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Nissan Leaf 2012 EM61 - Extra Power?

639 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  eBIMMER
I've read that the EM61 motors from Nissan were considered the "R&D motor" and can handle up to 250kW, though inverter and battery limit the system to 80kW.

Does anyone know of a way to tap into more of this motor's extra power? I've found shreds of info but nothing indicating a straight forward path. I'm interested to know if anyone has experience here.

- The Open Inverter project and to pair this with a Prius inverter and new board, but I think that's still limited to 80kW.

- Dala's YouTube suggests you can swap in larger Nissan inverters, but I don't think it's compatible with the first gen motor, the EM61.

I'd love to get away from having all the huge Leaf components in the vehicle, which aPrius inverter + board seems to fix, but it'd be unfortunate to do such a thing and still only have access to 80kW of the motor can push 250kW.

Thanks!
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When and how often would you need or use >80kW, or >200kW?

Can your battery pack supply the energy to operate at the higher power levels?

Can your welded motor coupling handle that power?
I would tap into that extra power in about 2 places on my daily commute, when passing,, and when showing off. Not that often.

My batteries are on their way out. ~60% SOH. I'm confident my motor coupler could be made too handle this. I recently posted an update on my coupler with 2 ways to strengthen it.

I'm at the point where my batteries need to be replaced or amended. But since I'm using a full leaf system, my options are very limited without spoofing the CANBUS. I liked how the Prius inverter with Opensource board lets me combine a bunch of boxes that are separate units in the gen1 Leaf (charger and inverter, at least) into a single small package, but it appears to still be limited to 80kW.

Said another way, im looking at a need for new batteries. Anything other than a direct replacement means a pretty big change. So if i do make a change, is there a good platform to get more power out of this overbuilt motor?

Thanks!
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