Help Needed: Converting Petrol Car Using Nissan Leaf or Note e-Power Motor – Feasibility & Setup

M

My diy

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Hi everyone,

I’m working on a petrol-to-electric conversion project and I’m considering using a Nissan Leaf motor or the generator/motor from a Nissan Note e-Power system. My goal is to build a reliable EV for city and highway use.

✅ Project Context:
  • Donor vehicle: [Optional – e.g., Suzuki Cultus or Toyota Vitz]
  • Target performance: ~80–100 km/h, ~150–200 km range
  • Battery pack: Planning to use a 72 V

❓ Questions:

  1. Has anyone here successfully used the Nissan Leaf motor or Nissan Note generator in an EV conversion?
  2. Is it possible to control these motors using open market controllers like Fardriver or Votol?
  3. Can I run the Nissan Note motor (or generator) at 72 V, or does it need higher voltage?
  4. Any known compatibility issues with non-OEM controllers?

I’d appreciate any advice, shared experiences, or even wiring diagrams. Thanks in advance
 
leaf motor/inverter is a 300V-400V system.
Netgain hyper9 systems are in the 100V-160V range.
They also make systems in the 80V/10Kw ranger
check out go-ev.com
 
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Or a Tesla motor mounted on an adapter plate to the existing clutch / gearbox assembly. Look at the people I noted previously on YouTube for ideas.
 
Yeah if you're going to the effort of deploying a Leaf motor, you might as well run it at it's peak levels. A car of that size should be reasonably efficient. I suspect you'll need about 25 kWh of battery for 200 km of city driving range.
  1. Has anyone here successfully used the Nissan Leaf motor or Nissan Note generator in an EV conversion?
  2. Is it possible to control these motors using open market controllers like Fardriver or Votol?
  3. Can I run the Nissan Note motor (or generator) at 72 V, or does it need higher voltage?
  4. Any known compatibility issues with non-OEM controllers?
1. Yes several, and many just used the original Leaf inverter.
2. Yes, but it's trickier. I know @Arlo1 has plenty of experience with a custom inverter - check out his threads. I'm going to be using a Rinehart PM100DXR inverter on my Honda CRX conversion which has a Leaf motor. It's got a resolver too, so I'm hoping it won't be too tricky to tune.
3. No, that's too low. Minimum voltage this thing will turn on is about 200 V, but it's been developed with a nominal 360 V system in mind.
4. I'll let you know how I get on :)
 
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