50kW in a Transit isn't ever going to work, as there's too much vehicle weight to start with, and it's got a high CD too, which makes a bad situation worse.
LOL - indeed it wasn't! At the start of the project, I do remember an argument with our (then) MD who wasn't an engineer, in which he strenuously maintained that the low power output didn't matter because it had more torque. Nne of us engineers could convince him, but we did enjoy the "I-told-you-so" feeling!

LifePo4 is a very safe chemistry and has a much higher energy density than Pb, but doesn't come close to NMC, which I'd use in a FL1 conversion. NMC will be better than 200Wh per KG, and over 500Wh per litre, so it's reasonably energy dense, although obviously well short of petrol or diesel for energy density. :(
Yeah, things have moved on a lot since we did those. Using an existing battery pack is definitely the way to go.

That's a battery pack which is over twice as heavy as the 36kWh I think the FL1 will accommodate with the current vehicle structure.
I don't really know what shape / size a Leaf battery pack is, to be honest. Did you intend to split the pack up to package it round the FL better, or try to keep the whole pack as one unit?

It is more inefficient to use an EX ICE engined vehicle, but there's plenty that can be done to minimise those inefficiencies.
For instance, using seat heating instead of heating the whole cabin whenever possible.
The PS will be run via electric, from an existing vehicle which is fitted with an Electric over Hydraulic system. These are efficient when there's no steering input, as the fluid simply circulates unrestricted.
A vacuum pump is needed to power the brake servo, but the motor for that will use just a few Watts.

Motor/inverter cooling will be via a small radiator, with a bypass to flow warm water to the heater matrix to add warmth to the cabin. This will be supplemented with the FL1 PTC heater, which should be enough, although at the expense of some range.
The AC compressor will likely be taken from a vehicle which uses and electric AC compressor, but its also reasonably easy to fit a suitable electric motor to the existing AC compressor, but that's not very energy efficient.

Maybe not, but it'll be better than converting an old E36 BMW, which has been done many times. ;)
True enough, but you're up against it with the lossy 4WD system. If you stuck a TD4 lump in a Leaf and drove it at the kinds of speeds that you envisage driving the FL, what do you reckon you'd get? 50+ to the gallon? My guess is that it would be at least 60% more fuel-efficient than in the FL1. Maybe 80%, even. I think the Leaf will be MUCH easier to push along than a FL1. If your inverter is of a similar efficiency to ours, you won't get much heat out of the cooling system. At a guess, I'd say you'd need at least 5kW to keep a FL1 nice and toasty in Winter. Probably more like 7. Sure, the heated seats will help if you're willing to make a few sacrifices. We ended up (for shame!) fitting a Webasto heater and having a small tank of diesel, so that you'd occasionally have to buy a gallon of diesel for you "zero emissions" vehicle. Let me tell you, 5kW doesn't go very far in a Transit in Winter! Of course, you will already have a small combustion heater that you'd get free with the FL1 (if it's a diesel one).... You'll still need a radiator for the Summer in any case. Yes, electric power steering off something with the same (or greater) max. front axle weight and which uses the same sort of fluid as the FL1 rack, would be a good thing too. And, indeed, the AC pump. We had the constraint of trying to sell these at a profit, so we were stuck with re-using as much of the donor vehicle as possible, because we'd already paid for it. At least you won't have that constraint. Ours were done in the least efficient way possible, with a DC-DC converter and electric motors driving the pumps off the base vehicle via V belts. It was really naff! Electric vacuum pump will use tens of watts though. I think mine has something like a 30A fuse!
 
I'm not interested in Regen, as it's worth a few% at most, and adds more complications than its worth. ;)
I don't know how much it made on ours, but I reckon maybe 10%. We had to ditch the regenerative over-run (which added very little) but we kept the braking. It's the single best bit about an EV! Watching the power consumption going negative is a big psychological thing too! To get round the ABS problem, we had a 1 Bar pressure switch in the front brake line. Regen could not start until there was at least 1 Bar in the brake line (which is practically nothing. Just enough to bring the pads into contact with the discs). We had a CAN reader which listened out for the signal for an ABS intervention and killed the regen instantly when the ABS pump cut in and wouldn't re-apply it until the brake pedal had been released and re-applied.
That's good enough for me. I never drive more than 60 anyway. I can't see why an E power FL1 will be slower than a standard one, as the ICE power FL1 is dead slow anyway, so I'd be surprised if the electric one with an 80kW motor would be slower.

I don't fully understand it myself, but I think we perhaps kid ourselves by quoting "peak" power for both the ICE and the electric motor. I found the following after a quick look online. Don't know if it's for a Leaf or something else, but it's pretty typical of the shape of the torque curve for a leccy motor.

If you're going to be permanently in 2nd or 3rd gear, it'll go like stink (well, all things being relative!) until the motor is spinning at about 5000 RPM, then it'll fall off a cliff. I don't know what the gearing works out at, but if at (say) 50 MPH your motor is doing (say) 6000 revs, I think your 50-70 time will be absolutely pants!

The motor in the graph below has (rough guesstimate, assuming the torque is in Nm) about 30kW at 4000 RPM but less than 20kW at 9000. If the Leaf motor has a similar torque curve (factored up so hat its peak torque is 300 Nm or whatever it is), it'll still fall off a cliff around half way through its rev band, won't it?

xrHPLyhKoEea6iPszznoe-8dPJRUB3zsmh2dEtCmxhvInO2W9cxQ3gJaL-zTie8iyz7wLuZNuEO5WcpTocnJI8Jv=s0-d
 
The Leaf motor is capable of far more than 80kW but the limiting factors are the inverter and battery. Even with the Huebner logic board in the Leaf inverter it's limited by the HV hardware. Using a different inverter will in theory allow more power but the battery then becomes the limiting factor.
I'm not sure what the max rpm of a Leaf motor is but it's way higher than a TD4 so it should still be nicely in the power band at 5k or 6k rpm so 70 in 3rd gear should be no problem. Don't forget the Leaf motor is driving the wheels with a single speed transmission.

Taken from Wikipedia

Electric motor 80 kW (110 hp), 280 N⋅m (210 ft⋅lb) synchronous motor
Transmission Single speed constant ratio (7.94:1 for 2011-2013 and 8.30:1 for 2014-2017)
Battery MY 2011-15
24 kWh lithium-ion battery
 
I believe the Leaf motor has a maximum RPM approaching 10k, so 3rd gear will be fine for normal use, as this is almost identical to when the Leaf motor is driving the Leaf. I can't find the full RPM power curve for the Leaf motor, but in common with most electric motors, the torque will drop off once it's past it's mid RPM point. However using 3rd gear in the FL1, and motor at a mid point of say 4500 RPM, the road speed be over 70 Mph, so if the torque drops off after then, it's not really an issue.

I found this recently. https://www.onbuy.com/gb/meiden-ev-...yBqvKM8-S3gn5rXli53vTYCBGJ0IYrwYaAmoKEALw_wcB
Not ideal for a FL1 EV project, but would probably suit a smaller vehicle.
 
I don't know what the gearing works out at, but if at (say) 50 MPH your motor is doing (say) 6000 revs, I think your 50-70 time will be absolutely pants!
The 50-70 time is pants on any FL1 anyway. That's a 3rd gear acceleration range on a 1.8K series, which has just 116ftlb of torque. The Leaf motor has almost twice as much torque, so I can't imagine the Leaf motor FL1 being slower than the 1.8K powered FL1.
 
I believe the Leaf motor has a maximum RPM approaching 10k, so 3rd gear will be fine for normal use, as this is almost identical to when the Leaf motor is driving the Leaf. I can't find the full RPM power curve for the Leaf motor, but in common with most electric motors, the torque will drop off once it's past it's mid RPM point. However using 3rd gear in the FL1, and motor at a mid point of say 4500 RPM, the road speed be over 70 Mph, so if the torque drops off after then, it's not really an issue.

I found this recently. https://www.onbuy.com/gb/meiden-ev-...yBqvKM8-S3gn5rXli53vTYCBGJ0IYrwYaAmoKEALw_wcB
Not ideal for a FL1 EV project, but would probably suit a smaller vehicle.
I wouldn't want to put that in a FL1. The way I see it adapting the motor to the gearbox and mounting it is one of the bigger challenges of this project and the most difficult part to change later. I'd want to start out with a motor that is capable of taking more power than I can generate initially but would give headroom for upgrades later.
I've seen Leaf motors for £500 but they are harder to find now because of fewer shunts over lockdown.

Here is everything you need for £1500
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2017-NISSAN-LEAF-EM57-30KWH-0cc-Electric-Automatic-Engine/392857387874?fits=Car+Make:Nissan|Model:Leaf&hash=item5b78200362:g:Dn0AAOSwyHFe-1AS
You could either sell the transmission or dismantle it and use the clutch splines for an adapter.
 
The way I see it adapting the motor to the gearbox and mounting it is one of the bigger challenges of this project and the most difficult part to change later. I'd want to start out with a motor that is capable of taking more power than I can generate initially but would give headroom for upgrades later.
Agreed. I was just pointing out what seems to be on the market in increasing numbers, but reducing costs. ;)
Here is everything you need for £1500

I've seen them in the past, for a similar price. I love the way they described it as a 0 cylinder, automatic engine. :eek::D
Only 19K miles on it though, so it'll likely outlast the vehicle it's fitted in to. ;)
 
I've made an update to the previous video about the CANbus and I think I now have a way of getting useful data from the car. Still to figure out how to identify what data is coming from where but at least we have a start.
Here is the video I posted previously


And Part 2 using much cheaper components.



Next on the agenda is to read the data from SWMBO's Freelander as all this was done in my old Merc.
 
Great video and information. Bit over my head but got the drift!!!

Thanks for posting.
I only recently started using Arduino so I still have a lot to learn. I don't know much about it myself but it seems CAN is not as complicated as it sounds and is pretty well described by this guy.
 
So I took the first baby step tonight and managed to connect into the CAN bus of my 04 Freelander. :D
I connected at the ECU as I figured that would be were everything would go back to, I used my 12V soldering iron to solder the leads before taping up.
In a Freelander the wires are Yellow and black for CAN high and Yellow and Brown for CAN low. CAN bus wires are always twisted together so that makes it easier to spot them.
I ran this CAT5 cable through one of the soft rubber grommets and temporarily through the door into the car so I could connect the laptop. It is easy to coil up and leave in the engine bay when I'm not using it so the ECU is all sealed up again but I can connect in anytime I want to. The connectors are only out of the ECU to make it easier to get at the cables

IMG_20200707_211601158.jpg


And this is the CAN data at the ECU. I don't know yet what any of these are yet but there aren't too many to figure out.
The ID and DLC stay static but the data changes all the time.
My understanding is the ID number is the module in the car sending data, the DLC is the number of bytes to expect and the data is what is being sent. I'm not certain about Period or Count.

IMG_20200707_213858946.jpg
 
I don't know yet what any of these are yet but there aren't too many to figure out

That's looking good Ali. I guess it's a bit like visiting Japan, where you can see the locals talking, but you've no idea what they're saying.

I'm thinking the Pscan eu guy (I forget his name) would have an idea of what the modules are, and what the data streams mean.

Nice work so far. Makes me feel rather slack, not putting much actual time into this project. :oops:
 
I just got this from one of the guys in Openinverter.org, this will help big time. :D

LOL. Those are the IDs from the E46 era BMWs.

153 - ABS
1F0 - Wheel Speeds
1F8 - 4WD stuff
316 - RPM is in here
329 - Throttle position is byte 5.
545 - Main items to send to the dash
613 / 615 - Items from the dash like ambient temperature, fuel level, AC request.
 
That's looking good Ali. I guess it's a bit like visiting Japan, where you can see the locals talking, but you've no idea what they're saying.

I'm thinking the Pscan eu guy (I forget his name) would have an idea of what the modules are, and what the data streams mean.

Nice work so far. Makes me feel rather slack, not putting much actual time into this project. :oops:
You could certainly try asking Philip @pscan.eu - but I don't know if he has gone into any depth into CAN signals - I think he has been concentrating more on the diagnostics side of things?
 
You could certainly try asking Philip @pscan.eu - but I don't know if he has gone into any depth into CAN signals - I think he has been concentrating more on the diagnostics side of things?
From what I can see there is no CAN to the ODB2 port, only diagnostics. I suspect the signals are similar but haven't been able to read them yet and may not need to. To be honest I don't even know how much I will need to inject CAN into the car as I don't know yet if the warning lights in the dash are triggered by sensors or CAN signals. Just some of the many things to look into in this project.
 
Is there a CAN signal translator/ dictionary for the FL1? My guess is that it'll be pretty similar to BMW.
 
Is there a CAN signal translator/ dictionary for the FL1? My guess is that it'll be pretty similar to BMW.

It could well be a simplified version of a BMW system, maybe off an E36 as its from a similar year. However BMW do use a more integrated BCU, which the FL1 doesn't really have. Interestingly when the wife's old E46 lost its CAN to the ABS ECU, the ABS still functioned correctly, and it didn't even put the ABS warning light on. All that happened was the gearbox malfunction light (was an auto) came on, with a code pointing to missing can message from the ABS.

I'm still pretty sure that the FL1 ABS will work as a stand alone system, but unfortunately I can't remove the CAN signal from my TD4 and drive the car, as it puts the gearbox in limp mode. Maybe something to try on a manual box FL1?
 
I hope to confirm some of the CAN data listed above today and maybe we can try disconnecting some things to see what happens but I need to be careful as the car is still SWMBO's daily.
I suspect as you say Nodge that the ABS will work fine as stand alone.
 

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