Vtech Chip

[bnsfengineer]

Has anyone tried the Vtech chip that is supposed to increase range by 10%? Also performance as well? They claim it is undetectable by Tesla?

 

[kev1n]

link?

 

[bnsfengineer]

evtun.com

 

[kev1n]

looks interesting, I wouldnt be surprised if it works, as Tesla's become more popular and get into the hands of 3rd party vendors, tuning will likely become a common upgrade

 

[bnsfengineer]

My thoughts as well but they give you 14 days to try out and return. Fairly inexpensive about $300

 

[SSedan]

Looks like it simply lies to the car about what your foot is doing, dampens your inputs to reduce power consumption.

I would suspect chill mode might accomplish similar.

 

[bnsfengineer]

Looks like it simply lies to the car about what your foot is doing, dampens your inputs to reduce power consumption.

I would suspect chill mode might accomplish similar.

Hmm...maybe I could try that for a DAY!

 

[Ande]

meh, a simple device at a high price. Simply changing the throttle curve and most likely do some hard averaging and filtering to make changes much slower. Kill responsiveness.
Most likely very much what Tesla does in Chill mode.
Buying that device is a waste of money unless you have smoe crazy twitching in your foot.
If there were such a simple solution to +10% range, every EV would already do that, after all, it's in Teslas interest to have as good range as possible.

Finally: Tesla uses two potmeters to detect accelerator pedal for safety, unusual deviance between them is detected. I would not bet such a device may have taken some shortcuts, as to read only one potmeter, then emulate both out - which would reduce safety.

 

[SSedan]

Such companies are well known for WILDLY overstating benefits and on ICE vehicles many electronic sensor filtering devices lead to a temporary improvement that the computer learns out. I doubt Tesla "learns" the same way since it isn't impacted by varying fuel quality and atmospheric conditions like an ICE is.

Way off topic, an in-law is a BNSF Roadmaster.

 

[TexaCali]

Old thread I know, but I just stumbled across this thing.....the claim is it allows the car to coast, not just a throttle curve. Claim is this gives more range in city driving (15%) but only 5% on highway. I know with my old EV (Ford Focus Electric), allowing it to cost with the gear selector was a great way to milk more range out in city driving. My Model 3 seems to go from power to regen, with no real coast. So it does seem possible this might offer some benefit, depending on your driving style and conditions. That said, I'm highly skeptical....as others have pointed out, too much history of snake oil salesmen in this market segment.

 

[beatle]

There's no real point in coasting since decelerating actually puts energy back into the battery. Perhaps if the car had an incredibly large amount of parasitic loss from the transmission, freewheeling could help in some cases. For a Model S I'd be incredibly surprised if someone were to receive better range by reducing or eliminating regen. Best way to improve city range is to actually offer more powerful regen all the way to a dead stop so you can all but eliminate using friction brakes which convert the car's kinetic energy into heat. The pre-Raven Model S only had induction motors which could not effectively bring the car to a dead stop; their regen shut off around 5 mph and you'd have to switch to friction brakes.

 

[ucmndd]

There's no real point in coasting since decelerating actually puts energy back into the battery.

Conserving momentum by coasting will always be more efficient than using regeneration. Cycling energy in and out of the battery results in at least a 10% loss.

 

[TexaCali]

Conserving momentum by coasting will always be more efficient than using regeneration. Cycling energy in and out of the battery results in at least a 10% loss.

Yep, there is always energy loss when converting energy from one form (kinetic) to another (electrochemical stored charge). So if you can use the kinetic energy you already have to get a little further down the road, that is best. And yes @beatle, regen is better than friction brakes, but if you can coast (and don't have to stop) that is even better!

Vtech's claims seems in the realm of possible, though a bit higher than I would expect.