75 and 75D variants increased performance from July 1st - software and hardware improvements?

[wk057]

What are your thoughts on RWD post-AP cars? I have a RWD 60/75 from 12/2016 that I'd love to know what power could be squeezed out above factory limits.

Cars built after about Q3'15 should be able to get a bit more power via software only, depending on exact configs. RWD cars built after then, specifically, are very software limited on performance still, so Tesla could do something there almost certainly.

My drive unit was recently upgraded because of a noise it was making.

I wonder how difficult it would be for Tesla to just offer bigger batteries and more performance for the old P85 cars. Like maybe give them your 85 and $2000 and get a 100 pack with updated software so us 85'ers don't feel left behind

Considering Tesla doesn't even want to offer any physical battery upgrades to anyone at all, and even lies to customers saying it's not possible... I'm going to guess this won't happen.

 

[tallypwner]

Oh well! As long as they keep sending new updates like Exit mode I'll be happy. Car is pretty fast as is. I only notice it being a little slow on freeway from 50-75.

 

[Peewee]

I'm curious about the difference between a 75 and 75D after the update. The difference was 0.1 to 60. I would be happy to see some real-life figures of the 75.

Both are in the fast enough range btw

 

[MIT_S60]

Cars built after about Q3'15 should be able to get a bit more power via software only, depending on exact configs. RWD cars built after then, specifically, are very software limited on performance still, so Tesla could do something there almost certainly.

Thanks for the confirmation on this! Tesla is standing by their comments that 2016/pre-July 2017 S75 RWD cannot support the increased performance due to the "older" drive unit hardware (pre-DU01). It's driving some of the S75 RWD owners crazy as we would have purchased the 75D with any indication that we'd be ineligible for such a drastic performance upgrade. I'm still holding out hope, but I'm not really expecting them to help us out.

 

[calif94577]

As someone who has done extensive modifications to a P85... I can assure you that there really isn't much, if any, software-only headroom there. Even if there was the full support of Tesla's software team to do the software-side modifications needed, any increase in power would, at a minimum, require upgrading the battery pack to support a higher current draw... essentially would need the Ludicrous retrofit. No battery packs produced in the P85 era are capable of increased current draw without some pretty in-depth hardware modifications. As an example, the procedure for the P85D to P85D retrofit is something like 40 pages long and requires at least 4 hours of labor with two techs, plus prep time. Some older P85 batteries would require even more modification.

Additionally, if by some miracle a P85 still has an older drive unit that's never been warranty swapped (or replaced before Tesla revised the inverter), then the drive unit would need to be upgraded to handle the higher current.

To be able to handle the added torque on a launch without spinning the tires, the traction control system would need an upgrade to the current generation system as well (ESP2 + iBooster + new sensors, etc) which, by the book, would require replacing one of the main wiring harnesses in the car since, as a policy, Tesla will not modify them.

Overall, no... there is not really any software headroom left with the P85, and a performance upgrade package put out by Tesla is pretty unlikely. Overall, I'm pretty sure anyone with a RWD pre-AP car has gotten everything they'll ever get, really. People with AP1 cars are pretty much there also. With the exception of minor firmware tweaks here and there, if you own a "Classic" Model S, I wouldn't expect much of anything from Tesla anymore. Plus, every one of these cars will be out of warranty by this time next year at the latest, minus the battery and drive unit. (Extended warranties don't really count, it's basically just an expensive service contract/insurance with a decently high deductible).

Didn't know you were following this thread! Should of known better lol. If you don't mind we pick you brain for a bit...

1. What is your opinion on further uncorking available for the 75D. Rumor has it that the motors are rated for even higher than they are currently using post uncork even.
2. There is much talk about what exactly is the physical difference/requirement that makes uncorking possible. Do you happen to know?
3. I have noticed suboptimal performance at freeway speeds post uncorking, particularly under 20% battery life that did not happen before. Power (particularly at freeway speeds) seems to be very sensitive to battery level when it wasn't as noticeable before. Ideas?
4. You mentioned upgraded traction control. When was this changed? Is there any decent article on the differences between generations as well as performance differences?
5. BOUNUS QUESTION!!!! What piece of information do you have that most of us don't know that we would want to know? (Ability/likelihood of becoming a hot spot. Ability/likelihood of recording video from the onboard cameras. Possible future updates. Reason why they offered uncorking. Enabling X-Mas easter egg on MS. Etc...)

Thanks in advanced!

 

[DJP31]

2. There is much talk about what exactly is the physical difference/requirement that makes uncorking possible. Do you happen to know?

@calif94577 All of this is way over my paygrade but the one constant I've seen is the "PT BMS ISENSORPROTOCOLNUMBER has to be greater than 3". If @wk057 can tell us what that is then there's a large piece of the puzzle in place.

 

[wk057]

Didn't know you were following this thread! Should of known better lol. If you don't mind we pick you brain for a bit...

1. What is your opinion on further uncorking available for the 75D. Rumor has it that the motors are rated for even higher than they are currently using post uncork even.

There is some headroom left. In theory the inverters could be pushed a lot further, but not something I'd do in a production car. Even pushing them to their normal limits would yield a bit more performance, but I'm guessing it's not worth the effort on their part.

2. There is much talk about what exactly is the physical difference/requirement that makes uncorking possible. Do you happen to know?

As far as I know there is no physical difference with the drive units (or anything else for that matter) that makes one car possible to uncork vs another. It all just appears to be risk mitigation on Tesla's part. I've speculated previously that newer 75 packs contain the newer cell chemistry used in the 100 packs, which I'm gathering more data on daily that appears to confirm this speculation. In which case, newer 75 packs wont degrade as fast under high current draw vs the older packs.

As far as I can tell, every dual motor non-performance Tesla can be uncorked on the technical side. It's just a matter of what the long term drawback is depending on the specific vehicle config.

They're basically pushing power equal to the original P85D perform through the small motors now. That certainly has some longevity and warranty implications to take into account, so it's not cost neutral for them to do this.

3. I have noticed suboptimal performance at freeway speeds post uncorking, particularly under 20% battery life that did not happen before. Power (particularly at freeway speeds) seems to be very sensitive to battery level when it wasn't as noticeable before. Ideas?

There is likely some alternative explanation for this one, such as pack temperature vs SoC. I don't believe the uncorking does anything to affect this.

4. You mentioned upgraded traction control. When was this changed? Is there any decent article on the differences between generations as well as performance differences?

This changed when AP1 was added to cars. Every AP1+ car has the gen2 system, every non-AP car has the gen1 system. I dont know of any articles on this. The main difference is that the wheel speed sensors are higher resolution and higher data rate in the gen2 system, so can detect slip exponentially faster. Additionally, the new system has the iBooster combined with it, so it can reach high brake pressure much more quickly than just the ABS pump available in the gen1 system.

5. BOUNUS QUESTION!!!! What piece of information do you have that most of us don't know that we would want to know? (Ability/likelihood of becoming a hot spot. Ability/likelihood of recording video from the onboard cameras. Possible future updates. Reason why they offered uncorking. Enabling X-Mas easter egg on MS. Etc...)

Thanks in advanced!

Good questions. Mainly would be speculation on my part for a lot of that. Bit O/T for this thread, but what the heck.

I haven't seen any evidence of any new easter eggs lately. The S doesnt seem to have enough mechanical control (like doors) to make the xmas easter egg make sense for it. Plus it relies on the fact that the headlights are LED on every X.

Dashcam type stuff isn't possible with the AP1 cam. It only has a CAN connection to the rest of the car. Downloading the 8 low resolution frames from an EDR event (see my twitter) actually takes almost an hour to transfer... so you're talking like 1 frame per 7 minutes... or 1/450th of a frame per second. Not super useful. AP2, on the other hand... I'd be very surprised if they didn't utilize it for dashcam functionality at some point. Everything is there on the hardware side... possibly might need a USB storage device or something for storing footage, but other than that it should be good to go. I've seen some evidence that they might be working on this already.

Why they offered uncorking? Pretty simple. Because now the performance delta between their highest end model and its uncorked counterparts actually exists with the 100 battery. The dual motor non-performance cars have always been capable of matching the power output of the original P85D on the technical side, but they were artificially capped since day one. Imagine if they had an uncorked performance 85D available when the P85D launched and there was only a tiny difference in initial acceleration. It wouldn't have made sense to fork over the extra cash for the high end model vs buying the next model down. Now, the 100 battery can deliver more power than the small motors can handle, so there actually is a performance gain on the P100D vs the 100D due to the larger rear motor. All of this has advantages for them on multiple fronts. It makes them look generous (free performance upgrades!), it doesn't cost them significantly to do so (some warranty reserve implications, but not substantial since the hardware can handle it), it makes newer cars more enticing with the artificial limits on who gets uncorked (they're not uncorking 85D's for example). Overall a win for them. Considering they still haven't released 100% of the performance available to the dual motor non-performance cars, it wouldn't surprise me if they did this again at some point.

 

[rinkydink]

Uncorked today at Gatwick SC, UK!

SC say they can’t tell 100% yet from the list of “eligible” VIN’s, so they need to physically connect to the car to confirm. The impression I was given was that most of the facelift cars will be eligible, but that there was a period of “crossover”, where it will effectively be pot luck. Some will win and some will lose unfortunately.

Now to update the tracker - how do I do it on an iPad? Any tips welcome!

 

[llirk]

As far as I know there is no physical difference with the drive units (or anything else for that matter) that makes one car possible to uncork vs another. It all just appears to be risk mitigation on Tesla's part. I've speculated previously that newer 75 packs contain the newer cell chemistry used in the 100 packs, which I'm gathering more data on daily that appears to confirm this speculation. In which case, newer 75 packs wont degrade as fast under high current draw vs the older packs.

As far as I can tell, every dual motor non-performance Tesla can be uncorked on the technical side. It's just a matter of what the long term drawback is depending on the specific vehicle config.

They're basically pushing power equal to the original P85D perform through the small motors now. That certainly has some longevity and warranty implications to take into account, so it's not cost neutral for them to do this.

@wk057, based on your statements above, would you also suggest that pre-July 75 RWD cars could gain a performance enhancement in the future as well?

Apologies for beating a dead horse here, but I'm still not buying the fact that this can't be done.

 

[pilotSteve]

@wk057, what is your thinking about Tesla offering any performance uncorking for S90D owners?

 

[BoilerG]

Thanks for the confirmation on this! Tesla is standing by their comments that 2016/pre-July 2017 S75 RWD cannot support the increased performance due to the "older" drive unit hardware (pre-DU01). It's driving some of the S75 RWD owners crazy as we would have purchased the 75D with any indication that we'd be ineligible for such a drastic performance upgrade. I'm still holding out hope, but I'm not really expecting them to help us out.

I'm not sure I believe this. The battery is rated for 350V and 1150A. This comes to 402.5kW. The original P85 RWD needed 350kW of power to get to a 0-60 of 4.2s. This provides 13% buffer to the battery. This is all per the Wiki page.

There is also a rumor that the motor/inverter from the P85 is the same as the original 85 RWD with software limitations. I can't see why Tesla would develop a completely different drive train that has worse performance for the S75.

When the new performance changes were announced, Tesla said it was a combination of software and some hardware. It suggested that the hardware changes were minor, and this was alluded to by my Sales Advisor who seems to be well connected. At this point, Tesla has 3 options for current RWD S 75 customers.

1 - Do nothing and piss them off. If I had any idea that the 75D would be eligible for a performance update like this while my 75 RWD would not be, I would have paid 5k more. I didn't spend the money because I'm in the south and don't need the extra 10 miles of range. So, it seemed like a waste given the information Tesla provided me at time of purchase. I will be VERY upset if they don't allow RWDs to improve performance.

2 - It's a software change that may be made with the "Chill mode" update or some other sort of software update that is OTA or in the service center. I am not sure if any post-facelift S 75 RWD's have gotten the update with Chill mode or not.

3 - There is some sort of hardware change required and they are trying to figure out if/how to offer it or it's cost prohibitive, which forces them to choice 1.


Does anyone have any real insight as to what's going on?

 

[Jpagadala]

I emailed Tesla a week ago stating my confusion and displeasure at leaving 75RWDs unaddressed and hoped that they were working on something. Like you, I would have sprung for AWD had I known this was a possibility. This is the response I got back earlier today-

“Thank you for contacting Tesla Vehicle Support. I apologize for the delay in response. Currently, there is no upgrade available on 75RWD. I understand your concern and appreciate you taking the time to document your feedback. I have forwarded your suggestions to our engineering team. I am unable to tell you if the upgrade will be available in future but I assure you, we review all the feedback seriously and hopefully there will be some upgrade available for all the vehicles. Please feel free to reach out to us in case of any further questions/concerns.
Best Regards,

Trupti Sahasrabudhe | Technical Support Specialist
45500 Fremont Blvd | Fremont, CA 94538
24/7 Support 1-877-79-TESLA
[email protected]
Model S video walkthrough

 

[BigTonyTones]

I'm not sure I believe this. The battery is rated for 350V and 1150A. This comes to 402.5kW. The original P85 RWD needed 350kW of power to get to a 0-60 of 4.2s. This provides 13% buffer to the battery. This is all per the Wiki page.

There is also a rumor that the motor/inverter from the P85 is the same as the original 85 RWD with software limitations. I can't see why Tesla would develop a completely different drive train that has worse performance for the S75.

When the new performance changes were announced, Tesla said it was a combination of software and some hardware. It suggested that the hardware changes were minor, and this was alluded to by my Sales Advisor who seems to be well connected. At this point, Tesla has 3 options for current RWD S 75 customers.

1 - Do nothing and piss them off. If I had any idea that the 75D would be eligible for a performance update like this while my 75 RWD would not be, I would have paid 5k more. I didn't spend the money because I'm in the south and don't need the extra 10 miles of range. So, it seemed like a waste given the information Tesla provided me at time of purchase. I will be VERY upset if they don't allow RWDs to improve performance.

2 - It's a software change that may be made with the "Chill mode" update or some other sort of software update that is OTA or in the service center. I am not sure if any post-facelift S 75 RWD's have gotten the update with Chill mode or not.

3 - There is some sort of hardware change required and they are trying to figure out if/how to offer it or it's cost prohibitive, which forces them to choice 1.


Does anyone have any real insight as to what's going on?

I too would have spent the extra 5k if I knew such a performance upgrade would be happening. I hope Tesla gives us SOMETHING. Doesn't have to be 1 second , just something to remove the bitter taste in my mouth.

 

[calif94577]

There is some headroom left. In theory the inverters could be pushed a lot further, but not something I'd do in a production car. Even pushing them to their normal limits would yield a bit more performance, but I'm guessing it's not worth the effort on their part.



As far as I know there is no physical difference with the drive units (or anything else for that matter) that makes one car possible to uncork vs another. It all just appears to be risk mitigation on Tesla's part. I've speculated previously that newer 75 packs contain the newer cell chemistry used in the 100 packs, which I'm gathering more data on daily that appears to confirm this speculation. In which case, newer 75 packs wont degrade as fast under high current draw vs the older packs.

As far as I can tell, every dual motor non-performance Tesla can be uncorked on the technical side. It's just a matter of what the long term drawback is depending on the specific vehicle config.

They're basically pushing power equal to the original P85D perform through the small motors now. That certainly has some longevity and warranty implications to take into account, so it's not cost neutral for them to do this.



There is likely some alternative explanation for this one, such as pack temperature vs SoC. I don't believe the uncorking does anything to affect this.



This changed when AP1 was added to cars. Every AP1+ car has the gen2 system, every non-AP car has the gen1 system. I dont know of any articles on this. The main difference is that the wheel speed sensors are higher resolution and higher data rate in the gen2 system, so can detect slip exponentially faster. Additionally, the new system has the iBooster combined with it, so it can reach high brake pressure much more quickly than just the ABS pump available in the gen1 system.



Good questions. Mainly would be speculation on my part for a lot of that. Bit O/T for this thread, but what the heck.

I haven't seen any evidence of any new easter eggs lately. The S doesnt seem to have enough mechanical control (like doors) to make the xmas easter egg make sense for it. Plus it relies on the fact that the headlights are LED on every X.

Dashcam type stuff isn't possible with the AP1 cam. It only has a CAN connection to the rest of the car. Downloading the 8 low resolution frames from an EDR event (see my twitter) actually takes almost an hour to transfer... so you're talking like 1 frame per 7 minutes... or 1/450th of a frame per second. Not super useful. AP2, on the other hand... I'd be very surprised if they didn't utilize it for dashcam functionality at some point. Everything is there on the hardware side... possibly might need a USB storage device or something for storing footage, but other than that it should be good to go. I've seen some evidence that they might be working on this already.

Why they offered uncorking? Pretty simple. Because now the performance delta between their highest end model and its uncorked counterparts actually exists with the 100 battery. The dual motor non-performance cars have always been capable of matching the power output of the original P85D on the technical side, but they were artificially capped since day one. Imagine if they had an uncorked performance 85D available when the P85D launched and there was only a tiny difference in initial acceleration. It wouldn't have made sense to fork over the extra cash for the high end model vs buying the next model down. Now, the 100 battery can deliver more power than the small motors can handle, so there actually is a performance gain on the P100D vs the 100D due to the larger rear motor. All of this has advantages for them on multiple fronts. It makes them look generous (free performance upgrades!), it doesn't cost them significantly to do so (some warranty reserve implications, but not substantial since the hardware can handle it), it makes newer cars more enticing with the artificial limits on who gets uncorked (they're not uncorking 85D's for example). Overall a win for them. Considering they still haven't released 100% of the performance available to the dual motor non-performance cars, it wouldn't surprise me if they did this again at some point.

You sir are amazing! Not gonna lie, I feel a bit honored that you replied to me

Regarding dash cam I expected to have to plug a USB stick in to the car for storage. I didn't think there would be much space on the built in computer its self for this. Shame that AP1 can't do this. Would there be a wiring harness upgrade that could enable it or would the current board pinouts not allow for this?

Regarding SoC and temp could it be that since it was not putting out near as much power before there was a lot of headroom so that when SoC or temp changed, the upper limit that fluctuated never dropped down below the software cap much so I did not feel the performance change as much. Now that the software cap is closer to the actual ceiling this fluctuation is more noticeable?

Thank you for the traction control info, you answered was I was asking about perfectly!

I did not think about the LED headlight difference. I have been considering getting some salvaged LED headlights and retrofitting them on mine (I do not have the premium upgrades package that included LED turning headlights and all that) I just dont know if it would work, would it be plug and play or would SC unlock that ability in the software.

So the 75D cars still have quite a bit of headroom left and quite possibly might further uncork it in the future is what you are saying?

Thanks again! Can't wait to see more of your work. All of your contributions to the Tesla community have been quite substantial.

 

[calif94577]

I too would have spent the extra 5k if I knew such a performance upgrade would be happening. I hope Tesla gives us SOMETHING. Doesn't have to be 1 second , just something to remove the bitter taste in my mouth.

If you think about it, the D cars should have the ability to put out twice the power. I am guessing the real limitation at this point is how much power the battery can put out at once. (I am not sure what the battery is rated vs what the motors are rated at to be able to tell you what the true bottle neck is). Theoretically as long as the battery cap is higher than that of one motor, there is nothing Tesla can do to make RWD cars as fast as D cars unless the hold the D cars back. If we go off the assumption that the battery cap is exactly that of both motors combined (neither bottlenecking the other) then the D is capable of twice the power of the RWD vehicles.

If anyone happens to have the rated power of each motor and the battery packs then this will help estimate the theoretical max power for each vehicle and compare the two.

 

[Bebop]

@wk057, what is your thinking about Tesla offering any performance uncorking for S90D owners?

Also curious on this one. I'm thinking it's possible for at least Insane Mode Territory for 90/100D cars.

 

[pilotSteve]

Also curious on this one. I'm thinking it's possible for at least Insane Mode Territory for 90/100D cars.

I would even take placebo mode update just so us 90D owners don't feel left out...

 

[unihappytime]

@pilotSteve there is a bunch of us original 70D cars that got left out, along with the 85D, that's a fair size group.

@wk057 Do you think an original 70D has the hardware capability for this upgrade? If I get you correct, all D cars should be able to take this software upgrade?

 

[MIT_S60]

@pilotSteve there is a bunch of us original 70D cars that got left out, along with the 85D, that's a fair size group.

@wk057 Do you think an original 70D has the hardware capability for this upgrade? If I get you correct, all D cars should be able to take this software upgrade?

The 85D did receive a performance upgrade to 4.4 seconds for 0-60 a while back ago, so it's at least mid-4's.

 

[sungun]

I had my 75D uncorked this week, but it kinda feels half corked still.

I've done a lot of tests and only get 335 kW and 4.75-5.0s 0-100 kph readings. SoC between 50-80%. Using Dashboard for Tesla on android. Its a new car delivered in sept w DU00.

Anybody else expericence this? Any thoughts on what could be the reason for not more consistent 350kW and 4,4s?

Debating if I should take it in for another try...