Supercharger for the Roadster (Elon said "No")

[pharma5]

Anyone else think they waited until the Model X design studio went live to bury news of this price under the stories of the X in the mainstream press?

Was kinda thinking the same thing, e.g., greater importance of the X impacting both timing and PR level of the Roadster info. Still digesting it.

That said, am happy to see a Roadster supercharging thread break out.:biggrin:

I was foaming at the mouth for this back in Jan:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/40200-Roadster-Supercharging?p=861007&viewfull=1#post861007

Please keep going!

(Have to confess, if the upgrade had supercharging they would have my money already. Possibly even if limited to pseudo-supercharging of +50 mi/hr range at the supercharger connections, e.g., if the heat load and cooling capability limited the car to this type of charging rate).

 

[TOBASH]

It would seem to me that this would require a community effort.

It also seems to me that we need a donor Roadster, perhaps a newly crashed unit totaled by an insurance carrier with intact rear suspension and battery and computer. Such a car could be placed on a dyno and run at speed, even if it is missing front suspension.

If 50 or 100 of us "crowdfund", the costs of research might be manageable.

Best,

T

 

[Chillout]

"my" EU vin #0447 fits those requirements... although I think it's overpriced, it's in perfect shape at the back to perform stuff like this.

 

[spaceballs]

I'm pretty sure there is a contactor inside the pack. Elon said during his speech at TESLIVE in 2013 that the Roadster has the wrong kind of contactor to be able to supercharge. Maybe he was talking about the contactor in the PEM which might be an AC contactor. In any case, if there is a contactor inside the pack, I doubt if it closes unless you're charging or driving. I'm not sure how you would fool it into thinking you were doing either one in order to keep the contactor closed. Maybe I'm missing something? One thing for sure is that you would need active cooling, but at 30kW I suspect there's enough cooling capacity.

Main HV contactors in ESS are the same as all modern EV batteries, they disconnect when key is in the off position, or not when charging so no real changes need here.

FYI I did a test trial with ESS at HPWC and I electronically disable the active ESS cooling, and monitored the sheet/bricks/cell temperatures charging at 70amps, and battery temps were still in nominal ranges adding 55% to my SOC. ESS rate of temperature rise at ~16kW gave me how much heat was being generated. The AC is good at cooling the ESS, I think its more than good enough for 60kW (or higher).

"Elon said during his speech at TESLIVE in 2013 that the Roadster has the wrong kind of contactor to be able to supercharge."
I'm guessing he meant that there is no proper contactors in the PEM to switch to the main charge port direct DC to the ESS.

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It would seem to me that this would require a community effort.

It be more then a community effort, Tesla would have to agree to let us use their Supercharger network, and provide a firmware update to support this kit.

It also seems to me that we need a donor Roadster, perhaps a newly crashed unit totaled by an insurance carrier with intact rear suspension and battery and computer. Such a car could be placed on a dyno and run at speed, even if it is missing front suspension.

I'll already got a car to test on, and maybe another (if I can find a used/dead ESS).

If 50 or 100 of us "crowdfund", the costs of research might be manageable.

I think if you get a reasonable list of people who be willing to buy it, I could approach Tesla via my company to see if they be willing to support this upgrade kit that I could build for us/or Tesla.

 

[m0rph]

@Tobash

I prefer to pay $10k for a used pack with high CAC from someone that wants the 3.0 upgrade badly, and then spend another 10k on supercharging. Seriously.
Find 50 people who think alike for your project, and 500k is your budget

Another thing that crossed my mind. We have the biggest Roadster community here at TMC, we have tons of topics about all sorts of stuff. But after reading A LOT of it, it seems like none of us was ever in direct contact with any of the guys that designed or built our Roadsters. The cars have been on the road for 7y now, and we still have so much to learn/discover about how exactly they work. Is that info really that hard to get our hands on?

 

[Chickenlittle]

@Tobash

I prefer to pay $10k for a used pack with high CAC from someone that wants the 3.0 upgrade badly, and then spend another 10k on supercharging. Seriously.
Find 50 people who think alike for your project, and 500k is your budget

Another thing that crossed my mind. We have the biggest Roadster community here at TMC, we have tons of topics about all sorts of stuff. But after reading A LOT of it, it seems like none of us was ever in direct contact with any of the guys that designed or built our Roadsters. The cars have been on the road for 7y now, and we still have so much to learn/discover about how exactly they work. Is that info really that hard to get our hands on?

i thought the price for 3.0 upgrade included trading in your current battery pack

 

[Cloudripper]

If you are right, please, PLEASE assemble an upgrade kit for us to install. I know we would need Tesla's cooperation... oh well.

Absolutely supercharging would be more valuable to me than added range. That's true for most of us. But I think it would be MUCH harder to implement than you suggest, far more than a couple thousand bucks in parts. In addition, it takes about 12 person-hours to replace the pack, much less open it up and replace internal parts with new brackets, bus bars, sensors, etc. High-temperature plastic injection molds are very expensive for such a small volume run. Existing wiring would only allow about 18kW max. It would take a considerable effort to get more than that. What would we get that we don't have now? One or two kW higher charging rate? At that rate I don't think you'd get enough takers to bring the parts cost down to $2 - 4,000 dollars.

Having said that, you've taken on some impressive projects and completed them with less effort than I would have expected. Maybe you're right? Believe me, I would LOVE to see you try, and succeed. Even if you just made a kit for us to install, a lot of us would buy it.

+1

The main value to me in connecting to the Supercharger network is the reliability for road trips (though a faster charge would be very nice to have). If anyone is serious about getting started on this, or simply show Tesla how much interest there is in this community (with a vote/commitment in real dollars), I'm willing to sponsor/run a Kickstarter. In fact, I feel strongly enough that I already set up a draft Kickstarter project that could be used to fund the right small group of determined folks to truly push it and make this happen.

 

[m0rph]

i thought the price for 3.0 upgrade included trading in your current battery pack

When my pack is almost dead, I swap it with someones good pack and pay 10k for that.
That person trades in my almost dead pack and pays 10k less for the 3.0 upgrade...

 

[Andrew Wolfe]

@Tobash

I prefer to pay $10k for a used pack with high CAC from someone that wants the 3.0 upgrade badly, and then spend another 10k on supercharging. Seriously.
Find 50 people who think alike for your project, and 500k is your budget

Another thing that crossed my mind. We have the biggest Roadster community here at TMC, we have tons of topics about all sorts of stuff. But after reading A LOT of it, it seems like none of us was ever in direct contact with any of the guys that designed or built our Roadsters. The cars have been on the road for 7y now, and we still have so much to learn/discover about how exactly they work. Is that info really that hard to get our hands on?

That would be a $500K budget to develop and deliver 50 units. I don't think that is nearly enough cash.

 

[mmccord]

If Tesla won't cooperate, you could build it for chademo instead.

 

[adiggs]

If Tesla won't cooperate, you could build it for chademo instead.

Good point here - chademo, at least in the Pacific Northwest, is widely available (if not as robust an infrastructure as the superchargers). Heck - for my personal use, chademo would be almost as good as the supercharger network, and possibly better because there are chademo chargers up and down the Oregon coast (West Coast Electric Highway).

Not the first or best case, but maybe a workable second choice to the Superchargers.

 

[AEdennis]

If Tesla won't cooperate, you could build it for chademo instead.

Good point here - chademo, at least in the Pacific Northwest, is widely available (if not as robust an infrastructure as the superchargers). Heck - for my personal use, chademo would be almost as good as the supercharger network, and possibly better because there are chademo chargers up and down the Oregon coast (West Coast Electric Highway).

Not the first or best case, but maybe a workable second choice to the Superchargers.

If you're thinking of CHAdeMO for a Roadster, I believe that @TonyWilliams has been working on that (after successfully creating the JDemo to enable the 2nd Gen Toyota/Tesla RAV4EV)... I believe that SamC has lent him his SoCal Roadster to work on this project over the summer.

 

[wk057]

Believe it or not, basically the exact same work needs to be done to add CHAdeMO support, physically and in software, as it is to do supercharging, except it's a different connector. If either is implemented physically, an adapter can be made (or may already exist) to use the other.

If there were a Roadster with CHAdeMO an adapter could be made to use it with a supercharger very easily, with Tesla's permission.

I think the best case would be to just swap the charge port with a Model S inlet and add the right hardware for fast charging using the supercharger protocol. At that point, even without Tesla's help, the Tesla CHAdeMO adapter would work and eventually might be able to talk them into allowing use of superchargers.

 

[Stefan T]

And on the EU roadster need the port be to change to TYP 2 port like EU Model S

Then it posible to use Tesla Chardemo Model s adpter

 

[dpeilow]

I know where there's a wrecked US Roadster in the EU that appears to just be gathering dust. No way it's economical if Chillout's was 33 k to repair.

I expect the battery is as dead as a dodo but it might do for this job and I expect the current owner wants out.

 

[ravng]

I for one agree that battery capacity is okay as it is (just had a weekend trip of 1200 km with no problems), the problem is charge time.
In Norway (and other european countries) 43 kw and 22 kw 3 phase type 2 charge stations is available everywhere, but you pay per minutte of use. With my roadster and my illegal adapter cable I can get 14.5kw from this station. So it's expensive to do, and takes a long time to charge. I don't want to complain to mutch, since 95% of my day to day charging is done for free at work, but it bothers me that I have to occupy the spot for 2 hours, when most people charge for 15-20 minutes before they are off. I dont mind stopping every 3 hours for a break, but stops over 50 minutes gets boring.

So rebuilding/adding a secondary charger would be my wish.
We did this back in the days with NiCd based cars. Just add a seperate charger (or two) in parallell with the existing (running on the other phases), and you program it to only run when the main charger works at 100% (so when the charing ramps up/down the secondary charger is turned off). Easy enough to do, but the available space would be a problem.

 

[TOBASH]

@Tobash

I prefer to pay $10k for a used pack with high CAC from someone that wants the 3.0 upgrade badly, and then spend another 10k on supercharging. Seriously.
Find 50 people who think alike for your project, and 500k is your budget



Another thing that crossed my mind. We have the biggest Roadster community here at TMC, we have tons of topics about all sorts of stuff. But after reading A LOT of it, it seems like none of us was ever in direct contact with any of the guys that designed or built our Roadsters. The cars have been on the road for 7y now, and we still have so much to learn/discover about how exactly they work. Is that info really that hard to get our hands on?

m0rph...

the testing budget is a testing budget, NOT a final purchase budget. The money raised is for research. Final purchase price is separate.

Research needs to be done on a platform. We need to chip in for a platform. Building Supercharging/CHAdeMO compatible kits will then be extra and separate.

As far as Supercharging... CHAdeMO seems like a better first goal as Tesla controls Supercharging and might initially resist efforts to Supercharge Roadsters.

As far as community effort... We will need at least several members on-board, or else financially the costs will be prohibitive. Tesla will want many people involved in order for them to take notice.

I for one am up for research and reverse engineering the battery packs and hacking the system and making CHAdeMO and eventual Supercharging work.

There is no reason for us not to be able to do these things. I am and will be a willing participant and contributor.

Best,

T

 

[scaesare]

Believe it or not, basically the exact same work needs to be done to add CHAdeMO support, physically and in software, as it is to do supercharging, except it's a different connector. If either is implemented physically, an adapter can be made (or may already exist) to use the other.

If there were a Roadster with CHAdeMO an adapter could be made to use it with a supercharger very easily, with Tesla's permission.

I think the best case would be to just swap the charge port with a Model S inlet and add the right hardware for fast charging using the supercharger protocol. At that point, even without Tesla's help, the Tesla CHAdeMO adapter would work and eventually might be able to talk them into allowing use of superchargers.

Well, similar work, anyway. The physical power parts would be the same: HV junction box with contactors, inlet change, etc...

But the logical layer stuff is different. The Superchargers use SAE DC signaling (GreenPhy PLC over the pilot line), whereas the CHAdeMO signaling is a combination of analog and CAN bus with separate pins.

This is why the Tesla CHAdeMO adapter isn't an inexpensive pass-thru device, but rather an adapter with active electronics to do the protocol/physical layer conversion.

To implement the same for the Roadster, you might be able to use the Tesla CHAdeMO adapter, or you'd have to implement similar functionality within the roadster itself along side the Supercharger protocol/phy stuff.... and then figure out physical inlet.

 

[Oba]

But the logical layer stuff is different. The Superchargers use SAE DC signaling (GreenPhy PLC over the pilot line), whereas the CHAdeMO signaling is a combination of analog and CAN bus with separate pins.

A common, yet improper, idea. Tesla Supercharger uses CAN, as does CHAdeMO. Even GB/T (China) uses CAN. One difference is that Tesla only uses a single CAN channel, whereas CHAdeMO uses two (via twisted pairs).

It's the CCS that is the oddball in communication.

- - - Updated - - -

If you're thinking of CHAdeMO for a Roadster, I believe that @TonyWilliams has been working on that (after successfully creating the JDemo to enable the 2nd Gen Toyota/Tesla RAV4EV)... I believe that SamC has lent him his SoCal Roadster to work on this project over the summer.

There's a thread on this in the Toyota Rav4 EV site (with 41,000 hits): Toyota Rav4 EV Forum by Quick Charge Power

Since the CHAdeMO to Tesla drivetrain issue appears to be resolved with the Rav4 EV, the real question for the tiny Roadster is where to put the inlet? CHAdeMO needs two DC pins (no ground required) and seven communication pins (5 analog, 2 digital for CAN).

So, that eliminates using any existing Tesla inlet. Therefore, the simple answer is a dedicated CHAdeMO inlet. How about in the boot?

The concept of yet another adapter to go from CHAdeMO to the Roadster inlet, then a bunch of hardware on the backside of the inlet to switch from AC to DC charger appears to be a real boondoggle.

The Supercharger is ABSOLUTELY NOT a possibility without support from Tesla. To be able to physically use the Supercharger without permission from Tesla is outright theft. If Tesla wanted to do this, they would. We don't know why, nor does it matter why.

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I for one am up for research and reverse engineering the battery packs and hacking the system and making CHAdeMO and eventual Supercharging work.

Well, it appears that the batteries are reasonably well known, as are a lot of the CAN messages. I'm not sure how much additional work would be required from what is already public domain.

Again, forget Supercharging. It will not happen without Tesla, or to be more accurate, it won't happen without stealing from Tesla. If they were to provide permission to use the Supercharger, it would be with a fee attached. Since they hold all the cards, I see no reason to do anything other than petition Tesla to offer Supercharger access. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that effort will fail. They quite obviously have known of both the Roadster and Supercharging for about half a dozen years!!! There's not much info that you can add, other than, "we want".

My suggestion is a dedicated CHAdeMO inlet mounted on the car somewhere with the electronics that to operate CHAdeMO in conjunction with the Tesla equipment. No clunky adaptors!!!

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There appears to be quite a few CHAdeMO stations.

 

[Habious]

This conversation originally started in the Roadster 3.0 thread...and got far enough off track to warrant its own thread. Now, it's moving away from converting a Roadster to be Supercharger capable to a conversation about a Roadster being CHAdeMO compatible!

Personally, I'm very interested in the ability to use the Superchargers, if that's feasible (I don't know enough to say that it is or isn't), and would be willing to fork over some $$$ for a study/pilot program, as has been discussed in this thread. If it ends up being about making the Roadster CHAdeMO compatible, I'm out.

As many have pointed out, it's not about getting the Roadster to be able to charge at "Supercharger charging rates" that's the turn-on, it's about having access to an existing network of charging stations, built along established travel routes.