We've bought a 2011 Nissan Leaf. It has 82% State of Health (SOH) on the 24 kWh battery. The rest of the car is in great condition.
I'm working through a list of improvements:
- Heater/fan cutoff switch (allows for lower power demisting of front windscreen) - DONE
- aero covers over fog light recess - DONE (using acetate sheets from an old office manual) also working on a 3D printable design
- tow bar for carrying bikes - DONE
- remove mud flaps (reduces drag) - DONE
- install a EVSE socket on the outside of the house - DONE
- water covers over front suspension struts - DONE (3D printable design files)
- phone mount for dash (for old phone running LeafSpy) - DONE
- aero cover front grill - DONE using hollow 3D printed shapes printed in vase mode (spiralized) with 0.5 mm nozzle
- move front number plate down and contour to front to reduce drag - DONE
- aero covers for the alloy rims - DONE using a 3D printable design https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-nissan-leaf-allow-rim-area-inserts-76399
- dash cam - DONE
- pump tires up to 40 PSI for reduced rolling resistance - DONE
- install seat heaters (more efficient than using the cabin heater) - DONE
- switch all light bulbs to LEDs - 20% done
- improve the Strut covers design - DONE
- replace the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) thingy with something useful - made a couple of brackets for the OBD2 socket - DONE
- Camper mode platform for sleeping in back - DONE
- Install SOC% display inside the top dash (using an Arduino) - DONE
- GPS tracker - ordered
- add 12V solar panel on to dash
- build a range extender battery (the Powerboot project)
- add more PV to my home system to help charge car
- upgrade my DIY powerwall to be able to charge the car - working on it
- conduct coast down tests to quantify what difference the front grill and rim covers make - DONE
Better Nissan Leaf coast-down tests
I ran some better coast down tests on 25 May 2019
Coast-down tests [deprecated], 15 May 2019
I've done some coast-down tests to see if my aero modifications (rim inserts and grill blocks) are making any difference. Here's the result:
This data comes from a GPS set to record at 5 second intervals over a 1.4 km stretch of straight flat-ish road in Upper Hutt. I drove 3 times in one direction and 3 times back with the aero mods in place. Then repeated 3 there-and-back runs without the aero mods.
The data indicates an 8% improvement with the aero mods, however there were several things about this test that I could improve to get more trustworthy data.
- I got better at driving the test runs as I did them. I should really have done a third set of runs with the aero mods back on (an "A B A" test)
- If I set the GPS to 1 second interval readings I'd have more data points to work with
- If I used a longer and flatter road I'd have a longer data set with more readings at the lower end of the coast.
I plan to do another test soon.