Tritium_James wrote:coulomb wrote:Perhaps you're overlooking the simple fact that for the Ford company to convert a Ford to an electric drivetrain is a lot easier than for one of us to do the same thing, since they have all the details on their CAN protocols at hand. No need for Ford to reverse engineer the protocol, their engineers can just go to the file or ask the engineer in the next cubicle who designed it.
Edit: so the point is, getting an already working ESC system to talk to an electric motor instead of an ICE is presumably not very hard, it's just you have to find the command that says "kill the spark now" and translate it to "command zero torque".
Yes, this is it exactly. In fact, since the CAN ID is about where the message came from (or more specifically, what it contains) rather than where it is going to, the ESC system itself probably doesn't need to change at all. They just need to program their electric motor ECU to look for CAN packets from the ESC system saying "I'm reaching the limit of what I can control with the brakes" type stuff, and respond in a similar ramp rate and amplitude to what the petrol ECU did.
As far as one of us doing the same thing - even if we did manage to reverse engineer the comms, and implement our own, can you trust it? I know Tesla spent months and months testing theirs, and I think that may have only been traction control, not even stability control? Not sure on that last point. But I know it involved trips to Sweden or somewhere for a month or two of testing on ice and snow.
Yes, I see... I think I can understand the complexity of the task. Although I would have felt that in the case of Tesla, Tesla would have had access to Lotus/Proton/Mitsubishi engineering and computer protocols.
The other problem at Vic-roads is the requirement for functioning airbags.
Now all this is not really a problem unless you live in Victoria. But the issue was raised at the last National conference of Auto Insurers, and will be an important item on the agenda this year with the Vic government controlled TAC, pushing for national standards for motor vehicle registration. While non-conforming comprehensive insurance can be got around, if the Vic model were adopted nationally, the third party component in Registration would effectively prevent EV conversions of late model vehicles and render any sales of conversions of any description very difficult.
Very true.... that is until you are involved in a serious road accident.Then the penalties for driving an unregistered, unroad worthy, motor vehicle would kick in. Even if the accident was not your fault you would be held liable for the compensation for injuries to the other parties. TAC would and does pursue such claims relentlessly, with considerable legal resources. Especially if a passenger in your vehicle were injured because the airbag failed to deploy correctly.I still think Vicroads have just invented a black market of illegally converted electric cars. Remember that we do not have annual RWC's in Vic. The only time a car is checked is when it is sold.
When was the last time anyone in authority (i.e. a policeman)looked under the bonnet of your car ??? For me, never in nearly 40 years of driving.
Grrrrr....A pox on all their houses!
