ECVS opens orders for NZ-made Leaf battery upgrade

Palmerston North-based Electric Commercial Vehicle Solutions (ECVS) has finalised pricing on a 52kWh battery upgrade for first-generation Nissan Leafs and opened a first batch of six build slots.

The kit replaces the degraded factory pack in ZE0 (2010-2012) and AZE0 (2013-2017) Leafs with a new 52kWh NMC battery built around CALB modules. Eight modules of 6.5kWh each make up the pack, which ECVS says weighs 280kg — lighter than the original — and bolts and plugs into the car with no chassis modifications, no CAN bridge, and none of the rubber lid spacers or chassis spacers commonly seen in informal upgrades.

Critically for owners and approved installers, the original Leaf BMS is retained but reflashed for the new chemistry. That means LeafSpy continues to work, state-of-health, battery bars and charger cycles are reset, and CHAdeMO DC fast charging runs at the factory 50kW with all safety parameters intact. The 6.6kW onboard AC charger is unchanged. The pack is engineered to ECE R100.

ECVS says it has put 1,600km on its prototype vehicle in a week of real-world testing. A Palmerston North to Auckland run via Tauranga and back covered 1,309km at 0.178kWh/km with a 300kg payload, suggesting around 290km of usable range on a real trip with no hypermiling. A Wellington return with sightseeing returned the same figure. DC charging held at 47kW up to nearly 80 per cent SOC, putting around 40kWh — roughly 225km — into the pack in 55 minutes. ECVS notes some owners getting 0.15kWh/km around town, pointing to closer to 350km of urban range.

Pricing is $14,200 including GST, ex works from Ashhurst, with a $7,500 deposit required to secure a build slot and the balance due before dispatch. The price includes trade-in of the old pack, which ECVS wants returned within a month of removal. Warranty is two years or 80,000km, whichever comes first, conditional on owners submitting LeafSpy reports every six months so ECVS can track pack performance in the field.

Lead time on the first six is around six weeks once all slots are filled — four weeks for sea freight of the battery modules and two weeks to build. ECVS says future orders should ship faster once stock is on the ground.

Installation can be handled by ECVS’s network of approved installers, who will run pre- and post-install LeafSpy checks, or completed DIY using ECVS’s documented work instructions. A WOF inspection on the prototype has passed with no issues.

ZE1 (post-2017) Leaf support and V2X/V2G compatibility are flagged as under evaluation but not yet on offer. CCS2 is explicitly off the table for now — ECVS has prioritised retaining factory CHAdeMO behaviour over a fast-charging connector swap.

Owners interested in a slot need to provide name, address, phone number, vehicle registration and model variant via ecvs.co.nz.