Greetings everyone,
Allow me to introduce myself - I'm a mechatronics engineer and former MIT machine shop instructor based in the Boston-Cambridge area, and have been a small-time EV hobbyist for quite a while now. In fact if you have made any small EVs like scooters, bikes, or go-karts, you might have seen my work published on the Internet (link to my site here). I've been keenly interested in the big-EV side of things for years, but have never found myself in a situation of adequate space and money to buy and break cars at will (being in Boston where space = money) until fairly recently.
I've been specifically interested in the ecosystem of work on putting Tesla drivetrains in other things. In the near future, I'd like to do my own conversion using Tesla parts, with a secondary mission of trying to document the entire process including reviving wrecked/junked Tesla cars without help or necessarily any permission from the company, which I've understood to be Very Hard so far.
I don't see myself being able to swipe Tesla hulks from eBay next week or something, so I'd like to collect a knowledge base for my own edification and others who might find this interesting on projects involving transplanting Tesla parts. Here's been my reading list:
If anyone has other interesting documents they'd be willing to contribute that would be much appreciated!
Oddly enough, I'm more comfortable designing a custom inverter for the traction motors from scratch and machining my own gearboxes for them, than figuring out CANBUS and Linux business; my Actual Software experience is quite limited but I like to think I can handle low-level hardware design.
My current target vehicle is one of my silly 1980s van collection:
Probably the truck-van to the right, an '86 Centurion 5th-wheel hauler made from a Ford E350 one-ton van. It has an unimpressive mid 80s V8 and gets 10MPG on a good day, horrifying single-digits around town. It can definitely support all the hardware from a P85-100D, which the smaller van cannot (I think it's better off with a Nissan Leaf transplant; in fact I bought that van non-running a few years ago with the intent of electrifying it, but didn't have enough secured resources to start)
I'd say right now my 'moonshot' build is a transplanted P90/P100DL powertrain with batteries and enough Tesla gear running with screwdrivers stuck in them such that it can Supercharge. The best case would be faking enough of the onboard module signals and commands that the Tesla is still convinced it's a Tesla; I see the recent addition of billed Supercharging (which implies vehicle-level verification that you're entitied to it) as an extra challenge. By my number crunching, the result would weigh around 6800lb but still be able to do a 4ish-second 0-60, which would border on the absurd for that thing.
A more reasonable goal might be to use just the front and rear drive units with a custom CAN controller and driver interface and homebrewed BMS with the cell modules, forgoing supercharging. Based on the work done by this community already, this seems to be an already solved problem and I can start tomorrow
Thanks for listening to me ramble, everyone. Comments and discussion is absolutely welcome!
Allow me to introduce myself - I'm a mechatronics engineer and former MIT machine shop instructor based in the Boston-Cambridge area, and have been a small-time EV hobbyist for quite a while now. In fact if you have made any small EVs like scooters, bikes, or go-karts, you might have seen my work published on the Internet (link to my site here). I've been keenly interested in the big-EV side of things for years, but have never found myself in a situation of adequate space and money to buy and break cars at will (being in Boston where space = money) until fairly recently.
I've been specifically interested in the ecosystem of work on putting Tesla drivetrains in other things. In the near future, I'd like to do my own conversion using Tesla parts, with a secondary mission of trying to document the entire process including reviving wrecked/junked Tesla cars without help or necessarily any permission from the company, which I've understood to be Very Hard so far.
I don't see myself being able to swipe Tesla hulks from eBay next week or something, so I'd like to collect a knowledge base for my own edification and others who might find this interesting on projects involving transplanting Tesla parts. Here's been my reading list:
- Probably everything by wk057 (e.g. his project directory including the BMS work and autopilot retrofit, ludicrous mode hack, youtube channel, canbus decyphering....). Jason, what do you do and how do I be like you at some point in life?!
- Repairing a Flooded Tesla Model S : HOW-TO by btr_ftw has been a godsend so I can see inside all of these fantastic things & where to find them. I have not been able to read through the whole thread yet - that seems to require substance abuse to fully appreciate
- Individual builds - Teslorean, 818 Kit car, Cobra. However, besides the Teslorean, the others don't seem to have much build information or logs&journals.
- TeslaTap was a good place to start Googling from.
If anyone has other interesting documents they'd be willing to contribute that would be much appreciated!
Oddly enough, I'm more comfortable designing a custom inverter for the traction motors from scratch and machining my own gearboxes for them, than figuring out CANBUS and Linux business; my Actual Software experience is quite limited but I like to think I can handle low-level hardware design.
My current target vehicle is one of my silly 1980s van collection:
Probably the truck-van to the right, an '86 Centurion 5th-wheel hauler made from a Ford E350 one-ton van. It has an unimpressive mid 80s V8 and gets 10MPG on a good day, horrifying single-digits around town. It can definitely support all the hardware from a P85-100D, which the smaller van cannot (I think it's better off with a Nissan Leaf transplant; in fact I bought that van non-running a few years ago with the intent of electrifying it, but didn't have enough secured resources to start)
I'd say right now my 'moonshot' build is a transplanted P90/P100DL powertrain with batteries and enough Tesla gear running with screwdrivers stuck in them such that it can Supercharge. The best case would be faking enough of the onboard module signals and commands that the Tesla is still convinced it's a Tesla; I see the recent addition of billed Supercharging (which implies vehicle-level verification that you're entitied to it) as an extra challenge. By my number crunching, the result would weigh around 6800lb but still be able to do a 4ish-second 0-60, which would border on the absurd for that thing.
A more reasonable goal might be to use just the front and rear drive units with a custom CAN controller and driver interface and homebrewed BMS with the cell modules, forgoing supercharging. Based on the work done by this community already, this seems to be an already solved problem and I can start tomorrow
Thanks for listening to me ramble, everyone. Comments and discussion is absolutely welcome!
