Until very recently, we had never heard of anyone making new battery packs for old cars. The only way to keep them alive was to find a used battery pack for a price that made sense. That is about to change when EVs Enhanced starts delivering its 16 Blade battery packs for the Nissan LEAF, something expected to happen in March 2023 – at the very earliest.
The first option to be delivered will be the 16 Blade Green, made with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells. Curiously, it is only a bit heavier than the original component for similar energy content. According to EVs Enhanced, the original 39.5-kWh battery pack weighs 303 kilograms (668 pounds). The 16 Blade unit has a dry weight of 310 kg (683 lb) and an energy content of 39.4-kWh.
It is fair to use that measure because Nissan gave the LEAF an air-cooling system, which fails to keep the temperature down in fast charging and is not that efficient in heating the battery when freezing weather arrives. EVs Enhanced developed an active liquid cooling and heating system for the 16 Blade.
Apart from making the battery pack last longer, this cooling method also reduces the fast charging time from 40 minutes in the best-case scenario to 32 minutes. The Rapidgate case was famous among LEAF owners: it was a software safeguard Nissan adopted to prevent fast charging in the electric hatchback. When the story emerged, the Japanese company offered to change that only for the owners that did not want the safeguard anymore.
Unfortunately, the New Zealander company did not disclose where the 16 Blade battery pack tips the scales when filled with MIVOLT – a dielectric (nonconductor) fluid that aims to keep battery pack temperature between 15ºC (59ºF) and 35ºC (95ºF). Regardless of how heavy it is, that’s a much better solution than what Nissan conceived for its pioneer.
The 16 Blade Battery Green will be followed by the 16 Blade Blue and the 16 Blade Red. The Blue option will pack over 70 kWh, possibly with ternary cells. If you are asking yourself about the Red, it has to do with performance. EVs Enhanced already said it would make very few of these battery packs. Indeed: the LEAF has never focused on delivering amazing acceleration times or high speeds. The only LEAF Nismo was never put for sale.
EVs Enhanced said it would wait to define a price for the 16 Blade. Its target is to sell it for “approximately a third of the cost of a new 40-kWh LEAF before any government incentives.” Nissan sells it in New Zealand for NZD63,990, which is equivalent to $40,167 at the current exchange rate. The tentative price will be NZD21,330 ($13,389). That has implications that we’d better discuss in another text.
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