Can you remap an EV?

[anonymous-user]

Presumably for more power. Is there headspace in the components, or do they already come out the factory maxed out?

Will/could this be a thing in the future? Out of warranty Tesla gets remapped just like an ICE car could?

[Scabutz]

Anythings possible with enough time and money, but upping the current to the motor(s), is just going to kill range.

[anonymous-user]

Yeah I get that. Just wondering if we will ever see modded EV's. Maybe uprating motors on the lower models with parts from the higher models. (Kinda like how people have bolt on upgrades from same marque)

Seen a Tesla today with aftermarket alloys. (SUV body shape one). It was a dark colour with dark alloys and got me thinking.

I drive a golf gti, and I would bet around 75% of them are modded in some way or another. Will EV's ever be modded?

[Carlososos]

Yes they are already modded and have had the oem+ treatment . Rich rebuilds has already done quite a few motor swaps, battery swaps are straight forward for most. The rest of the parts are more or less normal car. As the adoption of ev’s grow more possibility’s will come.

[anonymous-user]

The problem is the interconnectedness of the powertrain.

You could fool the traction inverter into supplying more current to the motor, but then it's dc link current and the dc link current reported by the BMS wouldn't match, and you'd get a shut down. Also, things like the range-o-meter would get messed up by mods

[S6PNJ]

MuddyK said:

Presumably for more power. Is there headspace in the components, or do they already come out the factory maxed out?

Will/could this be a thing in the future? Out of warranty Tesla gets remapped just like an ICE car could?

Guy Martin managed it - https://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martin-the... or the chap he spoke to did.

[SWoll]

MuddyK said:

Yeah I get that. Just wondering if we will ever see modded EV's. Maybe uprating motors on the lower models with parts from the higher models. (Kinda like how people have bolt on upgrades from same marque)

Seen a Tesla today with aftermarket alloys. (SUV body shape one). It was a dark colour with dark alloys and got me thinking.

I drive a golf gti, and I would bet around 75% of them are modded in some way or another. Will EV's ever be modded?

When you say 75% modded, do you mean performance modifications or things like wheels, suspension, brakes, styling, interior as that will be exactly the same?

[Tye Green]

maybe they need a continuously variable gearbox adding?

if the electric motors produce linear torque irrespective of rpm then clearly increasing rpm for any given road speed would yield an increase in acceleration.

[JonnyVTEC]

Scabutz said:

Anythings possible with enough time and money, but upping the current to the motor(s), is just going to kill range.

Why? Peak power has nothing to do with steady state cruise.

[walamai]

I've not seen anything yet that's a 'flash' or 'tune' for an OEM vehicle, but I can see that it's almost certainly on the horizon.

Worth understanding that the AC motor in pretty much every EV is supplied power by an inverter. If the inverter supplies more power, then the motor has... more power. Power to the inverter is supplied by DC batteries. The inverter itself will have a limit on how much current it can supply - which will be a factor of it's electronic components, and also how cool you can keep it. Similar situation with the motor - max current (torque) will also be constrained by its physical components and heat.
The inverter is typically controlled over CANBUS. (eg; you press the throttle and signal goes to the inverter to say 'give me 60% power')


I can see three ways to approach 'tuning' an EV:

1. Improve the cooling system. OEM systems will start to pull power as the battery, inverter or motor start to get hot. If you can keep them all cool, then you have more available power. Kind of like upgrading the intercooler on a turbo car.

2. Change the CANBUS signals to the inverter. ie; for a given throttle position you can tell the inverter to do something different to OEM. I suspect the 'headroom' here is probably marginal - but you can probably make the throttle 'response' more aggressive, particularly in non-performance oriented cars. I can envisage an 'interceptor' type box that sits in front of the Inverter and sends it different control signals.

3. Aftermarket inverter. Now you can control exactly how much power goes to the motor. Limited still by the motor itself and the battery max current supply - but I'm sure you could push a motor much harder than OEM, particularly for short periods of time. Combined with cooling, you could get some really meaningful power increases. (For example, a Leaf motor is 85Kw and people are getting ~130Kw using aftermarket inverters)

I've only ever seen aftermarket inverters used in conversions, but in principle there's no reason that you couldn't 'tune' an OEM vehicle using one.

[Boxbrownie]

Certainly the standard i3 can be reflashed to give slightly more output than the i3S by a company specialising in the i3 vehicles, but only from the 94ah forward, not the 60ah models.

[Byker28i]

walamai said:

I've not seen anything yet that's a 'flash' or 'tune' for an OEM vehicle, but I can see that it's almost certainly on the horizon.

There's ones for the Tesla's
https://progressiveparts.com/product/steinbauer-te...

Then as mentioned, Electric Classic Cars dod the work for Guy Martin and the show showed then tuning the parameters of the drive train and motor.

[off_again]

Just watched Motor Mythbusters on Motortrend on demand where they turbocharge a hybrid. Not quite the same thing, but they did adjust the way that the electric motor responds and put in some circuits to effectively fool the control system to thinking it was only getting a lower amount of hybrid boost - I guess it was a remap for a hybrid? Getting in the way of the feedback loop and effectively tricking the electric motor & batter deliver more. So I guess its possible.

[annodomini2]

It's possible, but there are physical limitations just as with ICE.

Current/thermal limits for the electronics, motor and batteries are the main issues.

[walamai]

Byker28i said:

There's ones for the Tesla's
https://progressiveparts.com/product/steinbauer-te...

Then as mentioned, Electric Classic Cars dod the work for Guy Martin and the show showed then tuning the parameters of the drive train and motor.

Oh yep, there are several aftermarket inverter replacement options and Canbus controller type options. I was just meaning I've not seen one dropped into an OEM EV yet. (In the context of 'remapping' a factory vehicle.)

I spotted Chris from Zero EV in that Guy Martin series, so I assume that car is running ZeroEV's version of the Open Inverter board.

On my mobile and can't find it on the ZeroEV site, but this... https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?cP...

[steve-V8s]

Perhaps one way to make an EV quicker would be to remove some of the batteries.

[GT6k]

Yes and it is already happening. Currently EVs are at the same stage that fuel injected cars were in the 1980s the knowledge and expertise was locked up in OEMs but leaked out and people got together the toolkits to change things. Mapping was only a thing once the tools to reprogramme the EFI system became available and we swapped carb balancers for laptops

For example the BMW I3 is eminently hackable and within the last couple of months it has been discovered that the extra performance of the I3S can be given to an I3 by a few clicks of a mouse. The I3 also shows some of the routes that may need to be adopted. For instance the continuous power seems to be limited by cooling of the inverter. A quick fix would be to disable regen to slightly unload it (Taycan already does this in track mode) , next mod might be a better cooling circuit for the inverter etc etc.

[dvs_dave]

steve-V8s said:

Perhaps one way to make an EV quicker would be to remove some of the batteries.

That’s a little bit of a catch 22. Apart from the obvious upsides/downsides, removing some of the batteries will limit the maximum current, and hence power the that the battery pack is able to deliver. It’s not like a fuel tank where a smaller tank just means a shorter range, with no impact on maximum engine power. On an EV the battery size influences both range and maximum power.

[ZesPak]

dvs_dave said:

That’s a little bit of a catch 22. Apart from the obvious upsides/downsides, removing some of the batteries will limit the maximum current, and hence power the that the battery pack is able to deliver. It’s not like a fuel tank where a smaller tank just means a shorter range, with no impact on maximum engine power. On an EV the battery size influences both range and maximum power.

And charge speed.

I explain it to layman by comparing it to having several small fuel tanks. Which means you could fill up quicker, or drain the fuel quicker.

[JonnyVTEC]

You’d have to remove all the cells in most likelihood anyway. And then refill the pack with smaller cells to maintain the same system voltage for the thing to even move!