I'm thinking that I'm probably brave enough once I have a spare couple of hours to mess around with this a little.
Ok. I had a clear couple of hours last night. So I ended up spending 4 hours on this. And now have a sore back.
I have the Satonic V2, which is a two piece design. A motor unit pulls a cable connected via a latch attachment unit to use the factory latching system to pull the frunk closed. After pulling closed, the Satonic motor reverses & its cable loosens, leaving the frunk closed from the factory latch. There's an emergency cable release connected to the motor piece.
Installation wasn't quite straightforward for a single person to do, although I spent a lot of time testing failsafe scenarios. I can confirm that the emergency release cable will detach the Satonic cable's connection to the motor, allowing it to loosen. This has given enough confidence to leave this installed.
What also wasn't straightforward was the placement of the motor unit. After lining up the latch unit & testing, testing, testing, I fastened the motor unit somewhere via cable ties & put everything back together. Then the frunk wouldn't close. Took everything apart again. It turns out that the cable from the motor unit to the latch unit was being pushed around by the replacement of the frunk liner, tightening it & pulling the factory latch to a half closed position. I had to move the motor around until the Satonic cable could be routed slack enough & not be affected when I put the frunk liner back.
I broke a couple of the plastic clips for the frunk liner & the air intake grill area. The residual plastic bits are somewhere in the bowels of the frunk area, never to be seen again. I hope they don't get lodged in anything important.
The auto re-close on unlatching-but-not-lifting-the-frunk doesn't work. I need to ask Satonic what's going on with this.
My main concern is safety. The Satonic web page lists one of the features of the V2 as "
Anti-Finger Design: Say goodbye to unsightly fingerprints on your Tesla's frunk. Our anti-finger design ensures a clean and polished appearance, maintaining the sleek look of your vehicle at all times." I think this should say "
Anti-Finger Design: Say goodbye to your fingers if they get in the way while the frunk is closing." The frunk closing motor starts when the hood is gently placed down. The gap at that time is about 2cm, plenty of space for a finger to get caught. I tried placing towels in to see what happens if there's an obstruction - the thing pulls shut as hard as it can & there's no safety mechanism. This is different to the trunk auto close because (1) the powered trunk is common to all Model Ys & is expected behaviour; the powered soft closing frunk is unique & people don't expect it to pull shut like this; (2) the powered trunk stops closing if it detects an obstruction; the soft closing frunk doesn't not have a force sensor.
To me, it would be safer to have the motor start only if the frunk is gently closed, and then manually pushed down one "click" – so it would be an intentional effort to close the frunk, but with very minimal effort, and at which point the gap would be less than 1cm, so hardly likely a finger would get caught. I'm still tossing up whether to remove the motor or not because of this safety issue.
