Simple, pure physics. If you can improve 30% (ie, give 30% more range) then there needs to be at least 30% waste in the first place. Waste always shows up as heat, as Lee likes to point out: Heat is the indicator of the (lack of) efficiency. So, if you have an EV that needs roughly 25kW to drive freeway speeds, Then you expect in the order of at least 10kW of heat to be produced *if* there is so much loss. This would mean that you need a significant amount of cooling, since this volume of heat is about the heat of 7 plug-in space heaters combined (each drawing about 12A at 110V) Now remember the installation practice of the Zilla controller, where you are guided to use something equivalent to a tiny aquarium pump and a bottle with water, not even a radiator needed as there is so little heat to get rid of anyway.
I have driven several EV trucks for many years as daily driver. The first thing I usually do is to disable the radiator fan, if it is running constantly, since there is simply so little heat that there is no need for a big fan blowing through a big radiator - which was a left-over from the ICE factory conversion where you need to get rid of about 100kW of waste heat. The only exception is if the controller is used for charging, because then even a couple hundreds of Watts dissipated over many hours can warm up the controller to a point that it may be useful to cool it. The other example is the Prius's inverter water pump which has a tendency to fail silently. The only indication that you actually have no cooling for the inverter is not that the car is not driving, but that on a hot day with a longer drive, it may start limiting power or the 12V battery conks out, because the DC/DC (which shares the cold plate with the inverter) overheats and disables itself. The fact that you can keep driving the vehicle without water cooling, tells you that the inverter actually produces very little heat or else it would fail soon. My (cynical) view on the claim of 30% is that they are probably not claiming to increase range by 30% but that they reduce the waste by 30% by paying more attention to the power needed by the controller's own operation. This means that if you have a 90% efficient vehicle they reduce the 10% waste by up to 3% so the vehicle may now be up to 93% efficient. For a car with 80 mile range, this means that they add "up to" 2.4 miles of range. Not insignificant, but not as spectacular as their claim-disguised-as-question "Can this controller add 30% range?" because the simple answer to that is "No." You can also derive it from the bogus argument in their article that they improved the efficiency by using a faster controller, because (as they claim) the industry was using microcontrollers designed for ICE and they use a specific automotive design. Eh, not only does that claim make no sense whatever, but making a controller faster usually means that it consumes *more* power, not less. But hey, who am I to judge? Let them show some independent test results and we will know. For now, it is just investment-baiting fodder for all I can determine. Cor. -----Original Message----- From: EV [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of EVDL Administrator via EV Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2018 10:46 AM To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List Cc: EVDL Administrator Subject: Re: [EVDL] EVLN: 30% Range Boost from EV-specific FPCU Controller chip Maybe this design could improve range (efficiency) that much if you substituted it for a creaky old SCR controller, or for a controller really badly matched to a sepex or induction motor. But I don't see that kind of waste in modern EV drives, thank goodness. Could be I'm missing something, but I'm skeptical and then some. David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
