Specifically ev, and specifically aftermarket modifications. Whether it’s a custom shop offering a package that you could have installed, or a backyard tinkerer coming up with a new trick to make their EV ratrod faster, what do you think will be done in the future that hasn’t been done yet?
I think full dashboard replacement to have physical buttons and switches instead of the giant control screens will be a thing for customers with deep pockets.
Jailbreaking the car to enable the high performance upgrade for free.
I’m looking forward to the first open source OS projects for EVs that change the crazy surveillance device into just a car.
Absolutely! So much to gain by taking over control of the computers, and so many paywalled things being built in. Most people don’t like it, and hot rodders won’t stand for it at all.
It really depends on the platform and manufacturer lock downs. Over volting the motors could be an avenue for increased performance at the cost of range.
Motor and battery swaps are entirely possible however are fairly expensive while requiring a pretty good understanding of electrical engineering.
Right now the big thing is to swap electric powertrains into vintage chassis.
I do think that over volting motors will be a popular modification. Quick, possibly cheap, makes the car faster.
I wonder if the people with money to swap the battery for higher performance would go ahead and swap the motor(s) to match?
Motors will be more popular to swap as most vehicles use the batteries as part of the sub frame and there’s less of a risk of fire if the BMS or charging circuit does not agree.
Electric motors are also easy to obtain as they are used in applications outside of vehicles meaning the only difficult part are mounting, cooling, and geting the motor talking to the car’s controller (there are aftermarket controllers for tesla motors already available)
Oh yeah, I forgot how integrated the battery packs are getting.
I don’t think it would stop someone with a hot rodders mindset, but it would give some pause because of how much integrated batteries raise the price and risks of swapping them out.
I think this will play out in a similar way to car tuning of today.
These motors and batteries are designed to last 150k miles or whatever with a certain failure rate. These numbers are hit by detuning the max output by some percentage.
If you want something to go 100% down a drag strip and care less about longevity then you turn it up some percentage and get more power.
This can probably be done with stock hardware to some extent but likely is easier with custom controllers.
This makes sense, custom controllers to overclock the system. Like all the Tesla launch modes, but custom and pushed to the actual limit.
I expect to see more people (usually in the open source scene) to build their own ev’s once someone starts a open source project
I also expect people to start buying second hand cars and have them retrofitted into an EV
An open source, home built ev? Interesting. Would that go all the way down to the battery management system?
Custom hand-wound motors? Exotic battery chemistries? Mr. Fusion?
Mr fusion is the dream, maybe someday.
Hand-wound motors sounds intriguing. Is this something that could be done in a garage? Does it take a very long time? Sounds expensive.
I definitely agree that swapping in new battery chemistry will be a thing. The same power out of a smaller pack would make a lot of difference. Even having the same size/weight but higher output would be worth something.
Hand-wound motor? Like… a bicycle?
Electric motors have “windings” coils of wire wound around a metal core that generate a magnetic field when you run a current through them, and that field makes the motor spin (super simplified explanation of course)
So that’s probably what they’re referring to.
Ahh that makes more sense lmao
More coffee for me, then!
The EV drag race: Each car gets a bitcoin mining rig with 50 Nvidia 4090’s that have to run off the vehicles batteries. The car with the longest range wins.
Zero? Short of a motor swap or hacking it, you cant change the performance of an EV.
Monster Cables enters the chat…
You mean like hotrodders and tuners have been doing since prohibition?
Hotrodders and tuners have been modifying ICEs for decades. It shouldn’t be controversial at all to say that EV motors are less serviceable or moddable than conventional ICE drivetrains. Even something as simple as a manual transmission swap is literally impossible with an electric motor.
EVs are a great solution to a lot of problems, but let’s not make them out to be something they’re not.
Hot rodders can deck heads, build a new exhaust manifold, slap 4 carbs on one engine, put a turbo or a supercharger on there, put a cam in, pretty much anything and everything. (If you ever get a chance to see the Museum of American Speed in Lincoln Nebraska, you should go.)
Just typing away, hacking it, is boring. And swapping the motor might not get you much with evs, no one is doing it yet for a reason. Its not like putting an LS where an old small block used to go.
I just dont see much hot rodding potential in EVs, and you just dont many people doing much with them. Weve had a decade or more, its just not happening yet and it might not ever.
Well, motor swaps and hacking are definitely modifications.
Besides the other commenter mentioning how cars have been modified forever, computers have been modified forever. People overclock their processor, swap in better ram, hard drives, graphics cards. Use a different operating system. I expect we’ll see the EV equivalent in time.
Beyond everything else, EVs just don’t invoke the same feelings like an ice does. A rumbling V8, a turbo i4 with a TUTUTU, gear shifts, the vibration and the noise.
EVs are appliances that take you from A to B. ICE cars have a soul, one that wants to rev till the valves float and tires burn off.
Don’t invoke the same feelings for you. I can’t relate to thinking my car has a soul or wanting to be loud.
Have you ever put your foot all the down on a highway on-ramp, and have the car keep revving for a split second after you lift? Like it wants to keep going faster, but you’re chaining it?
Yes, we get it. You’re really into powerful v8 cars. I’m not sure why you’re here under this post that is far outside your area of interest, arguing with people who want nothing to do with your area of interest.
I mean, there’s still cosmetic modifications, and some of those might be slightly different (things emphasizing exhaust pipes for instance wouldn’t really work, but maybe you’d see parts that suggest an exaggerated fake battery somewhere, or some clear panels placed to show off the motors or something). But beyond that, couldn’t you still change the performance in some ways, for example by replacing parts with lighter weight parts? For example, since batteries are heavy, maybe someone wanting to increase top speed and acceleration and willing to sacrifice range might replace the battery with a smaller one, or remove some of the cells from the battery somehow?
