What happens when tuners realize the hybrid HP/TQ numbers?

[heady]

I've never personally been much for wanting the more extreme power, although it's easy to achieve on electric drive trains. I do love to see it happen though, I'd be very happy if people started tinkering and melting down hybrid drive motors on a quest for more speed and power!

Here's an old friend of mine racing his electric bicycle against motorcycles at leguna seca way back in 2011; he took 3rd place in this race. He went to work as an engineer for Zero Motorcycles after this era.

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[colinl]

It's actually significantly easier to tune an electric motor, as there is no such thing as a HP rating on an electric motor, merely a duty cycle and current beyond which it begins to melt down. When you have modern equipment like three phase electric permanent magnet motors coupled to inverter drives with field weakening, the only real limitation is igbt current limit and motor temperature.

This is why you can take a "750 watt" electric bicycle bldc motor and pump about 20kw though it for a short drag race at over 100mph, if you know what you are doing.

lol give it a try and see what happens, and why it's different than your surron

 

[Escapologist]

In this to perv because I'm one of those PHEV sickos and it might be headed there

 

[heady]

lol give it a try and see what happens, and why it's different than your surron

It's already been done on a bunch of different drive trains, but I've never seen anyone do a Ford hybrid yet; you can check out builds over on diyelectriccar for months and months, we were all building race bikes and other silly things 20 years before kids toys like the surron came out. I prefer to repower using things like the netgain or hpevs kits, but the guys who go after the big power modify the OEM power stuff like Tesla motors with aftermarket controls.

 

[colinl]

It's already been done on a bunch of different drive trains, but I've never seen anyone do a Ford hybrid yet; you can check out builds over on diyelectriccar for months and months, we were all building race bikes and other silly things 20 years before kids toys like the surron came out. I prefer to repower using things like the netgain or hpevs kits, but the guys who go after the big power modify the OEM power stuff like Tesla motors with aftermarket controls.

you're talking about 2 very different things once again.

modifying a tesla engine or installing it in a new vehicle is not the same as getting '400 horsepower' out of a Ford Maverick hybrid.

so, prove it. show us it works, I'll just be waiting here with my very real ~300 hp ecoboost.

 

[AVC]

If they can successfully reverse engineer modern ICE engine controls, they can sort ICE-Electric controls as well. Like most scenarios, only a very few will muck with their factory setup, as it's usually $$$ and somewhat to significantly compromises reliability and service life of stock parts, which don't typically have lots of reserve capability/capacity.

 

[Tiger Dude]

I'm not reading all that text, but an ICE's max power is at high rpm, ICE max torque is at mid rpm, and an electric motor's max torque is at low rpm. The power output from a motor at high rpm is fairly complicated. You can't use published numbers to determine total system output. Unless you've put the vehicle on a dynamometer, you don't know total system's torque and power.

 

[heady]

you're talking about 2 very different things once again.

modifying a tesla engine or installing it in a new vehicle is not the same as getting '400 horsepower' out of a Ford Maverick hybrid.

so, prove it. show us it works, I'll just be waiting here with my very real ~300 hp ecoboost.

There's nothing at all to "prove" - those are just the OEM Ford factory specs for the engine, two motors, and inverters without pushing them past the factory design specs - whether anyone can tune the factory PCM or would need to end up using a third party controller like an EV controls TCU would remain to be seen. Existing tuner pros would be the people with the most knowledge of reverse engineering and flashing Ford's control systems to override the low factory current limits (after adding your own additional battery).

The reason the HF55 has a 226 hp electric-only factory spec is because it's a transmission that would be used in a hybrid or PHEV, just like the HF35/45 - and it has to have enough electric power to move the vehicle at all speeds/loads without running the engine when combined with a larger battery.

For those unfamiliar with 3 phase ac motors, or really any ac motor, the torque curve always looks like this:

The torque remains at maximum until you reach what is usually called the "torque knee" - this is where the back emf limits the speed of the motor naturally. Without a field weakening controller, you can't run a motor faster than this point at the voltage you are using at the time. Field weakening reduces the magnetic flux in the field, allowing you to spin the motor past its design Kv velocity constant. When you use field weakening, you can increase RPM past this RPM/Volt constant, but the torque decreases relative to how much you have weakened the magnetic flux with your motor controller.

The other thing you can do, again, to any electric motor you'd find in any EV from a bike to a HEMTT super tanker, is an increase in the voltage. This pushes the torque knee to the "right" on a power graph, the torque lb-ft is the same for the same field current (amperage), but as the knee has moved to a higher RPM, the total HP output of the motor is higher, basically by the same percentage you increased the voltage. When you do this, the motor is not under any additional thermal load at the same power level, because the current hasn't increased, only the voltage.

The limitation for how much you can increase the voltage is basically down to your controller electronics and the insulation breakdown voltage of the enamel coating on the motor windings. Increased voltage is the easiest way to gain "free" power at a higher efficiency without adding as much thermal stress to your motor, even the mechanical stresses are not significant, as the increased RPM also means that the power delivery is spread across many more shaft revolutions, shaft torque is the same. This is why an electric bicycle with a motor the size of a small grapefruit can drive around a track at about 100mph. You run a "36V motor" on 150V or so.

To increase torque, you simply push the field current higher. This adds even more heat to the motor, and so you are limited by how rapidly you can get the heat out without melting the coating off the field windings or melting the adhesive that holds the magnets in place, or thermally demagnetizing them. You can over-current a motor for a period of time before it will saturate with the heat, so you can get quick bursts of power well above the steady state duty cycle of a given motor frame. You combine these two very simple adjustments of current and voltage, all in software and/or making more series cells in your battery to find the experimental limit of when things explode on the dyno spectacularly!

 

[colinl]

that's a lot of words no sane person would read. so, prove it. I'll be ready to apologize when you achieve your lofty goals with the Maverick hybrid powertrain.

 

[hdave]

I also think the OP is over simplifying the effort in upgrading the Maverick's electrical capacity and also overestimating the power gains.

 

[colinl]

I also think the OP is over simplifying the effort in upgrading the Maverick's electrical capacity and also overestimating the power gains.

I did chuckle at the running a 36v motor at 150v.

op.. go get a second battery for your Maverick and hook them up in series. you can double the power no problem right?

lol it wouldn't last a day. the best possible outcome would be an electrical fire totaling the truck so you can buy a Slate and try again.

 

[heady]

You can't actually achieve the full power of the electric motors and engine in combo at the stock voltage in the hybrid, but as far as ease, the real difficulty is only due to the closed source and undocumented nature of the Ford control systems. When you buy a real, documented motor control inverter, the programming is actually quite simple, they are functionally very similar to VFD's used in industrial settings.

But, the stock battery voltage is the Achilles heel - it's roughly half the voltage needed to achieve even the rated motor power, even if you added a parallel auxiliary battery on the HV bus like when you add a DIY range extender pack to a Ford Lightning. Adding a parallel battery is exceptionally easy and the truck doesn't even really know about it, it just thinks you're drawing less from the onboard battery. EVs are far simpler than people make them out to be.



But, the cool thing is, Ford gives you a lot of really good, free stuff on the hybrid Maverick that should be really interesting to tuners, 200+HP of electric motors, and a 160+ hp engine. Keeping in mind there is no such thing as a 200 HP electric motor - the motor as built is rated for a 450V plug in hybrid, and so the specification reflects that. At the voltage used in the hybrid Maverick, the motor would perform at half its rating, about half the HP given the same field current. (It's given less than about half again as much field current, due to the factory battery discharge current limit as noted above, which is why it's only 36HP electric, stock)

As well, there is no such thing as a 450V motor, or a 220V motor, or a 36V motor, not in AC multi phase systems - the only thing that limits a motors voltage is the winding enamel type, and there is no heat or other factor that really matters when using different voltages. I'm actually quite surprised at how little car people on average know about electric drive systems after all this time. I also don't have any goals for any Maverick power train, my tuning days are long past by now, this is just a thread for fun for electric heads!

 

[Escapologist]

Making sense to me, the Escapes seem to have different numbers in different markets, and the PHEVs have more power to the wheels than the HEVs and the only obvious difference is the bigger battery. There are some higher output HEV in higher trim levels, maybe compare their programming to Mav's... but might only work for 24 and prior until 25's encryption gets figured out for Forscan.

 

[Maverick123]

Why all the doubts? Reminds me of everyone's attitude vs electric cars before the Model S Performance came out and blew everything else away. I don't know enough to confirm or deny what OP is saying, but he seems really knowledgeable and if he says it's possible then this is great, I'd love to see it done.

Are there people modding Priuses for high performance? Their drive system is really similar to the Maverick's, if they can do it then it's possible and I hope we'll get some of that

When engines started getting fuel injection and computer-controlled ignition, hot rodders complained that they couldn't be tuned and it would be the death of high performance. But some people rolled up their sleeves and decided to figure it out! Now thanks to modern ECU's, engines are making HP numbers that would be impossible with carbs and and a distributor.

New can be great, you just have to learn how to do it

 

[BLUEOVALRACER]

you're talking about 2 very different things once again.

modifying a tesla engine or installing it in a new vehicle is not the same as getting '400 horsepower' out of a Ford Maverick hybrid.

so, prove it. show us it works, I'll just be waiting here with my very real ~300 hp ecoboost.

He's making it sound like the Hybrid Maverick is all electric but it's Not.

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