tuningblog.eu Your magazine about tuning the car
Tesla's electric vehicles are already known for their instant torque surge and silent acceleration. But for some owners, even the nerve-wracking Ludicrous mode isn't enough. Now aftermarket tuning shops are busy cracking open the silicon heart of these electric vehicles to find the digital seed of even greater potential. Through tailor-made modifications and complex coding changes, so-called “hacks”, tuners show that Tesla still has unused performance reserves.
Pandora's battery box
You wouldn't expect electric vehicles and tuner culture to go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Gasoline engines require many parts to be upgraded and adjusted to produce more power. Conversely, an electric vehicle's battery pack and single drive unit appear to be immutable as a device. But hacking right-to-repair laws and proprietary systems has opened up K-Energy capabilities for modification.
Using custom analysis and manipulation tools to access the battery management system provides tuners with new power levers to exploit. The digital gates have been opened, exposing largely unused cells that can be used to deliver heavier loads. Safety margins balancing range and longevity can be relaxed to focus on current performance needs. Sudden peak drops that might have triggered warnings from the BMS are now met with newly coded green lights. It's like extending the working range of the entire power supply well beyond the factory specifications.
To secure the increased “on-demand” energy capacity, upgrades to inverters, cabling and cooling are required. Tuners want the released battery potential to be converted into maximum thrust by an efficient powertrain, rather than wasted in the form of heat or electromagnetic noise. When the supporting mods are implemented correctly, one has access to largely untapped sources of torque and speed whenever the accelerator pedal comes under a heavy foot.
More power for you
Early Tesla tuning efforts produced conservative results, primarily through changes to software parameters. Using this digital optimization in the first pass, tuners typically found that 50-75 more horsepower and a similar increase in torque were just waiting to be unlocked. This was a slight setback for Tesla's performance models, which already produce 450-500 hp. But the breakthroughs proved that greater potential lay deeper in the code and electrons.
As battery analysis tools improve and hardware-assisting mods become more robust, there have been notable spikes in tuned Tesla performance over the past two years. The hacking keys to acceptable battery charge limits and heat thresholds have been discovered. Combined with advanced cooling systems for the motor, inverter and battery pack, this paved the way for software that can safely achieve triple-digit performance gains from lithium cells.
Recent Tesla projects have resulted in over 200 additional horsepower and similar torque jumps to performance models. During test drives in their familiarly shaped sedans and SUVs, which deliver nearly 650 horsepower to all four wheels, owners were stunned. The level of breakneck acceleration exceeds most exotic supercars. Other electric vehicle customers have used tuning shops to enable 0-60 mph sprints in under 3 seconds and quarter-mile runs deep into the 10-second zone without breaking a sweat.
Pandora's box
Some may view this accelerated uncovering of hidden Tesla achievements as a modern-day Pandora's Box. Pushing battery systems so much beyond native limits understandably makes OEM reliability engineers nervous. Just as Pandora brought cursed suffering upon the world that could not be contained, some might argue that releasing all this latent electrical energy will only lead to problems.
In fact, pursuing dyno values through tuning carries risks if responsible limits are not set on heat and voltage. There is still much to learn to ensure the longevity of modified EV batteries and powertrains. But opening that box also holds the gift of hope – the idea of possibilities and the belief that we can build things better than we thought. Early tuners seized on this spark and began to safely and responsibly master the performance of enhanced electric vehicles.
Peak of art?
One shop at the forefront of this new tuning frontier is Canada's APEX Performance Solutions. The test bench runs and demonstration cars from the inconspicuous shop regularly circulate in the Tesla online communities and arouse astonishment and envy. Screw-on mods to supplement software hacking reliably smoke performance models with an output of over 700 hp - values that are firmly in the hypercar range. Other emerging EV tuning providers are eagerly adopting APEX's publicly shared methodology to reinforce the state of the art itself.
Through this progressive bubble-up effect, these generously visible pioneers give the rest of the grassroots tuning community tools to validate implementations, ensuring security keeps pace with performance ambitions. Just as Pandora gathered strength to close its unleashed box, companies like APEX are helping to mobilize collaborative knowledge to guide the potentials unleashed. Step by step, the limits of extreme modification of electric vehicles are expanding, as is our practical training to mitigate the associated risks.
The future with hope
Even though controversies and dangers arise in the suddenly increasingly dynamic tuning scene for extreme electric vehicles, the progress is also promising. Racing series like Formula E have already proven what breathtaking performance electric drives can deliver when you have the resources to build them specifically for this purpose. Early commercial tuning efforts represent the end user of this expansion - a kind of backyard breeder reactor that shows what amazing potential already lies in street cars, waiting for the right modifications.
As professional tuners uncover and disseminate the keys to unlocking this latent performance, customer credibility and trust in what electric vehicles can reliably deliver will increase. This hands-on training, which comes from hacking the system limitations of series electric vehicles, could then lead to better factory offers from major manufacturers. Pandora's Box has opened up a new look at the performance limits of electric vehicles while introducing an important learning curve. Wherever it goes, the industry is full of possibilities.
