P85 modded to be a P85 w/Ludicrous

[Cyclone]

Trailer + Model S is above the 5,000lb tow rating of the X. You're surely in trouble now!

The Charlotte Service center does local service pickup/deliveries of Model Ses using the testbed Model X with a trailer. If Tesla can do, Jason can.

 

[Btr_ftw]

Unsure how I'll go about offering this as a mod for others, but I definitely would like to. It's just not going to be cheap, unfortunately, and poof goes the warranty and firmware updates... so, you're going to have to *really* want it before taking that plunge.

Perfect for the salvage guys with no warranty that got in at a lower price point.

 

[e-FTW]

Perfect for the salvage guys with no warranty that got in at a lower price point.

Oooh, Salty already getting an upgrade!

 

[croman]

or he could start his own company...he's known well enough throughout the tesla community.

maybe he can start fiddling with Chevy Bolt's, Nissan Leaf's, etc...!

I've got a leaf I would love to upgrade. Budget is a bit more limited but I'd pay for extra battery capacity. Safe extra juice would be worth an investment.

 

[R.S]

Great work! How about changing the coolant pump and radiator to get more continuous power? You should also watch out for rotor temperature, induction motor rotors can get pretty hot and you have no readout for its temperature.

 

[Kristoffer Helle]

Won't help.. The stator needs cooling

 

[Whistle2Whine]

Just some ideals for you ,not even sure if it is possible but if you could hook a raspberry pi to it maybe you could program other features like video play in Safari and maybe access to all the options that the service center has (like a jailbreak)As for other hardwear you could make it were you cold switch out old parts when you take it in for service

I actually think this would be the way to go. Coming from the ICE tuning world (Cobb for my old MazdaSpeed 6 and APR or EuroDyne for my VWs), the ECU flash was always done via an OBD2 dongle plugged into a laptop or an actual controller box that managed the software in real-time. In either case, if a dealer did warranty work or regular maintenance, you could "flash" back to stock or just unplug your controller box to revert to 'Normal' so things like software updates could be applied. An Rasp-Pi could facilitate the same sort of process for tuned Teslas, I'd think, allowing them to receive vital updates then 're-flashing' for mods. Or spoofing the configuration to allow updates to occur.

Exciting times, and part of the reason I haven't been on many of my other car-tuning forums lately, other than for older Porsche's (I'm inheriting an old 944 that intend to make a track car. Which is also why I want a Model X P1xxDL when my S lease is up)

 

[wk057]

Despite what others may have said, no amount of additional cooling will improve performance of these units. At best you can pre-chill the drive unit to get a marginal improvement in time-until-overheating (like on the order of 30-60 seconds more time at higher power at best), but that's about it. These units are not designed for sustained high-power usage... they're made for a sustained cruise at 50-100A average current. The side effect of being able to do that low-ish constant power is that they have a huge burst capability. But a radiator the size of the Empire State building wont cool them any better than what is used by Tesla. There simply is not enough heatsink surface area on the drive unit side cooling loop for any amount of external cooling to make a difference. You can only sap away so much heat from tiny IGBTs.

 

[Saghost]

Despite what others may have said, no amount of additional cooling will improve performance of these units. At best you can pre-chill the drive unit to get a marginal improvement in time-until-overheating (like on the order of 30-60 seconds more time at higher power at best), but that's about it. These units are not designed for sustained high-power usage... they're made for a sustained cruise at 50-100A average current. The side effect of being able to do that low-ish constant power is that they have a huge burst capability. But a radiator the size of the Empire State building wont cool them any better than what is used by Tesla. There simply is not enough heatsink surface area on the drive unit side cooling loop for any amount of external cooling to make a difference. You can only sap away so much heat from tiny IGBTs.

Are the IGBTs the limiting factor?

I had the impression from the earlier discussion and video that the limit was mostly coming from the stator and rotor cooling...

Presumably colder incoming coolant or higher flow rates would marginally increase cooling, as would changes to the chemistry that improve wetting of the coolant passage surfaces.

Of course, that increases thermal gradients through the part, and thus thermal stresses in the motor...

 

[snd92]

Despite what others may have said, no amount of additional cooling will improve performance of these units. At best you can pre-chill the drive unit to get a marginal improvement in time-until-overheating (like on the order of 30-60 seconds more time at higher power at best), but that's about it. These units are not designed for sustained high-power usage... they're made for a sustained cruise at 50-100A average current. The side effect of being able to do that low-ish constant power is that they have a huge burst capability. But a radiator the size of the Empire State building wont cool them any better than what is used by Tesla. There simply is not enough heatsink surface area on the drive unit side cooling loop for any amount of external cooling to make a difference. You can only sap away so much heat from tiny IGBTs.

Oil cooling as in Rimac concept one would probably fix it.

 

[wk057]

Are the IGBTs the limiting factor?

I had the impression from the earlier discussion and video that the limit was mostly coming from the stator and rotor cooling...

Presumably colder incoming coolant or higher flow rates would marginally increase cooling, as would changes to the chemistry that improve wetting of the coolant passage surfaces.

Of course, that increases thermal gradients through the part, and thus thermal stresses in the motor...

In my testing the inverter is the main limiting factor. The stator can saturate slightly before the inverter in repeated full-load launches from a stop, but not in general hard use, like what you would do on a track/circuit... but the stator will cool quickly while under moderate to low load. The inverter remains saturated and is hard to cool once it's reached that point because any load at all appears to keep it heated.

At one point, as an experiment, I used the Tesla cooling system with the AC compressor to pre-chill the powertrain down to 5C. This did virtually nothing to prevent the inverter from reaching max temp. With ~6-8C coolant going into the unit, it was still overheating.

I'm going to retry this sometime soon with the P90++ I think. Now that I've finally finished this project, for the most part, I'm going to do some more testing. I recently installed a second power-train cooling pump, since the dual motor cars have four pumps instead of three. I wired it to the thermal controller just like in a dual motor car so now it's happy and isn't running the three pumps at full power constantly when the car is on now. The side effect this had previously was that the car would not go into battery-loop-only mode when the one coolant valve, since it was assuming a pump was bad. Instead, when doing something like max battery power, the car was heating the pack AND drive unit. Now that the thermal system is happy I'll be able to heat the pack slightly more that I did for my dyno runs, and thus get more power.

I also plan on trying out the "Ludicrous+" easter egg at some point on this car as well. I've yet to confirm exactly what this easter egg does, unfortunately. It's possible it won't have any effect, but who knows.

 

[Peteybabes]

Exciting times, and part of the reason I haven't been on many of my other car-tuning forums lately, other than for older Porsche's (I'm inheriting an old 944 that intend to make a track car. Which is also why I want a Model X P1xxDL when my S lease is up)

Awesome! my first car ever was a 1987 Porsche 944S super light weight so it should be an easy car to tow with the model X.

 

[Saghost]

In my testing the inverter is the main limiting factor. The stator can saturate slightly before the inverter in repeated full-load launches from a stop, but not in general hard use, like what you would do on a track/circuit... but the stator will cool quickly while under moderate to low load. The inverter remains saturated and is hard to cool once it's reached that point because any load at all appears to keep it heated.

At one point, as an experiment, I used the Tesla cooling system with the AC compressor to pre-chill the powertrain down to 5C. This did virtually nothing to prevent the inverter from reaching max temp. With ~6-8C coolant going into the unit, it was still overheating.

I'm going to retry this sometime soon with the P90++ I think. Now that I've finally finished this project, for the most part, I'm going to do some more testing. I recently installed a second power-train cooling pump, since the dual motor cars have four pumps instead of three. I wired it to the thermal controller just like in a dual motor car so now it's happy and isn't running the three pumps at full power constantly when the car is on now. The side effect this had previously was that the car would not go into battery-loop-only mode when the one coolant valve, since it was assuming a pump was bad. Instead, when doing something like max battery power, the car was heating the pack AND drive unit. Now that the thermal system is happy I'll be able to heat the pack slightly more that I did for my dyno runs, and thus get more power.

I also plan on trying out the "Ludicrous+" easter egg at some point on this car as well. I've yet to confirm exactly what this easter egg does, unfortunately. It's possible it won't have any effect, but who knows.

Interesting. How is Tesla transferring heat from the IGBTs to the coolant?

Maybe it needs dedicated heat pipes?

 

[Bheuring]

I actually think this would be the way to go. Coming from the ICE tuning world (Cobb for my old MazdaSpeed 6 and APR or EuroDyne for my VWs), the ECU flash was always done via an OBD2 dongle plugged into a laptop or an actual controller box that managed the software in real-time. In either case, if a dealer did warranty work or regular maintenance, you could "flash" back to stock or just unplug your controller box to revert to 'Normal' so things like software updates could be applied. An Rasp-Pi could facilitate the same sort of process for tuned Teslas, I'd think, allowing them to receive vital updates then 're-flashing' for mods. Or spoofing the configuration to allow updates to occur.

Exciting times, and part of the reason I haven't been on many of my other car-tuning forums lately, other than for older Porsche's (I'm inheriting an old 944 that intend to make a track car. Which is also why I want a Model X P1xxDL when my S lease is up)

I am glad u agree I was starting to think I was crazy

 

[MP3Mike]

Interesting. How is Tesla transferring heat from the IGBTs to the coolant?

Maybe it needs dedicated heat pipes?

Makes you wonder how much improvement, if any, they have made with the cooling on the invertor for the Model 3. (And when those changes will make it to the S/X.)

 

[Cyclone]

Makes you wonder how much improvement, if any, they have made with the cooling on the invertor for the Model 3. (And when those changes will make it to the S/X.)

They may fall back on the maxim "A Tesla is not designed to be a track car."

 

[AWDtsla]

At one point, as an experiment, I used the Tesla cooling system with the AC compressor to pre-chill the powertrain down to 5C. This did virtually nothing to prevent the inverter from reaching max temp. With ~6-8C coolant going into the unit, it was still overheating.

Replace whatever is in contact with the IGBT's with copper blocks with milled coolant channels, and use some high test heatsink paste under it? Also try watter wetter type coolant additives. Certainly seems like an easier problem than trying to redesign cooling channels in the stator or rotor.

 

[AWDtsla]

Interesting. How is Tesla transferring heat from the IGBTs to the coolant?

Maybe it needs dedicated heat pipes?

Direct liquid cooling > heat pipes. But I bet whatever is there is suboptimal.

 

[Saghost]

Direct liquid cooling > heat pipes. But I bet whatever is there is suboptimal.

I'll admit to never having designed a cooling system for electronics, but my understanding is that since heat pipes use the evaporation/condensation reaction inside the pipe, it can move far more energy with a smaller contact area and smaller surface area than any solid or liquid cooing system.

 

[Altes]

I've been offered positions at Tesla, but I refuse to move to California. Apparently that's a deal breaker. Besides, probably wouldn't be as much fun.

The SF Giants have an "ok" pitcher from your town, maybe you could hang with him?