MORE POWER

[feelthesweetbeat]

So... How will the aftermarket be able to make this more potent?* This makes Forced Induction obsolete, no more Air/fuel ratios, no more variable valve timing/porting, no more timing.* Any ideas for increasing the power/improving of this beast??!?!

Things i can think of right now:
-Batt cell rewiring (run parallel groups of 2 cells in series) to change the output voltage
* * -which would require replace wiring to allow for higher current flow
* * -add'l cooling

-Motors with different # of coils (turns)
* * -add'l cooling

-Regenerative braking aftermarket units

-Batt Voltage/amp control unit tuning

-It'd be easy to implement a scramble power button if ya see fit

Overall, i think tuning would become easier and would allow more people to perform mods on their own.* As a result, racing it would be cheaper enabling more people to compete competetively.*

[asdar]

I like the idea of more power and always loved tinkering with cars, but the thought of people tweaking the Tesla makes me cringe. I can just see some huge Lith explosion because someone threw some extra batteries in the trunk space and hooked it up, to get a few more miles.

No matter if it was Teslas fault or not it'd be splashed all over the news, at least ten times the media the car got at launch.

More power to you if you do mod it. I'd love to see a racing Tesla roadster.

[tonybelding]

So... How will the aftermarket be able to make this more potent?* This makes Forced Induction obsolete, no more Air/fuel ratios, no more variable valve timing/porting, no more timing.* Any ideas for increasing the power/improving of this beast??!?!

I don't see many realistic options for tuning it. . . .

Somebody on another forum mentioned experimenting with alternate motor windings, but I assume (and hope) he was joking about that.

Chipping or re-programming the computer might be possible, but to me it would seem pretty scary considering how computerized this car is.* Also, it's not clear whether there would be much to gain from it.

Changing the suspension should be pretty straightforward, and I could imagine something like the "sport package" that's available for the Elise.

The other most obvious mods that people seem likely to do involve stripping weight off the car.* Any part you can replace with a lighter one, or anything you can remove, will improve performance.* If you were only going to use your car on the track, such things as the stereo and airbags could go, and you could swap in racing seats.

And of course, you could remove batteries.* It has 900 pounds of batteries.* You might be able to remove half of those, and jettisoning 450 pounds would improve the performance quite a bit, and still have 100-125 miles of effective driving range.

[chucknorris]

the additionaly coils which you say will cool. does that increase power or just how long the batteries last or am i totally confused

[Joel]

I can just see some huge Lith explosion because someone threw some extra batteries in the trunk space and hooked it up

That's just because none of us have any experience with it yet.

A kid with a nitrous kit scares me more then someone with some extra batteries. Also this isn't like pouring alcohol in your gas tank. You can't just wire some things together. People performing mod's will have to be a little geeky. It's not like strapping a bigger carburetor on while drinking a 12 pack.

[feelthesweetbeat]

the additionaly coils which you say will cool.* does that increase power or just how long the batteries last or am i totally confused

increasing the number of coils (aka windings) in the electric motor would increase the strength of the beta field of the rotor thus increasing the amount of torque. As long as you keep in check how many amps youre drawing from the batts (by controlling the resistance of the circuit since the voltage is probably fixed) then changing the number of windings wouldnt be to disasterous. I guess you'd also need to balance the rotor (spinning part of an electric motor) after you increase the windings to ensure that it wont cause any harmful vibrations.

Come to think of it, the "gas" pedal will probably be controlling the resistance of the circuit, therefore changing the "gas" pedal might actually make the car more powerful... seems weird.

adding more windings also increases the length of the motors wiring, adding resistance and increases induced voltage within the coil, in turn, decreasing the voltage drop across the motors terminals and causes m... whatever theres alot to talk about. im gonna leave work now.

[stockey]

Why not use this engine,with this the tesla roadster would one of the fastest car in the world.The engine as 420 ft lbs and 500 HP !
http://www.rasertech.com/tech_p-2.html

[feelthesweetbeat]

Why not use this engine,with this the tesla roadster would one of the fastest car in the world.The engine as 420 ft lbs and 500 HP !
http://www.rasertech.com/tech_p-2.html

It looks like they are designed to act as the hub of a wheel and 150 extra lbs of unsprung weight per drive wheel is not a good thing in sports cars. It would be better if it was moved from the wheel to the center of the car and driveshafts added. 500 ft/lbs of torque per wheel is alot, not to mention the fact that each drive wheel can be independantly controlled eliminating the need for a diff. The transmission may also not be necessary due to electric motor torque curves. wow, very small drivetrain losses!!!

[Iamtherealwoody]

NEW FOR THE SPORT SEDAN, AWD CONTROLLED BY THOSE HUB MOTORS, ONE PUSHING THE FRONT DRIVE SHAFT, ONE PUSHING THE REAR. oh my how nice would that be.

[tevvybear]

Come to think of it, the "gas" pedal will probably be controlling the resistance of the circuit, therefore changing the "gas" pedal might actually make the car more powerful... seems weird.*

I was reading up a thing today about how electric trains work. The modern ones don't use resistance to govern engine power, but instead the duty cycle of the input power.
They do this because the power loss of a resistor would be huge!

I'm looking into converting a car i own to electric in the near future, so i've been looking at how these things are done. (eg. i now know by Tesla's example, and a couple of other sources that 3 phase AC induction motors seem to be the way to go. - now i just have to make an appropriate 3 phase inductor, possibly utilising a variable gain buck-boost converter running at high frequency with a variable frequency and amplitude sin-wave generator to determine the ratio (either that or i make a microcontroller do all of the processing to determine the gain required - which i think is do-able)