Can you TUNE an Electric Vehicle for BETTER PERFORMANCE? | Behind the Wheel Podcast w/ William Rori
What’s going on welcome back to another episode of the behind the wheel podcast you know when we do an intro like this it means we got a guest something special and the headphones are a little bit of a giveaway if you’re watching that’s fair I I guess I didn’t I didn’t
Know about the headphone thing I didn’t think about we don’t have the guest we don’t have the headon yeah no no it’s true I just didn’t think about it but anyhow so yeah we do have a guest uh if you remember uh kind of uh not too long
Ago um we had William Rory on we spoke about um Can bust systems kind of what it means for engine swaps and some different things like that but we also alluded to the fact that we were going to have him back on and we were going to
Do um another podcast we actually talked about kind of his bread and butter what he does for for a living but really specifically how it affects EVs and what is EV tuning look like now and what is it going to look like in the future yeah eventric podcast if you don’t want to
Hear it leave now yes and and don’t leave comments for me it’s not nice but I will say this um you know from an Enthusiast aspect you know the E thing whether it stays as a supplement or it becomes the predominant thing that the agenda wants there is going to be a
Pathway for enthusiasts to continue to improve and and and make their cars better and I think that that’s the part that I’ve always been real into right so like let’s see uh what that means so William yeah what’s you know so we have William Roy with us and William how you
Doing great thanks for having me back yeah awesome to have you man and uh you know I think it’s really cool because you know it’s not like anyone here is a EV Specialist or whatever it is but you we get a chance to be with you
Who I meant literally here oh yeah I’ve been literally here like we’re not we’re no EV Specialists but like we get to talk with you which is uh that’s what you do and um I think it’s really interesting because basically if you ever check out the automotive news and
Stuff like that the only thing that’s ever in the news anymore is EV related stuff and uh people want to talk about it people want to say stuff about it but there’s not too many expt out there at least not now because we’re still kind
Of in an infant stage of EV Vehicles so um you know I I know that for work you do this stuff every day can you know tell us a little bit about you know what you do yeah exactly uh where to begin so I I I think I have a good perspective in
This because uh like you guys said we are we are all Automotive enthusiasts so it’s kind of an interesting thing where we’re getting I don’t want to say pushed but there is definitely a change happening and there might push too yeah yeah maybe I don’t want to say it but um
But we’re all getting caught up in it and so it’s like where do we go from now uh so yeah basically at work uh I am again a senior electrical engineer electromechanical engineer um so what we do we do a lot of uh design uh simulation which is just as important as
The actual calibration part of electric motors uh mainly uh vehicle full edus so whether it’s for like large trucks we do full you know edus for class eight trucks uh all passenger cars uh mainly this three different types uh I’ll probably try to keep it to the most
Popular one because it’s going to get it’s going to get really dry and you make you guys heads spin uh but basically permanent magnet motors and AC induction Motors are the two big ones that I do so okay so I think what’s interesting here and and and my only
Real premise behind or my premise not the right word my my only good base for this educated part of the conversation is the fact if you remember do you remember a while back we did that podcast with am from with Lawson from am
I I was not on that one so with with uh we had Lawson from am um kind of on the podcast and at the time you know before a was acquired by Holly there a lot of their focus was developing um kind of the canbus SL um kind of ECU to be able
To tune and and add in a lot of these things now there there their initial uh kind of fight wasn’t in trying to develop something that would go let’s say into a Tesla and control a Tesla their thing was hey you know you may buy
A fox body and want to put some sort of you know uh electric motor in or do some sort of EV swap or maybe you want to grab you know a Powertrain out of a Tesla and and power you know something like this you want to do something cool
And we’re going to give you the ability to basically add use this system to develop a cust system and to develop you know kind of a control you know battery control uh system and and be able to you know manage these batteries so um it was cool from the perspective of if you
Wanted to swap something you wanted to go to EV West and you wanted to pick up a motor or something like that you could make this happen with what they were putting out but this is not what we’re talking about today we’re talking about I bought a blank and I want to say
By what the hell was it I bought a Tesla I bought I bought one of these EVs and and and and I what is the possibility that I could essentially at some point improve on it I can make maybe more power change where the power’s outputed or how the batteries are
Conserved or how what’s my range and stuff like that right yeah yeah good question so uh you know already there’s uh tuning companies there’s a couple in Canada Mountain Pass performance that are doing your normal tuning stuff right suspension brakes all that stuff but I think that’s what everybody is worried
About right is Where Do We Go From Here I want more power or something of that sort so it’s going to be a big topic so sorry uh let me know if you guys need me to stop for anything but it’s it’s fundamental to know uh what your
Electric motors is actually doing and and what controls it and where to go from there because if we think about it like normal tuning where hey you know if we just add more air fuel you know timing you’re gonna make more power unfortunately it it does work like
That in in some ways but it also doesn’t work like that in some ways so let’s let’s take your standard we’ll use a model three for example okay fair so uh it’s most of the ubiquitous uh car out there really I think probably is sold
The most uh as San wise at least uh it has one the long range version has one permanent magnet uh rear motor okay so you have one motor one inverter and that makes a Electronic Drive Unit like an edu okay so at the end of the day what
You’re doing uh when you program and you calibrate and you make these electric motors is you are regulating current okay so what you do is uh let’s look from the motor perspective okay so the part that spins is called the rotor easy this part that’s stationary it’s called The
Stater elri electric motors are easy so far you’ve ever taken apart an alternator you know where we’re going here yeah I keep telling people electric motors are easy yeah um and so anyways so uh the stator uh has copper coils basically they’re called windings and
Long story short if you run current in a sine wave through through those you will the car will spin you will spin the motor uh now the nice thing about it is that uh in this case so you have uh they’re called three phases so you have
Three phases of current that make a sine wave right you’ve always seen the waves and in this case they’re always 120 degrees from each other so there’s actually a cool trick that we can do to make basically all of EV tuning come down to two numbers it’s called the ID
And IQ and that’s basically your reaction current and your power production current easy so there’s actually uh you you you do two transform functions okay it’s called a park and a Clark transform and basically what it does is you know uh the end goal of an
IC car maybe isn’t to make as much power right there’s a lot of efficiency and stuff like that yeah well the interesting thing about an EV is you basically get your best efficiency at also the same amount of torque right for x amount of current you want the most
Torque possible that’s how you get the most efficiency as well so in this case you always want to be leading by 90 de okay so uh thus you can do this park and Clark transform and you get two currents your ID and your IQ vice versa depending
On which way you’re spending uh and so yeah you get down to two values and all you’re doing at the end of the day is controlling those but the problem is there’s really nowhere to go from there with the existing Hardware uh you’re there’s no there’s no making it better
Than what it was from the factory if you if you do your simulation correctly uh it’s as good as it will get so I think what we have to realize is that you might not be able to maybe tune an existing motor but you’ll be able to
Open up the limitations of it okay so you mentioned the am stuff so I’ve actually used one uh on the Tesla Model S okay uh but I’ve actually used a bunch actually um uh just the control board though you can actually use it without the ECU but that’s a different story
Pride proprietary uh but uh um so yeah so uh that they’re able to open up the limits because in this case I’m sure they had to sell you know the model S plat or whatever right can’t have the normal one making 400 kilowatts uh so anyways they’re able to
Open up the the safety limitations current wise uh and that’s how you make more power so I I don’t think things are completely lost I think that we’re going to be able to make Power uh just like the good old days but just in a different way you’re not modifying
Tuning you’re not modifying fuel anymore you’re not modifying those two currents uh you will be opening limits basically so now go ahead no you go ahead no I no you I’m sure your question I just about I think I was about the spiral oh okay
Well I was going to say you know for for the nature of what you do for work um I mean how does how does that really go so in other words like I know that you play a part in uh a lot of the OE stuff um
And you know always will will kind of have a car and they’ll say hey we’re working on X Y and Z Model whatever it may be and uh we need X Y andz which is funny enough Tesla but um I didn’t mean that literally but uh you know we have
These cars that we’re working on we need to hit this kind of Benchmark with it and they kind of just leave it in your hand more or less and you know what what’s the process like from there I mean you you’re kind of left with uh essentially a halfway finished project
Is that more fair to say or it yes uh it’s hard though because things are things are changing so quick in that world so a couple years ago it went from all these oems are are purchasing these electric motors and the inverter from A supplier right so the supplier is doing
All that stuff now they’re giving it into to the oems the oem’s job is to put it in the vehicle make it work make it not vibrate crazy and all that stuff uh now we’re seeing on the other hand now the oems are kind of catching up and so
Now they’re doing everything in the house so like you said a lot of times they don’t we we’re still trying to figure out what the best way to do these things are I don’t know if you guys have seen uh the new BMW uh IM or whatever
The new uh BMW EBS they actually went back to brushed motors they actually had you know like the old uh brushed DC motors why uh so long story short so you can increase the efficiency of a motor by reducing the air gap okay so like I
Said you have that rotor and the Stater well there is always going to be a air gap now it’s not much but uh for one thing if a rotor is going 14,000 RPM yeah uh the air inside is going very fast as well okay and it’s I don’t want
To get super engineering to to into into fluid dynamics but at a certain speed uh air becomes it acts like a fluid uh and you actually get quite a lot of drag uh so there there’s losses from the air gap uh but we don’t use brush motors for
Anything because the brush is wear down right you know and and then you get dust well how do you how if you got dust inside of a sealed motor what do you do you know you’re not going to right what you hit hit 100K you got to you know
Replace your electric motor like that’s not people aren’t going to go with that so apparently they designed some crazy coding that’s just one example of an oem doing something completely off the board because there’s no one knows how to do it yet no one knows what the best way
Forward is so everyone’s just you know throwing darts so how wait so how do they get the dust out well the idea is that it’s not supposed to dust enough to to matter okay now let’s let’s be honest here BMW yeah I mean listen H I remember
The day that I had to bleed a more modern uh you know three series and realizing that they had you know the Overflow upon the Overflow and like I mean like there’s nothing German that’s easy and the fact that they just said oh it won’t dust makes me I want to call BS
On this they’re just going to dust yeah yep and that’s what we do that’s what we do so that’s a cool technology and now so all these oems they’re like how did they make it not dust or is it really you know did it really not dust and
They’ll have us test it right oh that’s crazy now yeah and now we’re not going to be able to get a BMW to really test it right so we have to mightbe get that motor from a wrecked car or something like that we might have to make it run
On our own controls and so that’s where we have to program our own e-o because in this case we’re not testing the inverter I don’t care about the inverter right we care about how that motor is designed and how they’re able to get brushes to to basically work in a modern
AC you know asynchronous motor so so what do you do you just set this motor up once you get kind of the feel you just set it to basically like like it’s like one of those longevity tests you just run this thing until the I hate to
Say it till the balls fall off and then and then you open it up and go yeah there’s a whole bunch of dust in that specific scenario that’s probably what we would do like I you know Scott you were an engineer at heart let me tell
You I feel that way sometimes I will say maybe we’ll we’ll put some quantities to it right we’ll measure the Stater weight before and then afterwards Stu like that but yeah yeah yeah that’s probably what we do I hate to say it so yeah that’s
Wild so like so like yeah I mean I guess that’s that’s that’s kind of I wonder how long that takes good question well you know I I will say that’s definitely it’s a very Hot Topic in the industry right okay you know uh Motors like that new motor designs Transmissions Transmissions are
A huge thing my God that’s the biggest that’s the huge thing right now uh you know the Porsche takon had the two-p Speed right so everyone has you know trying to figure out how they do it is it worth it and obviously the answer is
More complex than yes or no um but yeah these are the things that we’re just trying to figure out and and no one really knows the answer yet which is exciting yeah I mean look I I I think it’s important to to point out like remember that you know what we’re going
Through is different but the same right like when you think about even a turtle combustion engines if you go back you know back to let’s say you know the 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s there was a a big change in the way that they did transmissions
And I mean there was so many different types of transmissions and different things and and you know and today it’s it’s kind of it’s slowed down with the internal comest engine a little bit just because you know there are some things that just have proven to be more
Efficient and with the time you kind of people get behind what’s the most efficient most economical whatever it may be well now we’re going into a a place where we’re kind of rewriting that so we’re going to go through that that period of learning all over again um and
I kind of think that’s what you mean like that’s where we’re at again exactly I guys remember turbochargers yeah we we made them ceramic for a little bit Yeah they broke after 10,000 miles what were we doing you know like no one so it’s it’s the same thing and it’s exciting
But things are changing really fast because of that right I mean it’s even like going like you know from from the technology point when Porsche started to introduce like the variable Bane turbos and stuff like that right like you’re taking a spin on what was there but then
You’re like oh wait a minute we don’t have to worry about putting on it turbocharger is going to run out of steam we can use this turbocharger throughout the RPM range which I guess is done by tuning for those listening but like um but but it’s it’s a it’s a
Different mechanical piece piece that allows us to change essentially what the effective you know size of the turbine housing is or that AR to allow more flow or or so so you’re controlling the spool and the efficiency range of the turbo by kind of directing these veins in you know in different angles
Right pretty it’s pretty wild so then so now I want to just double back real quick double back I want to double back to we we’re talking about that whole EV tuning thing yeah and we we just we got done with the complicated sine waves we figured out that there’s these two
Numbers that we’re going to essentially boil this thing down to but you know the one thing that I’m curious about is when we start talking about what we’re going to tune I want to know what those things are for example if you’ve ever driven and I think let’s let’s base all of our
Hypothetical conversations on a Model 3 single motor reg you know standard battery life car and the reason I’m saying this is because it’s probably the most affordable out of the Tesla line it’s also probably the most prevalent but the most popular right right that’s and but
But addition to that I also think we can stay with one example to to kind of Base this on so I get this car now if you’ve driven one you know that they’re pretty good off the line but they top out not too far up the range right yeah um does
This allow us to now with a tuning maybe change um kind of where that where that motor wants to top out at what can we do power delivery or so that that one so I’m gon to break some hearts here uh so that that one’s a tough one so the the
Solution there is higher vol volage okay so that that’s why uh so cyber trucks 800 take on 800 everything is going to keep going up okay so the old model 3 if I remember right they’re about 400 or so okay uh so uh I hate to go more more techy with you
Guys I’ll try to keep it very brief but um you know when people say that oh my God electric motors have all their Torque from zero RPM yeah in powery right yeah Instant Power Dy what they don’t tell you though is that you have let’s say you have Dino curve right so
As your speed goes up you know torque’s on the y axis speeds on the X well you’ll start at full torque right but you’ll see as the car goes like you can get you know dinos of metel 3es right they’re all over the Internet yep uh it
Hits you know let’s say a certain speed which is in a motor RPM but in this case we’ll do miles per hour at 70 miles per hour the thing drops off like crazy yeah it drops off because it’s hitting something called field weakening okay okay so uh a model 3 has permanent
Magnets in the motor okay so they’re they’re able it’s it’s so efficient because it has magnets from the get-go you don’t have to use any current to make your magnetic flux got it sorry it’s gonna get pretty tactical here that’s all right we’re gonna stay with
You here we we’re going so basically a MAG the magnetic flux is what makes it turn e easy as that uh it’s current going through the windings so because you don’t have to waste a lot of that current uh generally you’re more efficient which is why those are become
The prevalent Motors almost everything’s permanent magnet nowadays okay so what the problem is though is as you’re spinning that it is creating back electricity okay it’s creating voltage that’s going backwards effectively and back into the inverter that’s not good you need you need there to be a a
Potential difference uh in voltage so at a certain speed the rotor is spinning fast enough that the voltage that the uh rotor is producing is the exact same that the battery pack is then what you have to do is you have to start using some of that current that could
Otherwise be used to make power to reduce it if that makes any sense so now that’s why you get that huge crazy drop off that’s why people use Transmissions that’s a big thing and that’s why the Porsche take on which is supposed to be a GT car right you’re supposed to be
Able to go and take that on the Autobon and you know it doesn’t just fall off in performance right that’s the idea that makesense that’s that’s why that’s exactly why so unfortunately to answer your question in the most circular way possible that one’s going to be a hard
One to do I I I don’t want to make any bad you know predictions that one’s basically going to be impossible all right so then what what about for the exam were you going to I have so many questions I don’t know where to start go
Ahead I was going to tr off you go ahead all right so so my question is is in with a tuning measurement right like I mean with a with a tune the ability to tune these let’s say battery control modules ma management whatever I don’t know what we’re going to call them but
Let’s let’s say we have this ability can we sh can we shift that power band at all or is it really a permanent motor you know uh a permanent magnet engine I mean a motor is going to kind of be fixed this is is this is what it is you can’t
Really do too much to it yeah so that effectively you you can get more Peak torque so let let’s let’s say again our in our hypothetical example right uh you can open up the limitations of let’s say uh current okay uh again if you can uh access the battery management system BMS
Is usually what they call them yep uh you could probably change the limits there you could probably get more Peak torque okay uh it’s gonna drop off at the same point unfortunately unless you’re fig you know figuring out some way to get more like overcharging the battery but at that point like there’s
Some safety issues concerned there so yeah we’re we’re gonna have to be careful when we tune anything that has to do with the battery management system as okay so so the moment I come up on this and I say all right let’s say let’s imagine we’re 15 years away from today
Some of the first first model 3 is now they’ve been out on the road for 25 years okay and I get one of these things for $3,000 well no hold on a second I’m I’m go I’m go I’m going we’re going you know like listen you got Civics that are 20
You know like let’s let’s get down there so we got these model 3s and yeah I’m sure somebody’s you know they put a new battery pack in or we’ve or cells have gotten we don’t like this example I can tell but listen I want I want to figure
This out does that mean mean that at some point the modification in these cars that everybody’s going to be doing is not the engine swap it’s going to be they’re going to be looking to try to figure out how to put a transmission into these cars
Oh I can’t look look I can’t yeah it’s gonna be really tough but but to your to your point though yeah I I don’t want to I want to be like realistic I’m a huge car guy right yeah that kind of tuning is is probably going to go away and you
Know I don’t want to say that a good thing don’t say it’s a bad thing y but that style of tuning is probably going to go away again you’ll you’ll probably be able to up the peak torque that you’re able to get right but that doesn’t help us extend it right exactly
I don’t think you’re really gonna be able to get beyond that well I have a few questions then I guess I’ll stay on topic for right now because I have a couple questions that are off topic as well but uh well for for you for you
Know people who don’t know you uh I mean you’re also a grid life driver Seca driver I mean you’re out there doing the damn thing and you know true Mot Motorsports and car Enthusiast and uh even though you work with EVS it’s not like you go home to your Lucid air or
Something like that you know so um but I had a couple weeks ago but oh cool did you wait you had one uh I perks of the job we get to buy we get to drive basically every production EV uh now I have now I have more questions but it’s
Do you want you want my honest answer yeah sure lots of things are good about it lots of things are bad so uh we had a brand new Lucid a GT uh like the grand so it’s the dual motor kind of longer range version we didn’t get the Sapphire
We had the old pre- refresh uh the only a th horsepower one that one was pretty cool too uh we had several paint quality issues I mean literally like you know like orange peel in the like paint brand new car um yeah there’s some nvh issues here and there I dynamically it’s
Actually probably one of the better or best EVS there are cool uh it’s more tuned like the takon uh dynamically it yeah it’s a big SUV but it actually feels quite Nimble um I’m not a fan of all almost all the other EV uh that yeah
They either try to make it like overly sporty for no reason the Lucid is pretty good they’re really pretty good they do have a lot of software issues though I will say I’m sure issues as well yeah yeah a lot the quality control stuff is what you’re gambling with so I I think
The one thing that that you know where where I stand on EV is is that like and this is this is my again this is my opinion right right um I preferably not like this turned into a clip because I feel like out of context this would be a
Bad clip go for it I know but here’s the thing I I ultimately believe that car companies like the BMWs and the Mercedes and you know and and the car companies that have been car companies I I believe that they will eventually make some of
The best EVS that are out there now I understand Tesla’s got an incredible lead on on what they got going on there yeah but when you get down to the real true car enthusiasts and and this is why like I’ve heard people say things like ah Tesla’s going to you know put all
These car companies out of business here’s why I don’t think so because a lot of these companies that are coming up with EV only like they’ve only done EV they’re devel whatever they’re technology companies and I think they’re going to do great things for the space that will continuously have Automotive
Manufactur adopting different pieces but I ultimately think at the end of the day a company like BW they build cars and they know how to build cars and they’re good at building cars okay y yeah it’s a tough thing that that’s the hard part I will say Elon
Said that himself uh that part of it hard yeah hold on a second Max is asking a question compon okay I didn’t hear the first part of his question you’re gonna have to Rich well I would say no because they can’t paint a car so yeah I might have missed that
Full question but I think I got I think I got part of it Lucid has one of the best motor designs out there okay so and so I and I believe that that part will become but like the same way listen I don’t care what you say I don’t know
Who’s doing it but like the same way companies that you work for a reverse engineering these things to find out what’s good what’s bad there are going to be OES that are doing the same damn thing like I just can’t imagine that won’t happen so so at the end of the day
You know like obviously their IP their proprietary patents and and different things like that that’s going to be the the kind of the strong point on this but you know p are you know kind of a tweak away from being able to be a different process and all of a sudden you’re
Taking the premise and it’s being applied differently so you’ll have those apple uh apple and um what was the other debate the the the the lawsuit that went on Samsung oh okay right so like I I think there’s a going to come but like when it comes down to making vehicles
And making cars I mean like I’m sorry like the one thing I really struggle with Tesla as much as it’s cool that you’re driving a flying iPad right like as cool as sometimes s the Driving Experience can be there is this other piece where I look at the car and I can
Look at the car and go but the cars doesn’t have the quality that I want when I buy a car yep like they’re just not like I’m I mean I’m telling you that like there’s pieces in there I’m like this is not when you pull back the
Carpet and the stuff hiding some of the things you will not be super happy with what you own yeah maybe maybe that’ll change but a BMW knows what it’s like to build a car like with Porsche knows what it’s like to build a car and so now the
EV thing in my opinion and I want you to comment on this is I think making an EV is way easier than putting an internal combustion engine into a car and I think it’s way cheaper I think they’re going to find a way to make more profit on
These cars and charge you more money than they have ever done before and I think they love this um feel like I’m on the right pace or am I off the ball yeah comment on that for sure so uh not taking any uh like let’s say external um
You know obviously there’s quite a quite a push uh in government of course but for the O the oems want it to guys they are they are cheaper they are easier to manufacture uh less parts I mean literally the motor is just two bearings and then you’re differential that’s it
Like it it so it it is incredibly cheap to do so and now again they’re moving it all inhouse as well so now they can you know control the manufacturing part of it oems want to make EVS yeah there is is what it is it’s to their advantage
They will make more money per car to make these EVS at the end so yeah there’s definitely a push for that too it’s crazy I I had the question it’s the biggest conspiracy ever and I don’t believe in conspiracies well it seems like there’s some proof there so I’m
Telling you well they’ll they’ll never say that though they never say that I’m not saying and I’m not saying they should and I’m not even saying they shouldn’t be allowed to like like again I’m not against EVS I’m just against how fast we’re trying to get there and what
We’re getting there what the steps we’re taking to get there are it’s incredible supplemental vehicle option that should be on the realm all right I’m not going to I won’t I won’t say anymore but uh all right I’m GNA I’m going to circle back to a question that I had that was
Uh when we were talking about the peak the peak torque and the the kind of the fallof uh of torque in the EVS when tuning them or whatever it may be or looking at their Maps or or whatever um you know when you go out to the track I
Mean you can actually see people who are racing EVS now on the track and uh question that I just have is like if you’re out there and there’s a bunch of people who are driving model 3 performances or whatever that is on the tracker or whatever um are all these
Guys going to fall to the same limitations or like you know it’s not the same thing you can you can go see someone at the track with an EVO and you don’t know exactly what’s going going on with that car but is it going to just
Leave you with just like oh that model 3 that model 3 that model 3 they’re all the same and they’re all going to run similar numbers and the difference is going to be based on maybe just I don’t performance driver performance tires I don’t know suspension sends or whatever
May be will be that shallow I I would imagine I would I would guess maybe the quarter mile stuff is probably identical you know there’s not too much you can really do with an EV what you push the gas better than someone else like that’s about it uh so
I think and the and the road course world uh I think yeah I think the the gap between evos taking the driver out of the component at all it can be Ma you know it can literally be the fastest cars in the world fastest time attack
Cars in the world and then you know bone stock Evo 10 right right uh the gap’s huge y I don’t think that’s GNA be the case the the gap between you know a modded we’ll say a modded model 3 and a not modded model 3 would be much less so
Like you know in my sense when I think about performance games or whatever the first thing that came to my head if I if I had a EV and I had to put it on track the first thing comes to my head is weight reduction and like how much does
That play a role in terms of uh when you’re trying to achieve certain numbers or whatever that may be I mean do you guys factor that or look for that yeah yeah definitely uh but keep in mind as well so like it’s all it’s all percentage gain based right yeah so if
You can if you can pull 100 pounds out of a 2100 pound Miata yeah you are getting a lot more than pulling 100 pounds out of a 5,000 pound Tesla right understood but but yet like the gains are still the same right so you you can actually a lightweight battery a
Lightweight 12volt battery to be fair uh is a popular mod for Teslas uh that’s that’s what they do and and you can get you can drop 30 pounds right which is you know it’s substantial I have done that in my time attack car um but when
Your car is 4,800 pounds it’s not as substantial so yeah definitely I mean less weight is is always better for racing period when we talk about performance though with an EV are we is it as kind of I don’t want to say simple but is it as simple as when we talking
About how fast the car is and how far let’s say How Far That Power Band can extend is that motor technology and when we start talking about range and the ability to kind of power those Motors That’s All Battery Technology I would I don’t want to put a
Number to it but for the most part um so okay there’s a couple things to it so you hear you hear the meme that uh you know electric motors are what 99% efficient you hear people say okay we gota maybe we’ll debunk that here okay
So uh maybe guys yeah yeah yeah I hope not guys uh so maybe maybe it’s 99% efficient and that would that would actually be pretty high by the way uh maybe it’s 99% efficient at one speed and one load right so one torque yeah uh generally guys they go down to 60% 50%
Stuff like that so we we have to be clear that there is still a range at which that motor wants to run and that all comes down to motor design uh you can um you can create the windings differently to make different back EMF whether what motor design it is is
Whether it’s AC induction or permanent magnet uh yeah it’s there there’s there’s a lot to it um but that’s all it’s all factors into it so in in a more realistic sense or whatever what I was thinking is that like for what you do for work I would imagine there has to be
I’m going to just give a a fake scenario but uh as an educated guest I would imagine some scenarios might go something like this you have a o and they’re going to say we’re going to be looking to release this car in the near future whatever it is uh if we’re not
Hidden 260 m per charge for range uh we’re going to get flamed in the media and people are going to call it a piece of garbage and uh you know we’re only getting x amount of right now can you guys help us is what I would imagine
Some conversations go like and then you know I I’m just curious what are the steps that you guys take from your company to kind of uh make it happen for them yeah yeah it’s actually quite a realistic thing you actually hit it within five miles of a company that
We’ve actually done there we go see yeah it’s really funny um so so yeah so a couple couple steps that we got to look into right so um there’s definitely a bunch of factors that you can do uh again there there while it is hard to tune an electric motor incorrectly uh I
Would also argue that it’s hard to tune it correctly too so like there is ways that you can uh definitely increase efficiency and then also there’s sacrifices that you can do that would make the car will say louder so you can actually do a lot of techniques uh with
Your calibration and I I’m also I’m talking about vector control there’s some other control strategies out there but anyways um that will uh reduce noise level uh but increase efficiency and vice versa uh or the the opposite um so you can do a lot of that uh so that’s
That’s the first thing we look into uh we’ll look into the Power Electronics we’ll probably want to tear down a motor see if there’s any actual design changes we can do um I mean the the big thing is is Battery tech too for that stuff some
Of them will come to us and let’s say we want 25% guys like 25% range increase you’re just not going to get like that you’re you’re talking about small percentages of increase to a well-tuned electric motor and a not well-tuned electric motor but you know again that’s is what
We’re going with if all these motors are 95% plus efficient a percent matters uh so yeah you can go through and you can do that stuff but a lot of companies are not understanding right now that uh to get the 25% that they need to be competitive you’re gonna have to change some
Architecture I I get this funny Vision in my head of you make some people feel really bad because they have their R&D team and they go we did it we got this’s as much as we can do and they go well that’s not good enough Let’s go ask these guys they
Get the car back from you guys they look at their engineers and they go what the hell why couldn’t you guys do that that’s what I that’s that weird funny thing I see in my own head after you know that scenario but uh it happens we do it internally too you know sometimes
Like we’ll send a project off and like we’ll get another one from another customer like why is that so much better than what we just did right right right so if if you’re the biggest thing about engineering is a I guess we’d like to argue but B if you’re wrong in an
Argument uh you got to be able to accept it and try to learn from it if you’re not if you’re not here to learn I just don’t know what you’re doing right especially in this space there’s very few experts in the electric motor field there is but uh if you think you’re an
Expert generally you’re not yet uh so you got to be pretty humble with it um so there’s still a lot to learn and that that does happen for sure so before we start to wrap up I let’s just do I want because I want to break this piece out
I’m going to ask you to pick up that crystal ball for a second I know it’s not your job but but but I’m going to ask you to try with the knowledge that you have what are let’s say we get to a point where the equivalent of an access port or a
Pre-developed tune package is something that can essentially be uploaded into your EV that you have that’s bone stock what different things do you believe will be userfriendly on the screen that you can change within to affect the actual speed performance Etc of a car what what kind
Of things do you think will be in that program or what par you know what things can we change yeah so I mean the the biggest thing I think and and uh companies sell thousands of these a year uh throttle mapping right throttle mapping is easy um okay you know and
Again I think I think to that to that point as well I want to point out uh you talked about am so uh I don’t know if you guys knew but there was two different types of Model S Motors there was the sport and the Bas okay the only
Difference between them technically is a little Power Electronics uh it’s just a calibration oh wow so there’s there’s there’s things like that now there’s scenarios like that where you might be able to plug in your hypothetical access port device got and upgrade to you know let’s say the higher model or something
Like that there’s no there’s going to be some platforms that that share Motors but they don’t want to cannibalize sales on the higher stuff or the chassis is not capable or you know 50 other different reason understand yeah but throttle throttle mapping is an easy one
Uh for sure and again you might be able to go up to a higher model of things which really just opens up the limits effectively um yeah so stuff like that it’s gonna be probably pretty limited uh but also hey more less things people can break too so right so you think you
Think the throttle mapping I mean you mentioned something with noise do you think there’ll be a quiet mode or I mean louder vote not really I’m trying to think of anything else here yeah it’s such a uh I I go to the uh SE conferences every year and it’s still
Very much theoretical at this point yeah uh like we are doing uh variable switching frequencies so your inverter uh takes your DC power so DC’s Flatline right Y and then it switches it uses switches and that’s how you get your wave okay it’s switching it so fast that
It actually ends up starting to look like a wave got okay so you can you can mess with that there’s a lot of efficiency to be gained with just changing the switching frequency uh you can make it again sound better in some cases a lot of the nvh stuff is you want
To keep it away from a resonant frequency so there’s times that you’ll be like you know uh I’m going to go time attack racing I don’t care about that give me this you know a cal that doesn’t matter at all maybe it’s the base switching frequency that doesn’t change
Like stuff like that could potentially be possible but uh it’s going to be very it’ll be a learning curve for all the tuners right uh all these big tuning companies it probably won’t be picked up by Standalone guys because it’s it’s a lot of theory right it’s interesting
It’s like it’s also tough because it’s like you really are starting to get to a point where at least at this juncture the level of EV tuning is really all in everything you can do to a to a car except for Speed like you’re not you’re
Kind of in that realm of yeah you can make the suspension better you can make handling better you probably can like shave some weight arguably will make a difference depending on the total vehicle weight that you have um but it’s not like there’s going to be battery
Swaps and you know and all this stuff and you’re do you think there ever will be any kind of like plug-and playay what’s that like do you think there ever will be any kind of like plug- Inplay type of like uh you know performance mod
I guess or whatever it may be in terms of uh depends on the platform too well you said it’s about wattage so I guess additional wattage I I don’t know you plug additional wattage in I don’t know I’m not the engineer it that it’ll be Hardware limited so a lot of yeah yeah
So so it’s it’s potentially possible right so uh here’s here’s a good example uh the older Gen 2 PR I think it’s Gen 2 Priuses okay uh they have an aftermarket battery pack you can literally plug in it works just fine with your existing battery management system and you
Literally get more power in range okay so I’m it’s not impossible it’s definitely not impossible I would imagine that the demand for that development wise won’t be there until like let’s say all these model 3es get really old and they start actually the battery packs start dying so far we
Haven’t seen that bad of degradation uh actually the whole industry was pretty conservative uh and they’re actually kind of pulling back on that um it’s why the oems had such low range for a while uh Tesla was much more aggressive with their strategy for that so that’s surprising yeah yeah exactly exactly so
Everybody’s kind of catching up again but that’s one of the many reasons they’re for so long the biggest fear I think I have for these cars and I know this is kind of going off the realm of of tuning EVS but like is that you’re going to get to a certain point where
The car is living lived his life expectancy and at least at this juncture the battery to replace a battery or some of these parts is just it’s not it it’s basically totals the car like you there’s no point in actually doing this stuff so what we’re what we’re really
Going to see I think pop up as time goes on is essentially these electrified you know like the electrified garage like Rich Beno what he does and you’re going to start to see um you know these shops pop up that are essentially going to be horning these parts and have the
Ability to try to give you a much more coste effective way to keep your car on the road and I just think man it’s could you imagine you buy a car the battery lasts let’s say 880,000 miles you go you know you you go to wherever and you say hey and they’re
Like oh yeah like I know your car you bought your car with the the rebates for $42,000 if you want to change his batteries 26 like what’s up with that yeah you know so what do you do junk the car where are these batteries going yeah I got some bad news for
People too uh the ma the majority of the uh when you recycle a battery let’s say you recycle a laptop phone anything like that uh we we don’t usually reuse the lithium uh it’s actually so cheap that it’s not used uh usually when you recycle it the plastic housing is what’s
Actually recycled wait wait wait are you you’re saying they don’t they don’t reuse the lithium not really it’s it’s it’s so cheap to mine that the recycling process wait a minute but they’re saying so much of what we’re hearing is about the the the crap of this mining problem and yeah I don’t
Know what to tell you guys it it is it is I’m keep in mind lithium is one of the most abundant elements on our planet right so I mean yes uh but right now it’s it’s so cheap to mine that a lot of the B again when you recycle a battery
Pack it’s mostly the plastic housing that’s being reused I I’m absolutely I don’t know if I should be more Angry all right look I I can’t say how much I appreciate you for coming on these These past two times I gota I think I have to go take some Pepto bismo
I’m like really I don’t know if I’m like more I I’m just not happy now it it could depressing but here let me uh let me let me flip things up really quick yeah end end it on a good note would you yeah yeah we we’ll do so
I’m a huge car guy uh like I said we got you know seat time in almost every production car so things are not looking bad for enthusiasts okay so we have some of the best Enthusiast cars that are being built right now uh there’s potentially EV Enthusiast cars I don’t
Know if you guys have been the ionic n 5n y uh it’s looking really good we we don’t you know not have a lot of us Journal us have got it but it’s looking really cool it’s got a simulated DCT and like it kind of looks like a meme but
Everybody that’s driven it loves it and they and they actually end up using the DCT mode so you know that’s cool and then on the flip side 15 years ago you could not buy a car that was track ready from the factory right barely any almost
None uh now there’s maybe 10 that I can think of that you can go on track basically all day we’re talking about the Camaro ss1 L c8s uh you know any of the 911 GT products like the Elantra so I think as we get to the point where
A lot of these EVS are we’ll say consumer cars their appliances really what they are or Tech products we’ll say yep uh the remaining Enthusiast cars I think we’re already seeing them getting more and more hardcore all right so there’s there’s a there’s a good quote
Out there that said the best thing that ever happened to horse racing was the invention of the car and I think that’s and and I don’t think now pricing is probably not gonna go down on Enthusiast products we’ve seen that through covid right yeah any Enthusiast cars on
Obtainium but they are getting better they’re getting more hardcore because they’re not your commuter car anymore right yeah so I don’t think everything’s do a Gloom it’s interesting I yeah I mean I don’t We’re Not Gonna We’re not gonna get listen I I thank you very much
For coming on I think it it gave me a dose of reality on and things that I learned that I was a little bit more hopeful for but I also think um it gives me an accurate sense of where things are but it’s interesting you know the one
Point that really I think I take away from this is that you know while you know because look an an engine also has a power band quote unquote right so like in theory like you’re starting to see like there is a potential that through gearing and Transmissions some of these
Cars could really potentially be reutilized I guess in this motor base I just don’t know exactly how you know I don’t know that they’ve gotten there but like you said like like BMW and Porsche like they’re starting to come out with these cars that are have Transmissions so so we’ll see
Yeah that’s coming that’s definitely coming there’s a lot of uh again you got to know what you’re making your car for right a city EV is not going to need that they’re all gonna be one speeds but performance car probably gonna need it right Scott’s car needs transition yeah
You go listen thank you for coming on I appreciate it uh Hey like uh you have anything you want to promote any Social Links any anything cool any Services you do coaching I mean what we got here yeah sure sure so uh I’m a part of a YouTube
Channel actually my brothers uh follows our racing in just general car Shenanigans right uh it’s called Patty Boy on YouTube uh and then obviously you guys know uh we’re doing our own uh kind of let’s save these cars from the junkyard thing when your Porsche blows up and it’s more expensive the engine’s
More expensive than your whole Porsche uh the tuning by Nick right we’re we’re currently we’re currently selling our K swap kits uh so yeah go go hit him up uh if anything doesn’t work on the electronic side uh you can complain to me directly oh jeez that’s that’s a big one
Watch out they’ll clip out next thing you know your dress will be popping up on the bottom of a clip I think that so and yeah it’s good man we’re going to I I know there’s going to be more conversations and maybe even some projects that we could kind of ask your
Your guidance on because um aside from the Nick thing which is like man I’ve been looking all over I’m looking you know it’s really hard to find a blown like as easy as it is it’s really hard to find a blown engine um you know 9911 there’s plenty of people that will spend
All the money in the world to take a good old you know lock ail uh engine and try to get it fixed or whatever it is so um yeah anyhow we’ll we’ll be in touch I’m sure yeah yeah it’s great thanks for having me dude thanks for coming on
William thank you so much man yeah thank you so I think listen I’m um I don’t know if Max ended it or not oh good I’m still on I I look I don’t know I don’t know what to make of this one I would I think I was a little
Bit more optimistic that we were going to get all these reports of all the cool things you can do to EVS I think I’m a little bit more sad now but I think uh the basis here is you know this may be great thing for standard modes of
Transportation at some point um but if you’re looking for something super dope um you know maybe there’ll be some it seems like you’re going have to be relying on the on the OES yeah I mean at least at least to PVE the way of some of these you know more complicated you know
Um like you said architecture and mayad to some some different capabilities but if nothing else remember that you need to really look out for all the cool cars that are around now them uh yeah and like look I mean up to 2015 if you haven’t watched the canbus podcast that
We did with William go back and watch it we talk about how you could put different engine modern platforms into other vehicles and what kind of you know technolog is required to do it and make it operate seamlessly with your factory you know computers and canb systems so
Um so that’s pretty much it you got anything else you want to add I’m good good we’re out of here take care it’s been nice seeing you we’ll do this whole thing next Wednesday don’t forget to come back yada yada y catch you later
A few weeks ago, we had William Rori on the podcast to talk about CANBUS and the possibilities that CANBUS offers to people who are looking to swap engines. Today, we’re talking about Tuning – more specifically EV tuning and what can be done to tune one of these motors to produce higher outputs, while also potentially increasing efficiency.
More QUESTIONS about this project? Visit https://tuning-by-nick.myshopify.com or hit up @tuningbynick and/or Will Rori (@willrtakespics) on instagram.
Drop a comment below! What engine would you swap into your dream car? Tell us about it.
#podcast #automotive #porsche #k24 #honda
