Upcoming FW upgrade to "positively impact" essentially the entire fleet

[bxr140]

@bxr - It's not necessarily even the rate that has improve. They could maintain the 120 kW cap and just extend the taper point another 10% SOC or so.

That's what Im saying. . (I guess it wasn't clear that I meant rates=the whole curve, not just the peak power)

It would obviously be different rates for the A packs and 60s. but the logic can still be cross platform. Certainly the physics/chemistry/math hasn't changed, but no doubt the years of data and years of research into increasing rates has shed some light on what's possible.I also think the impact to supercharger use would be uber significant (though, it would increase the number of clipping events due to SC pairing).

 

[llavalle]

@bxr - It's not necessarily even the rate that has improve. They could maintain the 120 kW cap and just extend the taper point another 10% SOC or so. The impact would be huge if that's viable.

That's not physically possible (changing the taper point).

When charging a battery, the charger will adjust its voltage above the current battery voltage. The difference between the battery voltage and the charger output will determine the amount of amps going to the battery.

Bogus number examples : battery is 300V. Charger wants to "send" 20Amp for some reason (limitation of wire size for example). Charger will send 310V... (again, bogus numbers). When the battery gets to 301V.. charger will send 311V... and so on. The charger basically "follows up" the battery and try to keep the amps at the same amount.

At one point, the battery will be very close to it's maximum voltage. ex :A regular lithium ion cell (18650) max voltage is 4.2V. This means, for our example battery, that at one point we're at 395V for an example max of 400 and we can't pump out 405 to still get the 20A.. we must never exceed 400! So we get 10amps.. and when the battery is at 398, we get 4 amps, and so on.

That's the reason why you get diminishing returns when upping charger capacity. At one point you save only at the beginning of the charging cycle. A 120kWh battery would stay in the 120kw zone for much longer!

So back to the original thread : enabling 140kW supercharging could be possible (if the wiring of the car and the cells can handle it) but changing the taper point isn't without changing the cell technology.

 

[Gizmotoy]

That's not physically possible (changing the taper point).
...
So back to the original thread : enabling 140kW supercharging could be possible (if the wiring of the car and the cells can handle it) but changing the taper point isn't without changing the cell technology.

That would be true if Tesla is following the upper limits permitted by the batteries, but I don't think we know that's the case. They've changed the tapering behavior at least once since they started delivering Model S. The car and Supercharger communicate, and could decide to charge the battery at whatever rate they feel like as long as it's less then the maximum for the given SOC, and it's entirely possible Tesla is holding some of that capacity in reserve to either go easy on the batteries or manage thermal stresses.

 

[Vger]

The more I think about this, the more I think it will be something much more "obvious".
It has to be something that makes intuitive sense to many buyers and also can be retroactively done for "almost the entire fleet".
That has me think it's something that requires the tech package (that I think would be "almost the entire fleet").
So maybe it is the full rewrite of the navigation software that Elon had hinted about in November of 2013 and had pre-announced for Jan/Feb... we thought he meant 2014
Navigation that takes into account, traffic, weather, wind, charging locations and gives a recommendation as to the best speed in order to arrive at your destination at the earliest time.
Maybe it will even (GASP) support way points

Yes, this! There is room here to please everybody, and both catch up with competitive systems, and leapfrog other EV's.

In addition, I think that v6.1 shows that they "get" that they have to sprinkle in some minor refinements (like defaulting to average energy consumption) in each release.

Respectfully, I hink a lot of us are over-thinking this. It does not have to be out-of-the-blue to be highly impactful. Just good design and attention to real workflows while driving will guide to big impact and customer satisfaction.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

A more robust navigation system would positively impact the entire fleet, especially if they add automatic routing to superchargers (or other charge points) along your route.

 

[middly]

While I agree it's fun to speculate on what the upgrades are...has there been any hint towards when this upgrade would be out?

 

[dirkhh]

While I agree it's fun to speculate on what the upgrades are...has there been any hint towards when this upgrade would be out?

Announced dates for firmware upgrades from Tesla are a mixed bag. 6.0 may have been a wee bit late (Elon's comments in Nov 2013 made us believe we'd get something much more comprehensive than what 6.0 ended up offering as early as Feb 2014... on the flip side torque sleep arrived within a day or two of their self-imposed target date). From what Jerome said in Switzerland it seems that they are thinking about a major firmware upgrade (I'm guessing 6.2) in the next month or two - but it's not clear if that is the release that Elon was talking about.
This is a very longwinded way of saying "I don't think we know"

 

[AlMc]

While I agree it's fun to speculate on what the upgrades are...has there been any hint towards when this upgrade would be out?

The only data point we have IIRC is EM saying at the CC in February that this would come 'next month' (so March)

 

[sandpiper]

Here's my wish....

I'd like if it they had determined, after two years of conservative field testing, that it's possible to:

a) run the batteries a bit deeper into discharge
b) charge the batteries a bit closer to true full charge
c) increase the length of time that the supercharger can run at full rate before taper, and taper off more slowly.
d) do the above without adversely degrading the battery.

The net result would be that Tesla provides a firmware upgrade that provides all vehicles in the fleet with 12% more range, and allows them to run to full charge 25% faster!

This might not be COMPLETELY out to lunch.

 

[HankLloydRight]

Respectfully, I think a lot of us are over-thinking this.

Respectfully, I think this is an understatement.

 

[EfficientWatts]

Just wondering, if it is something to do with the battery and adjusting charge limits and boundaries, how much capacity/reserve do they have to work with? Can't image it to be too much.

 

[sandpiper]

Just wondering, if it is something to do with the battery and adjusting charge limits and boundaries, how much capacity/reserve do they have to work with? Can't image it to be too much.

I saw a chart somewhere on this forum. You might be able to find it is you search. If I recall correctly (perhaps a stretch!) it was either 15 or 20%, combining room at the top and bottom.

 

[middly]

Respectfully, I think this is an understatement.

Respectfully, I think this is all part of the fun.

 

[morbot]

Anyone think it's possible we'll ever see improvements (even if they're just minor) in the areas of:
1. Faster rate of charge
2. Increased range

Through purely software only updates? I know early on they made some efficiency tweaks, but I wonder if things are so optimized at this point there's no further room for improvement outside of hardware changes?

 

[llavalle]

That would be true if Tesla is following the upper limits permitted by the batteries, but I don't think we know that's the case.

I'm pretty sure they do. a S85 will report a full battery at 402V.. With 96cells in series (16modules x 6 groups, total 7104 cells), it means each cell is at 4.1875V. That only leaves 0.0125V of margin... and we're not even talking about balance between each group.

So unless the 402V reported is wrong (or altered for display purposes), they won't be able to do anything with it.

 

[Gizmotoy]

I'm pretty sure they do. a S85 will report a full battery at 402V.. With 96cells in series (16modules x 6 groups, total 7104 cells), it means each cell is at 4.1875V. That only leaves 0.0125V of margin... and we're not even talking about balance between each group.

So unless the 402V reported is wrong (or altered for display purposes), they won't be able to do anything with it.

That's fine for a full battery, but you took that sentence out of context. What was being discussed was the rate of charge at various SOCs, not the total battery capacity. We know they already increased the rate of charge (the taper) one time since they started delivering Model S, and I don't think we know for sure how close that rate is to the battery's theoretical max.

 

[apacheguy]

Right, the taper can absolutely be improved at the lower SOC end. Elon even hinted at this during the SpC announcement. They are not testing the upper limits of the batteries in the current implementation.

 

[dirkhh]

Right, the taper can absolutely be improved at the lower SOC end. Elon even hinted at this during the SpC announcement. They are not testing the upper limits of the batteries in the current implementation.

Father in law of a good friend happens to work in battery research (oh the people I know...). He explained to me that he was flabergasted by the taper curve. I showed him my logs of a few supercharger visits (back when I was working on the REST API tools and tracked all this). He did some calculations and came to the conclusion that either he is missing some important data or Tesla is being extremely careful to avoid aging the cells too quickly. In his mind the taper could be pushed out quite a bit - as in "start at about a 20% higher SOC than it does today".

 

[anxman]

Some possible upgrades to the whole fleet could be:

- Integration of better musical choices directly into the car, such as Spotify
- 3D navigation
- Inclusion of all charging data from Chargepoint/Plugshare directly into the navigation system
- Better designed music center with improved album art

Another theory I considered recently is improved range across the whole fleet. Basically, their learnings from torque sleep on the P85D have let them figure out how to apply torque sleep to single motor vehicles and improve range by a few percentage points.

 

[skilly]

As long as we are speculating, I was thinking things that might benefit the whole fleet:

- flux capacitor
- Knight Rider flashing light and talking computer interface
- trunk monkey
- The Jetson's bubble car sound app to match speedo read out (tied to tech package of course).