This is yet the smallest second-life for Nissan Leaf batteries
Nissan is using old Leaf batteries in portable power packs developed with electronics maker JVCKenwood and 4R Energy, a company owned by Nissan and Sumitomo, which works on power storage systems. The “portable power stations” can provide emergency support or simply power gadgets.
Each 4.4-kilogram (32-pound) power station contains only two modules from a Leaf battery, making for a small box; each full-size EV carries 48 battery modules.
Since the Leaf is among the best-selling (or sold) electric vehicles in the world, there is a lot of potential to pack portable power stations.
Nissan marked 1,000,000 all-electric vehicle sales globally in July since the Leaf model entered the market in December 2010. The pioneering EV still accounts for most sales, with 650,000 units sold worldwide.
The power packs seen by the Associated Press at Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, are already on sale for 170,500 yen ($1,170) in Japan. Export plans are not yet set.
It is, of course, not the first time Nissan is looking into the secondary use of EV batteries. Most recently, in Melilla, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, Nissan and Enel installed 48 used Leaf batteries and 30 new battery packs as backup energy storage to prevent power supply interruption. Old Nissan batteries also power Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) in a car factory in Oppama, Japan.
These are the more incidental examples building on longstanding research into second-life use. The University of Warwick already in 2020 developed a procedure for Nissan that allows a quick assessment of the suitability of used electric car batteries for use in stationary energy storage. The Japanese company has also been cooperating with the British energy provider EDF Energy to research the reuse of used electric car batteries since 2019. Nissan signed an agreement with the University of Santa Catarina in Brazil in 2018 to explore the potential use of Leaf batteries as part of energy storage solutions. In the Netherlands, the Amsterdam Arena is powered by Leaf batteries with a 2.8 MWh battery storage system. The list could go on.
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