I've put a Nissan Leaf on a bench before and run it just like you did and would never do it again.
This approach is so much harder than it seems.
"once everything works then it'll be straightforward to remove what's left and dramatically reduce the rats nest qualities of this setup"
We thought the same initially, it turns out the system depends on many more components than you would think.
I imagined the EV system to be like an onion where you can take layers off, not so!It is much more like an egg, once you smash it, you have a few shards that you can re-use but you end up with a mess due to high connectivity between systems. (Leaf refused to turn on without original power steering and wipers connected).
Surprisingly what is more straightforward is putting together your own drivetrain with something like https://openinverter.org and building it back up from first principles. Or you isolate the inverter and motor and make them believe they are still in the original vehicle by replaying CAN messages, ZombieVerter is a project with that approach. Both of these are open source projects.
This approach is so much harder than it seems. "once everything works then it'll be straightforward to remove what's left and dramatically reduce the rats nest qualities of this setup" We thought the same initially, it turns out the system depends on many more components than you would think.
I imagined the EV system to be like an onion where you can take layers off, not so!It is much more like an egg, once you smash it, you have a few shards that you can re-use but you end up with a mess due to high connectivity between systems. (Leaf refused to turn on without original power steering and wipers connected).
Surprisingly what is more straightforward is putting together your own drivetrain with something like https://openinverter.org and building it back up from first principles. Or you isolate the inverter and motor and make them believe they are still in the original vehicle by replaying CAN messages, ZombieVerter is a project with that approach. Both of these are open source projects.
Happy tinkering!