltage drop etc...?

[Jkerle]

Originally Posted by fstop

Have you had a chance to test it out any further for range, speeds, voltage drop etc...?

I havent, to much going on this time of year. We did a little bit of tuning going back and forth with Navitas and were able to get it to pop a 6in wheelie on take off. We also dropped a second off the zero to 20mph time. If this was my first modded cart I would be more than happy with the performance. How ever the pack is limited to 250amps max output. This does hurt the acceleration a little bit. I would say that for most applications it would be a huge improvement over FLA tho. My leaf cell setup with a 600amp controller has drawn 600amps on take off according to the data log. So in my cart I would see a huge reduction in performance if I switched to this pack.

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[fstop]

Originally Posted by Jkerle

I havent, to much going on this time of year. We did a little bit of tuning going back and forth with Navitas and were able to get it to pop a 6in wheelie on take off. We also dropped a second off the zero to 20mph time. If this was my first modded cart I would be more than happy with the performance. How ever the pack is limited to 250amps max output. This does hurt the acceleration a little bit. I would say that for most applications it would be a huge improvement over FLA tho. My leaf cell setup with a 600amp controller has drawn 600amps on take off according to the data log. So in my cart I would see a huge reduction in performance if I switched to this pack.

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Thanks for the additional info. Looking forward to some more data when you have the time, but the 250 amp max output of this pack - does the pack shut down / disconnect at that point or is it "soft" limited in a way that allows the controller not to reset etc... and just limits acceleration / torque?

[fstop]

Originally Posted by MCJEFE

I'm looking forward to seeing your results. Are you planning to track the hours and look for degradation in performance or all out failure due to stressing the pack?

I'm not sure of how accurate my method was... but I got a cheap in line meter, ran my Leaf pack down to 3.65v, installed the meter and measured the AH while charging to full charge at 10 amps. You might be able to do something similar by measuring your pack capacity upon installation and after 50, 100.. hours to see if there's any significant change?

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Are you saying you'd expect these cells / packs to degrade faster than the used Leaf cells that are used to build the DIY packs?

Is it because the used cells have already taken a certain degradation hit because of previous use and have "stabilized" at whatever level they are when they go into a DIY pack, or because you feel that the chemistry in the manufactured pack's cells (despite the fact that they are new cells) would be more prone to degradation than the older Leaf cells?

I know some of the purveyors of the Leaf modules state that they have "70% life remaining", and have never understood if that is in capacity or # of cycles left or some of both. To my knowledge you can't get new Leaf modules, or if you can their cost is prohibitive for this use.

I'm probably not calculating this correctly at all, but if a "New" leaf 14 module pack could on paper supply approx. 120ah of capacity, and you were fortunate enough to acquire a set of 14 modules that had 80% of the original capacity left as opposed to the oft-quoted 70%, you have 96ah available. So that's almost as much as the 105ah rating of the manufactured pack.

But the Leaf module DIY pack is roughly 6v higher in nominal voltage, so I guess that is what accounts for the Leaf pack's higher weight (likely 125 lbs with an enclosure, various mounting parts, protection solenoid(s), shunts, BMS, etc...) compared to the manufactured pack's 95lbs (which includes a full steel enclosure and associated protections - probably doesn't include the mounting brackets and bolts though).

I'm considering this manufactured pack, even though I've begun to amass the parts required for a Leaf pack (thanks to the great info here - especially your "101" thread - Thanks!!!)

I'm curious exactly how you would envision using this little meter to gauge capacity loss - You'd make an inline adapter to go between the pack and the charger, and begin charging at a predefined total pack voltage, at a specific charge rate, and note the cumulative AH from a charge cycle (which presumably ends at the same voltage each time)? Am I understanding this correctly?

And am I correct in assuming that you would expect that over time / use that the same charge cycle, starting at the same pack voltage, would take less time (inject less power) into the batteries as time went on - implying that the battery capacity is diminishing?

Since you have a Zeva BMS, doesn't that allow you to access that same data? What has your experience been in this regard with the Leaf pack?

Thanks for any insight and all the super informative posts you've taken the time to organize so nicely on the subject.

[Loomison]

Nice build.

[Haddixbros]

Any updates on the switch? Im about to pull the trigger on the roypow lithium myself and would like to know before dropping that kind of cash

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[Sergio]

Just about every ad you see posting remaining capacity of a Leaf lithium module is simply based on the year of the car (or module date stamp) and data published by Nissan on expected degradation.

I doubt seriously any of the places selling on ebay have any clue about the actual miles, environment, charge/discharge cycle, depth of discharge, etc.

I also doubt they are taking the time to discharge each module and measure the AH.

That being said, Nissan on purpose kept the used packs exchanged during warranty for their previously announced, but I don't think every realized, secondary "power wall" business.

There is plenty of life left in these packs after 8 years since they are not subjected to heavy current discharge during their life.

The published expected life of the Leaf pack is 22 years.

[fstop]

Originally Posted by Sergio

Just about every ad you see posting remaining capacity of a Leaf lithium module is simply based on the year of the car (or module date stamp) and data published by Nissan on expected degradation.

I doubt seriously any of the places selling on ebay have any clue about the actual miles, environment, charge/discharge cycle, depth of discharge, etc.

I also doubt they are taking the time to discharge each module and measure the AH.

That being said, Nissan on purpose kept the used packs exchanged during warranty for their previously announced, but I don't think every realized, secondary "power wall" business.

There is plenty of life left in these packs after 8 years since they are not subjected to heavy current discharge during their life.

The published expected life of the Leaf pack is 22 years.

I forgot some of what I read regarding the Leaf modules when I was looking into building a pack, but I think there were some made during a certain time (not the earliest G2 modules, I think the later ones) that had fast declining cell "Health" -vs- some of the older ones.

I think this talks about it somewhat: https://pushevs.com/2018/03/20/nissa...kwh-batteries/

It seems like most folks are getting very good results on this forum, but I read a few places, like endless-sphere, where sometimes results weren't as good...
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/vi...p?f=9&t=103183

It all probably has a lot to do with how the particular modules you receive were treated and managed during their previous life.

It was (and is) interesting to me that there seem to be so many Leaf modules available on the used market - I wouldn't think they could all be coming from wrecked cars?