About AMps

I built a custom electric car using an Exocar frame and installed the drive train and electronics from a salvaged Nissan Leaf. This involved advanced mechanical, electrical and software skills. An entirely independent project requiring complex problem solving skills.

THE exocar frame

This is the chassis I used for my project, it is a 1:1 prototype from a company called Exo Rails out of Colorado. It was originally made as an electric car but it used a much less powerful DC motor (instead of an AC Induction motor like the Nissan Leaf) and old lead acid car batteries. So the power/torque was significantly less, there was no regenerative braking feature and none of the convenience that the Nissan Leaf drive train provides.

the salvaged Nissan leaf

This is the Leaf that I bought at an auction as a salvaged vehicle, it wasn't functional once it arrived but after some soldering and service resets I was finally able to get the car driving again. Something funny I found while I was removing the thousands of wires and dozens of modules was a speaker located right next to the motor, after some testing I learned that the sound of the motor was actually augmented! So the already quiet electric car can be even quieter when the speaker is removed, fascinating!

battery pack removal

This is the 24kwH battery located underneath the car. It has a watertight seal and was surprisingly hard to open. (Good Job Nissan!) Once I had it opened, I removed the 3 main modules, disconnected all the wires and cut the modules into 5 seperate pieces.

INSTALLING THE MOTOR AND BATTERIES

After separating the modules I installed them throughout the car. This required lots of modification to the chassis since it wasn't designed to house 48 individual modules! (each module contains 4 cells for a total of 192 Lithium-ion Cells)  I then soldered hundreds upon hundreds of wires for the Battery Management system (BMS) and made custom high amperage wires for all the high voltage connections. Once the batteries were mounted I called up a local welder to help me weld the motor mounts to the frame of the car. (Even though I wish I could have done this part myself, I thought it was only ethical to have a professional with years of experience perform this crucial task)

MACHINED COUPLERS TO ATTACH AXELS

Once the motor and batteries were installed, I temporary connected all the electronics to make sure I did everything correctly. To my surprise the car turned on first try and I was able to spin the motor! One of the most challenging aspects of this project was connecting the Nissan Leaf axle to the Track Car's axle, I could have had a custom one made but that was far out of my price range. It took me months to find someone capable of properly designing and machining the couplers, but luckily through connections I have with Robotics, I finally found someone! (Thanks Ed!)

WIRING THE CAR

Now that I had the mechanical part of the car functional, I moved on to mounting and connecting all the controls. Since the Leaf is a front wheel drive car, all the wires were extremely short and a total rewiring was necessary.

The car drives and all the requirements for it to be street legal are implemented and functional. However I still have a lot planned for the car and continue to work on it almost daily. I just recently was able to "Hack" the CAN Bus of the Nissan Leaf so that I can obtain all the data needed for the dashboard and instrument cluster. (Currently working on a Tesla style instrument cluster!)