After putting my reservation down on a Tesla Model 3 and sheepishly signing up to Twitter just to follow Elon I thought I’d randomly speculate on the announcement like all the other partially informed masses. The Model 3 has ticked all the boxes for me to buy an EV, and I’m sure it will be an amazing piece of kit when it’s finished. All I really need to decide on is the colour.
In reality I don’t want to downgrade my car current car a 2000 Subaru B4-RSK, which I’m crossing my fingers will survive the wait for a 3. Seemingly it will have about same spec, except possibly acceleration, which is in the same ballpark anyway. Presumably a performance upgrade will be available, so all that aside what would I like added?
‘Ridiculous’ mode, cowbell and turbos.
The Tesla model S 90D already has ‘Ludicrous’ acceleration, 0-100 in 3 seconds using around 400KW of battery power. While that's more than I could reasonably want, why not ask for ‘Ridiculous’ mode? There many large and likely erroneous assumptions in here i.e that a similar disparity will exist on the 3. Let’s just push on for giggles.
The 7000 odd cells in the S can’t provide enough oomph to use all the available motor performance. There is another 170KW left on the table, power wise that’s about what you’d get from a 3.3 litre BMW. Again putting aside trivial things like sticking to the road and melting cables, I’d like to randomly speculate on how could you could add a performance tuning kit to use that extra headroom.
The simple answer is, more power! (or voltage). The Tesla battery operates around 430V, so to hit 400KW it needs the best part of 930A! That’s a lot of current, so I’m going to suggest that adding more current might blow up the inverters. What about pushing up the voltage by about 180V for a short time (during acceleration) using ultracaps in series with the battery.
Energy wise that’s only 8x3000F caps costing about $500. Brilliant, job done cheapest performance mod ever. Just need a DC-DC converter that can do pull 20KA, bugger that is a bit over spec.
What about 50 caps and a voltage doubler? I know you’d only be able to use a fraction of their stored energy, need charge time and some badass power transistors but it might actually work for a few seconds of acceleration. Cost would be more like $3,000 and weigh about 30KG. So sensibly you should just add 30KG of batteries, get better range and slightly improved performance.
The mental in me says, screw that, bolt on the electrical equivalent of couple of turbos and have 750HP of Ridiculousness.
In reality I don’t want to downgrade my car current car a 2000 Subaru B4-RSK, which I’m crossing my fingers will survive the wait for a 3. Seemingly it will have about same spec, except possibly acceleration, which is in the same ballpark anyway. Presumably a performance upgrade will be available, so all that aside what would I like added?
‘Ridiculous’ mode, cowbell and turbos.
The Tesla model S 90D already has ‘Ludicrous’ acceleration, 0-100 in 3 seconds using around 400KW of battery power. While that's more than I could reasonably want, why not ask for ‘Ridiculous’ mode? There many large and likely erroneous assumptions in here i.e that a similar disparity will exist on the 3. Let’s just push on for giggles.
The 7000 odd cells in the S can’t provide enough oomph to use all the available motor performance. There is another 170KW left on the table, power wise that’s about what you’d get from a 3.3 litre BMW. Again putting aside trivial things like sticking to the road and melting cables, I’d like to randomly speculate on how could you could add a performance tuning kit to use that extra headroom.
The simple answer is, more power! (or voltage). The Tesla battery operates around 430V, so to hit 400KW it needs the best part of 930A! That’s a lot of current, so I’m going to suggest that adding more current might blow up the inverters. What about pushing up the voltage by about 180V for a short time (during acceleration) using ultracaps in series with the battery.
Energy wise that’s only 8x3000F caps costing about $500. Brilliant, job done cheapest performance mod ever. Just need a DC-DC converter that can do pull 20KA, bugger that is a bit over spec.
What about 50 caps and a voltage doubler? I know you’d only be able to use a fraction of their stored energy, need charge time and some badass power transistors but it might actually work for a few seconds of acceleration. Cost would be more like $3,000 and weigh about 30KG. So sensibly you should just add 30KG of batteries, get better range and slightly improved performance.
The mental in me says, screw that, bolt on the electrical equivalent of couple of turbos and have 750HP of Ridiculousness.
