With the Nissan Leaf, directly fitting a new replacement battery pack or a used battery pack from another vehicle results in a fault code (P3102) which causes the car to run in turtle mode where motor power is severely limited. This is because the vehicle control module (VCM) in the car and the lithium battery controller (LBC) in the battery pack must be coded/paired to each other for the car to operate correctly.
This has not stopped battery swaps being performed by the aftermarket, but it has forced people doing battery swaps into opening both battery packs to retain the original battery control module in the new battery. While this is more time consuming and with increased safety risks, there are also issues associated with the original BMS having to re-learn the condition of the new battery and not being able to pick up lost ‘bars’.
We have been working on a solution to eliminate this issue for some time and have now developed a tool to successfully pair a different LBC to the car’s original VCM. This is exactly how Nissan designed battery swaps to be performed, but they went to great lengths to retain control of that process for themselves only. Thanks to our battery pairing tool, battery swaps can now be performed by independent repairers in the safest and most efficient method possible. Pairing a battery with our tool after replacement now takes less than 30 seconds – simply insert the tool into the vehicle’s OBDII diagnostics port and press the on button.
