AESC / LEAF Battery Modules Voltage Check

Here is a voltage check of each half module of my 3 module pack after 3 months of charge + discharge: they are still all in balance, here at the bottom at 3.59V

AESC / LEAF Battery Modules Voltage Check

After a little month of charging and discharging these 3 AESC modules wires in series, the half modules - and modules too - are perfectly in balance ...  No BMS required at all ... Like for LiFePO4 ...

LEAF Battery Modules First Discharge through a Grid Tie Inverter

After Charging these 3 AESC or Nissan LEAF BAttery Modules up to 4V per half module, I now discharge them down to 3.6V

No BMS, just a good Bottom Balancing ....

LiFePO4 Battery Charge Method - Updated with video proofs

I just updated the most popular post of the blog, on LiFePO4 Battery Charging, with the 3 videos showing the cells voltages, always in balance - at the same level -, performed in March, May and July 2013

Take a look at the very bottom of the post here : LiFePO4 Battery Charging Method - Don't Ruin your Expensive Cells !

=> Conclusion: It works: All the cells are still perfectly in balance after 6 months ...

Second CALB Cells Voltage Check - After 2 weeks of rest

After two weeks of rest, the individual cell voltage is at 3.22V, the exact same on each cell ...
Is it a coincidence ? No, the result of a good Bottom Balancing and no over-charge & discharge

BTW, I am still not using a BMS ...

Is Nissan looking into Bottom Balancing ?

Looking at the real-time visitors monitor on my blog, I just saw this interesting visit from a Japanese from Yokohama who arrived loooking for "how to bottom balance a battery pack" on the Bing search engine

Nissan's headquaters being in the same city, I thought: Maybe Nissan's engineers are looking into a new strategy for their BMS for the LEAF, e-NV200 or ESFLOW ... Who knows ?

Anyways, this person ended up reading about my bottom balancing tool and probably the whole Bottom Balancong simple strategy behind it

LiFePO4 CALB CA180FI cells voltage check

My LiFePO4 CALB CA180FI cells are still in balance after 3 weeks of use

I just did one time a bottom balance at the very beginning and after many charge/discharge cycles (full or not), they remain in balance as expected


Nothing complicated, no BMS, no shunt balancers, you DO NOT need any of this to keep your LiFePO4 cells working and in good condition

Flooded i-Miev: A Close Look at a BMS Board

Look how complex this 3 cells BMS is on the i-MiEV ...

- Is this really necessary ? (See Jack Rickard's thoughts on this)
- How much cheaper would electric cars be without this kind of electronics ?


"We take a close look at a battery management board from a four-pack of lithium cells pulled from a Mitsubishi i-Miev electric car flooded in Super-Storm Sandy."

Vectrix tires changed :-) Bad Vectrix News :-(

My rear tire has been flat for two days with a nice hole in it; I pumped a lot of air in it (4 Bars), using the LEAF 12V electric pump, to hold until I get to the Elecity garage in the East of Paris (zip code 75013), 13 km away from Boulogne

Arrived at Elecity and Motos 13 Repair Shop

I left it there at 11am and had to pick it up around 5pm

That is the boss's Vectrix in red (I like this color)

Mine, still with the old tires

As I asked my wife to follow me in case I had to refill air halfway, I called and she had not left home yet; I said the journey to the shop had been fine and pretty fast, I that I will meet them for lunch later... I then took some time to go visit the Elecity store acrros the street 

They are selling the Vectrix Li and Li+ and I had a little chat with the dealer 

Looks nice in black

Vectrix Li+

Behind the scene, in the back of the store: a Vectrix with a battery problem, waiting to be repaired, if they can identify the problem he told me; He also said it took 4 months to get a charger from the US last time he ordered one !

He showed me some replacement cells, told me they changed LiFePO4 cells on new generation Vectrix with Li packs, but that the problems still remain...

After a lazy afternoon in Bon Marché (well heated BTW in this cold & wet weather), back to Elecity and I could pick up my Vectrix with its brand new tires: Michelin City Grip ! They told me these were way better than the original ones... I talked to the shop owner who actually did the tire change and he said he inflated them at much more than required, and that it is always better for Electric Scooters, reducing the drag (he is right)

He also told me that the new company importing Vectrix in France will probably quit because they are not selling any or very little, and that maintenance was catastrophic because of the delay to get spare parts from the US :-( I was really sad to hear this
He also confirmed that the Vectrix Store (the first dealer in Paris and in France for years) had closed and showed me the scooter shop lift he bouhgt from him as a proof

and back home in the parking

Back in the cage

LiFePO4 Energy Storage System - End of Charge

In this video I caught the end of the battery bank charge
You can see that individual cell voltages are not going to high even if I am not using a BMS ...
The charger is in its constant voltage phase and you can see the current going into the batteries is going down, so is the charger consumption

It is also the last time I charge my system with a 48V charger because I am going to switch to a 24V configuration ...