bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

KahnBB6, i respect your passion, enthusiasm and skill in extensively modifying cars!

you wrote:



I replied:

you replied:

i wrote what i did because cars have become sophisticated computers with dozens of processors, tons of sensors, cellular radios, control modules, a TON of software, etc. and they're only going to get more complex.

i go to car shows and talk with enthusiasts who have modified their old Datsun 240Z or 1932 Ford etc., and they're amazing, and i think it's great so i'm not against even extensive modifications. but what i referred to above as being against, is you stating people are going to resort to do the following to modern cars:

"total ditching of certain key logic board components or entire modules in favor of aftermarket and open-source replacements that allow for more open tuning potential."

on a modern car i believe that will inevitably result in making those vehicles much less safe and potentially dangerous with all kinds of unintended consequences. i am ok with people turning a modern mustang into an EV mustang and doing all you say in order to make a drag strip monster.

no doubt that takes skill, patience, time, and dedication i don't possess or have interest in possessing, and i understand that for OLD cars. but what use will a 'wiring diagram' be when there's just a few strands of optical fiber in a car, with gigs and gigs of encrypted digital data moving around? reminds me of dumb sci-fi movies where some guy takes a wrench and pliers to pull out a few 'modules' and 'wires' in some intergalactic spaceship. Ludicrous, lol.

there may be reasons people want to modify them but as you say it gets "very dicey" which is why i oppose the extensive ripping out of stuff you suggested on modern cars.

and i didn't say i want "all" modification and conversion banned. but regardless of what you want, i believe it will become more and more difficult with new vehicles, if not impossible, except for 'gutting' and replacing most everything, at which point the car clearly won't be subjected to the OEM testing and certification for road use.

specifically on converting an ICE mustang into an EV, i can only imagine how limited the range is for such a converted vehicle, making it something very few people would want to do anyway.

i guess in the end i don't really care if this becomes more regulated or not, as so few people do it and it's going to become harder and harder and more expensive anyway.

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

bitkahuna, my apologies for taking so long to reply to you! A family emergency hit and only a couple of weeks later am I now able to return to this discussion with focus.

I also respect *your* passion, enthusiasm and skills that you bring to the table here as a member of this forum! We may have different opinions and specialties on various vehicle topics but that is where I come from as well!

You are correct in that new cars are increasingly becoming or already are infused with sophisticated computers, many processors, CAN-BUS chassis-wide data networks (or the newer SENT data communication standard that is making headway) far more sensors than ever before, cellular communication modules, etc. and all of this is increasingly being driven by software and that, yes they're getting more complex every model year.

This is just how it is and we adapt to these things. No longer do you need to only know how to physically work on cars but in addition you have to get your head around basic software coding, engine fuel mapping and/or mapping and code that applies to linear motor torque curves and inverter behaviors, code cracking, etc.

However those old Datsun 240Z's and especially 1932 Fords don't have much if any of that even with modern engine swaps into them. Hotrodding, restomodding and EV conversions to old classics WILL happen and thus very simplified versions of those newer powertrains will be fitted into them.

In fact this has already been happening with EV converting classic cars for years and the trend will only continue once it becomes very costly to fuel up with gasoline and probably when many cities will start limiting ICE cars in certain areas. I'm not the one making those rules but the writing will be on the wall at a certain point. Thus, at least some classics will be converted from internal combustion to EV powertrains with all the modern skillsets that they require. Many people have already been doing this today with great results which is paving the way for making these conversions easier.

Regarding new vehicles though... well, how else do you propose to get around remote software lockouts directed by a major corporation's servers at the car that you legally own just because you'd prefer it to have a mild +50hp bump over what it is capable of putting out in the state of tune you bought it in? With ICE cars nothing has to be changed out but with some EV's replacing a circuit board with a totally redesigned one by an aftermarket company or DIY group that will have spent months reverse engineering the design so as to create a replacement that does all the same things but with user interface control may be necessary.

This mostly applies to the inverter of an EV. And this is also already and PRIMARILY a thing in the DIY electric conversion community for classic vehicle project cars as young as 1990's vintage. There is an infamous BMW 840 coupe that has been converted to EV with a full Tesla Model S rear drive unit (very common now) and repurposed Tesla inverter module with a custom logic board and a repurposed battery pack with its own BMS (battery monitoring system) from yet another OEM electric vehicle. The man behind it is a brilliant electrical engineer who loves classic BMWs and electric cars and absolutely wanted not one but several of his favorite brand's classic 90's models in his driveway... all converted to full electric.

What's more, all of his EV converted BMWs are road legal and have passed his country's strict DMV vehicle safety inspections which actually do go in-depth into the electrical safety hardware he had to install from the very start of each vehicle conversion project. He doesn't use his cars as drag strip monsters at all. He just uses them like normal everyday cars and charges them at normal EV charging stations.

There are a lot of people doing this and the vast majority of them are not building drag strip monsters but rather future-proofed and future-minded updated versions of the classic vehicles that they love.

Today's brand new EV's are currently in unknown territory as far as how much anyone will want to keep and cherish them and keep them for longer than their warranty periods. I don't see anyone caring that much about going to all this trouble with an SUV the way they might a Porsche Taycan but there will be some modern EV cars that will stand out from the rest to people who love them as beautiful, high performance or both and those probably will get some kind of modification on the aftermarket as they age so long as THOSE models are cared about and are sought after.

The thing is that it all applies to currently old cars but ALL cars eventually get old. Some models are forgotten and not bothered with as modification platforms because no one really cares about them that way. Then there are some models that have that timeless appeal from the start and which people tend to like to personalize, customize or give more power.

Studying diagrams applies to any car. They all have wires that do things. This helps when you own one for 30+ years and you need to troubleshoot and repair some electrical circuit in order to repair something that the manufacturer has discontinued parts for (for instance). Today's newer cars also add to this advanced control modules and software using CANBUS, SENT or other data protocols over local area networks.

Well... now you need to know what codes represent certain functions, why those control modules are behaving as they do normally and how to give those control modules what they need to "see" in order to make them do what they are supposed to when you've just installed the on-board battery charger module from a Tesla Model S into a 2018 Porsche 911 that you for whatever reason were determined to custom convert into an EV.

There are so many examples and applications for this especially as we gradually move into an electric vehicle society. Brand new and old cars will be along for the ride.

I always get annoyed with dumb sci-fi movies like those as well with some "mechanic" who miraculously fixes something by pounding on a computer screen with a screwdriver (except when it's so unbelievably stupid that it's funny) but what we're talking about even in terms of today's tuning of modern internal combustion vehicles let alone EV's already involves a deep understanding of in-vehicle data networks and protocols specific to many aspects and components of the specific vehicle being worked on.

There is a LOT of coding and software knowledge required to do any of this even on today's new vehicles and yes that will only become more the case as we move forward. But it's far from impossible to learn how to do.

Here's a very simplified example of a modern EV car being tuned. It's not a lot so far and note that it is NOT as simple as just rewriting software. You have to do your homework and often replace key components such as the drive motor unit, inverter and even the batteries with different components that are better designed for the power increases that you are seeking and THEN you can apply the software knowledge.

Cases where you would not have to do this are when you buy a vehicle (and have the title of ownership for it) and said vehicle has hardware already installed capable of, say, 300hp but your trim level only came with a 200hp tune due to the manufacturer feeling that only one version of the vehicle saves them on manufacturing while they can just make the base trim level pretend it cannot offer any more power because it was programmed that way despite the hardware on board being more than capable of safely going higher.

It really depends from model to model. And also it depends on whether anyone cares about personalizing one model versus another. People are more likely to want to tune and personalize a Ford Mustang (coupe) than a boring but humble and unremarkable Honda CR-V.




Again, this will vary as every manufacturer does things differently and as every manufacturer has a different idea about how their EV vehicles will offer options and features to their customers such as building one physical version of a model's powertrain that can support up to 400hp (as a hypothetical example) but offering four different trim levels on that model all with various levels of horsepower levels down to 180hp with the only difference being the software coding.

In some cases all you need to do if you fully own the car you bought is to flash in the version of the software for 400hp (again, using the hypothetical example of a physical car that would have no driveline differences between trim levels) and then manage to stop the manufacturer from stopping your action when they realize,"Hey! This person who bought one of our cars capable of 400hp with the 200hp coding just flashed theirs to the coding for the 400hp trim level without paying the official $12,500 fee we demand in order to do so officially! Send a counter OTA update to revert them back to the 200hp software tune!"

For the most part the replacement of, say, the main logic board within an OEM automaker's inverter unit for one of their production electric vehicles is done when you are converting an older classic car to full electric and want to take advantage of excellent, reliable and well designed electronics that only an OEM manufacturer with millions to invest in the R&D and testing can give you. The problem is that you really can't effectively use those components in some cases unless you replace a logic board or two with one that has been painstakingly reverse engineered in order to give the DIY hobbyist control of it in order to make their EV conversion work normally.

It's far less the case (although not out of the question) when you want to modify an existing new EV car to a different state of tune. In the majority of cases you would be taking a much more software driven approach with some minor or major hardware changes with parts from the same model series to tune a modern EV car.

But we're still in early days with all of this so we'll see how any of this methodology changes as we go forward.

Range is limited with converted EV cars yes but that doesn't stop people from doing these kinds of passion projects. Really, it's been a thing that has been done for at least three decades now with whatever technology was available at the time. Even current lithium-ion battery technology sucks when huge range and high performance characteristics require that the entire floorpan of a modern electric vehicle IS more or less all battery.

Yet improvements in range at the OEM level and DIY hobbyist level have been observed over time as lithium packs get better and more energy dense. Things will really change when sodium-ion and various solid state battery designs become commercially available given their even greater potential for energy density, power density, much lighter weight and far better safety without the thermal runaway concerns we have with lithium cells.

A lot of people are very interested in converting an ICE vehicle into an EV. Many already do this with current technology and many more will get into it in the future. People love their cars from many eras and when the entire world shifts to a completely new means of propelling vehicles, a completely new "refueling" infrastructure and a focus on de-emphasizing internal combustion engines... many classic car people and hobbyists will just adapt in order to keep using and enjoying their favorite cars.

That is not to say that gasoline won't be a thing tomorrow-- it's here for quite some time yet-- but plenty of car enthusiasts will continue to adapt and convert some of their currently old cars and as currently new ICE cars age plenty of those will be converted and hot-rodded as EVs as well.

For quite a while we're going to see a mix of the usual internal combustion old and new classics and unique converted ones at car shows.

It's just in the very early stages right now.

.....

Tuning of modern EV cars in general actually will involve very little gutting of components and much more sophisticated reverse engineering of and re-coding of software. Unless someone plans to truly "gut" their performance car to make a dragster with entirely different driveline components (see for example the Ford Mach-E Cobra Jet 1400 which has an EV driveline NOTHING at all like its mass production counterpart) then we're not talking about deviating from a road legal and safe vehicle.

Personally I hate the Mach-E even in this state of tune because its still an Escape-based SUV and not a Mustang unlike the actual Ford Mustang coupe Cobra Jet 1400 but look at it carefully and you'll see that it represents a very extreme version of what it means to "tune an EV" by replacing almost everything that makes it move.



And for comparison here's an actual Ford Mustang with its ICE driveline removed and a completely custom and very expensive high powered dragster style EV driveline installed:



Mostly we're talking about mild changes or different programming for how the steering system behaves, how an active suspension behaves, tweaks to torque vectoring, removal of or limiting of draconian traction control behaviors that absolutely lock down the car too much if there is even the faintest hint of wheelspin, etc.

It really does come down to how each model is programmed versus another as to what one enthusiast owner feels needs to be changed or not.

....

Another thing to mention about the notion of banning the tuning of electric cars and/or the conversion of classic ICE cars to electric....

Have you heard of a company called Rimac Automobili based out of Croatia? Perhaps their Concept One and Nevera supercars?

That company was founded by a young guy named Mate Rimac who in the late 2000's was one of these DIY electric car conversion hobbyists with his 1980's BMW E30 that he was constantly refining to put out then unheard of amounts of power in an EV conversion project car. He was brilliant from the start and began showing off his creation. One thing led to another and he founded he EV design, engineering consulting and supercar firm.

Then Porsche invested heavily into his company, then Hyundai Motors. Just this year his company acquired a 55% stake in Bugatti with plans to deeply integrate engineering resources and ideas to bring the famous super/hypercar brand well into the mid-21st century electrified era.

If Mate Rimac had not been allowed to ponder, tinker, reverse engineer, re-purpose and otherwise have the creative freedom to build that project car BMW E30 full electric conversion car he would not have gained major attention as a serious businessman and engineer as he rushed right through his internet hobby car forum days (you can still see all his informative posts up through 2013 still on the DIYelectriccar forums) and into the world of founding his company and becoming a major electric supercar manufacturer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_Automobili
https://www.rimac-automobili.com
https://www.motor1.com/news/34396/ri...e-world-video/
https://jalopnik.com/remember-how-th...ect-1829365756




.....


Recently Steve Wozniak, formerly of Apple said something similar over the growing Right To Repair legislation battle-- that if he and Steve Jobs had not been *allowed* to tinker with, reverse engineer the technology of the day they never would have invented a number of project devices which later led to their Apple I which then led to their corporation, the Apple II and everything Apple has developed as a company ever since.

The iPhone literally would not exist in 2007 were it not for hobbyists being allowed to modify, change, tinker with, reverse engineer, and reprogram hardware and use it in ways that the original manufacturers never intended or would have wanted to allow had they known that two upstarts were about to attract big investment on the basis of their Apple I computer and found a major computer company that would rival all the biggest manufacturers in the industry.

Few people who modify and play with electronics, hardware, vehicles or really any kind of thing or device will rocket into becoming new company founders or industry leaders but without allowing people the freedom to repair, modify or otherwise customize the things they own so long as they aren't harming anyone with their work you really kill a lot of the root of innovation and dare I say it even things that are just fun.

You cannot assume that just because someone changes something about a product they own that they have suddenly made themselves and their creation a danger to society at large. That kind of narrative is exactly the kind of thing the lobbyists and lawyers for companies from John Deere to Apple are currently pushing in order to kill any efforts to legislate Right To Repair at any local or especially national level.

It is also the same narrative that most automobile manufacturers would love to have as many people believe as possible so as to kill off the aftermarket modification and tuning industry as might apply to future vehicles.

....

Please understand, bitkahuna, that what I am trying to do in this post is to help better inform. Car modification and driveline conversions for older models will only continue and evolve even as popular model preferences change with new and old ones. And depending on where you live it may well make more sense eventually to convert an old classic car with a fully electric powertrain in order to keep enjoying it on the road, in big cities, etc.

Maybe that won't apply to all classics with some of them having very special ICE drivelines especially if certain models were ridiculously low production, rare and exclusive to begin with but it will apply to a lot of classics in coming years. People will still like driving their favorite cars.

There are already a lot of reasons why not just anyone can get into this or master it (current costs being one of the largest hurdles) but technology improves, costs come down, kits for certain popular models are developed. See EVwest.com and https://electricgt.com for examples.

Motorola

Turns out sunroofs flying off cars while driving isn't a problem exclusive to Tesla...

Ford Recalls Over 38,000 Mustang Mach-E

The reason is a potentially improperly bonded windshield and sunroof that might separate from the vehicle.

Windows204

Cant say i enjoy the look much, they could have done better

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

Ford Mustang Mach-E fails Sweden's moose test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PTOBc883zg

EZZ

The Mach E GT is a pretty disappointing performance version so far. It seems Ford's EV tech isn't so great...the 0-60 looks okay (although still slower than a Model Y) but the trap in the quarter mile is very bad. Its getting around 12.6s but only at 100mph. For a car that quick, it should be trapping around 115mph. Basically, its tuned for good 0-60 but completely poops out after that. A Performance Model Y will get around 12s flat and trap around 115mph. Highway pulls will feel anemic especially for a performance vehicle. It seems Ford is severely pulling back power after 60mph...hope they can fix it. I hear the marketing folks at Ford promised the performance numbers but the technical people had trouble figuring out how to get there. Not surprising as Ford has little experience building EVs. Too bad.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/42393/...the-drag-strip

JeffKeryk

Yeah, but at least the roof didn't fall off... Just kidding!

LeX2K

38,000 Mach-E’s have been recalled for the roof glass not being properly bonded is that every one sold? Especially funny since Ford mocked (Mached?) Tesla for roof glass problems.
I'm more disappointed with the UI I think it's terrible. Looks like a weird combination of Windows Vista and Windows 8.

EZZ

Yeah. For Ford to make fun of Tesla...pot calling kettle black. Lol

JeffKeryk

I ain't buying a Mach-E, but in all fairness, the recall is to make sure the glass top does not fly off. I think only a few have separated. And the ones in question are from the Canadian plant. Ford is not sure what the problem actually is.
Having said this, the recall is just the latest hiccup in the rollout of the Mustang Mach-E; there have been numerous issues. And the car is not exactly new; it is based on the Escape/Fusion global platform.
I THINK this is the 1st glass roof, however.

Oh yeah, we love our Model 3. Full disclosure, as they say.