Let the Hacking Begin

[jray3]

Soo, I'm close to committing to an i, but being a card-carrying National Electric Drag Racing Association member, am eager to squeeze a little more out of this jellybean. Hotrodding the i may be more challenging than with a dc-motored car, but extending the range should be easier, via two options. First would be a supplemental battery pack in the cargo area to drop in either for those long(er) trips or shallower daily cycling. I'm envisioning a lightweight pack such as under 100 lbs of 10 Ah Headway cells with hardware, adding another 16 miles worth of range, or even a LiPo pack that could blister the meats on a friday night dragster, while also propping up the i on occasion. The 330V pack matches my DC EV voltage, so I'm hoping for some synergies between the two cars, while giving the wife something more civilized to run errands in than raw Zilla power! :twisted:

Beyond a supplemental 'suitcase pack', serious range extension would require a trailer. Of course, Mitsu doesn't recommend pulling a trailer, but the rear suspension mounts are easily accessible, and it looks like designing a trailer hitch might not be too hard, enabling one to pull a larger pack, or just mount a jellybean genset on a hitch receiver. I'd expect that a hitch for the JDM iMiev CARGO might follow it's introduction, and that van supposedly has the same rear suspension and underbody.
Anybody penciled on a trailer hitch yet- perhaps one of you lucky Japanese or New Zealanders?

I'd expect some software to prevent charging and driving at the same time, but it mightn't be too hard to make a supplemental charge look like regen to the controller. :ugeek:
btw, the first shipments arrived at Seattle-area dealers today, and my test drive is scheduled for Thursday. I drove a JDM version this summer, but am curious about the driving feel of the fattened-up US version. The widened track improved the looks, in my book.
Cheers,
Jay

 

[marta]

Considering the amount of support the Nissan Leaf has gathered, and how many engineers and other well educated people have bought and are driving the electric vehicle, I'd say it's only a matter of time before somebody starts 'hacking' the Mitsubishi i-Miev to do some of the things you mentioned.

I guess the driving force behind starting to open up the Leaf was to improve the battery charged display and information to give the driver more accurate and useful information.

Again, following the Nissan Leaf's lead, this Mitsubishi i-Miev forum will probably be one of the places that lot's of that stuff happens.

 

[JoeS]

Having much better control over regen than the Leaf is what sold me on the iMiev, in addition to its smaller physical size and lighter weight. What I would really like is a joystick or perhaps a paddle on the steering wheel to allow me to control regen manually. I have MIMA on my first generation Honda Insight (77+mpg lifetime) and love the joystick control over the electric motor for both acceleration and regen.

Certainly, getting the 120vac adapter to deliver the full 15A available from our mandatory "dedicated" home outlet should be the first hack, IMO. Increasing that recharge rate to, say, 5miles/rechargehour (over the existing nominal 62/22=2.8mi/rechargehour) would work for me.

For some initial hacks, improved feedback to the driver such as trip kWH/mi or mi/kWH would be preferable than that miles-remaining anxiety-inducing number (wonder if it'll be any smarter than the Leaf's?).

jray3, adding a pack of Headways had also crossed my mind, but it's a matter of wait-and-see until I actually get the vehicle and determine if my 73-mile round-trip commute (in off-peak hours) is doable. I see integrating the added pack with the existing built-in BMS as the first challenge as simply paralleling the existing pack may not work depending how they're doing coulomb counting.

Sadly, I have little spare time to play and hope others can run with it.

 

[Dan O]

Are you Nuts?

 

[jray3]

Are you Nuts?

Aren't we all? :lol:
Personalizing one's car has made generations of happy hackers. The i certainly has plenty of room for improvement, as making it more 'carlike' is something that Mitsubishi is advertising, so they make no apologies for depriving me of actual data. Joystick control of regen, even accel-decel by joystick could be fine features that no OEM will offer.
I think the simplest (though less efficient) method of adding battery capacity would be to tap into the DC bus and shuttle charge with a Manzanita Micro charger, but as Joe S says, not counting coulombs correctly could create chaos. Inputting to the HV DC side would bypass the charger's limitations, open up opportunities for range trailers, and quite possibly sidestep the interlock that prevents driving while plugged in. Part of the fun of having a secondary, limited use car is that it's not the end of the world if you break it. End of the warranty, maybe, end of the wife's budgetary permissiveness, definitely, but not end of the world.

 

[jray3]

jray3, adding a pack of Headways had also crossed my mind, but it's a matter of wait-and-see until I actually get the vehicle and determine if my 73-mile round-trip commute (in off-peak hours) is doable.

Whoa Joe, you do have charging at work, don'tchya? Or like all EV drivers, you live at the bottom of a hill? Using the EPA number of 62 miles range, that'd be 267 wh per mile (if all 16 kwh are useable). Charging on only the 8 amp 120V cord would make you wait at least 3 hrs to get the 11 miles of range you need to start home.

 

[JoeS]

From -

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/10/26/2012-mitsubishi-i-first-drive-review/

"How does that work? Well, the EPA measures electric vehicles using a two-cycle (city/highway) test and then subtracts 30 percent from these numbers to approximate "real world" driving. 70 percent of the i's city range (98 miles) is 69 miles. 70 percent of the car's highway range (78 miles) is 55 miles. In calculating a combined (city/highway) driving range, the EPA weighs the formula slightly more in the favor of the city range (55 percent) versus the highway range (45 percent), thus: (98 miles at 55 percent) + (78 miles at 45 percent) x 70 percent = 62 miles. That may make some sort of regulatory sense, but there should no longer be any doubt that your mileage may vary when it comes to EV range estimates."

I have no problem hypermiling during the off-peak traffic hours. Anyone worth their salt can easily beat the EPA ratings by at least 30%, and there are Level 2 EVSEs on the way if I get into trouble. Still in discussions regarding providing 120/240vac at my destination.

Yep, jray3, you've got it right: my commute home culminates in a four-mile climb from town

 

[Dan O]

I can certainly understand customizing ones vehicle, but why would you void the warranty on a $30,000.00 Vehicle?

 

[jray3]

In all seriousness, I wouldn't do anything to void the warranty until I was extremely familiar with the vehicle, sure of the need, and financially prepared to deal with the consequences... But, there's a lot that we should be able to do without voiding warranties, such as pulling data from the OBD, trying different tire and wheel combos, etc. And though I know that the dealer/mfr has the heavy hand, it's generally their burden to prove that a modification has caused failure in the warranteed system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson-Moss_Warranty_Act

 

[marta]

The Nissan Leaf people have been doing a bunch of this sort of stuff already: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=4131

And they're not doing anything that's voiding warranty, at least not that any of them are aware of :lol:

 

[mitchell]

I can vouch for that - the Nissan Leaf guys have been going all at it with some of there 'mods'

 

[jjlink]

One hack that would be cool is to get real remote access to the key-fob functions that rickmaz describes:

"The little key fob remote is interesting: you pull out a small antenna, and can control remote charging timers, or start/stop manual charging, or cool, heat or defrost the car while it's hooked up to its charger. "

Here is a excerpt from a review:

Another simple solution Mitsubishi uses with the i is its bizarre remote key fob. This non-Internet-connected device can communicate wirelessly with the vehicle (if within range) to pre-heat or pre-cool the vehicle, as well as set the charging process. We think the fob is too big and does too little – and carrying another digital piece of plastic is annoying – but company spokesman Maurice Durand reminds AutoblogGreen that Mitsubishi is really dealing with a car that's three years old at this point, and the fob was the simplest solution without adding cost. We hope that a smart-phone solution will be coming at some point.
http://autos.aol.com/cars-Mitsubishi-Lancer+Evolution-2012/expert-review/


I guess we will have to get a hold of one it before we can do much.

Any Ideas?

 

[seattler]

Since it's not a mobile phone app, it means it's communicating with a wireless signal straight to the car rather than through the cell network to the car. The advantage being that there's no fee for the vehicle to be connected to a network.

It's probably a simple enough code that the Mitsubishi i's FOB is sending that it could be hacked, but the only advantage would be you could pre-cool or pre-heat someone's vehicle.

The other option would be to try and enable more functionality, but if the Mitsubishi i FOB only comes with 2 buttons and they're each doing something, if you took the 'receiving' end at the car and made it do a different function, you would lose the original function.

 

[EcarFan]

Jray - did you get your test drive yet? how was it?

I would like to get this car myself but I have a 72 mile round trip
and i'll need to add a battery pack or something to increase
the range to say at least 100 miles.

Any solid ideas on where to shop to accomplish that?

John

 

[MtnViewMark]

Actually, I for one, like that the remote is not cell-phone enabled: I don't want to pay a fee for some service to talk to the car in my driveway! (I think the Leaf you have to pay monthly after 3years -- other cars, paying for the cell service to the car is baked into the purchase price.)

Now, hacking the remote sounds like fun. For starters I want to change the behavior so that it sets a time to start charging, not a delay in hours. Not sure if that logic is on the car or not - but at least we could make the remote calculate the difference and send it?

As for the other kind of hacking, alas, the remote is probably a viable attack surface for all sorts of mayhem beyond pre-warming the car. See these really scary research papers. I've seen their presentations and videos - you don't want to get in a cell-phone connected car after seeing them!

 

[jjlink]

I just installed a power monitoring device in my home to keep an eye on the change in power use once I have an EV. I am getting a baseline now since the car is still on the boat according to the Mitsubishi website.

This is the device I am using http://www.wattvision.com/info/how_it_works

Here is a sample of the live data feed:

wattvision by JJLINK, on Flickr

 

[seattler]

Cool - from that image it looks like your baseline power usage is around 600 watts? Or am I misreading that? Perhaps it's 600 watts because there are Christmas lights on 24/7?

Has your power company said anything about it? I see in the photos on the website there is a 'dear power company' label that explains what it is I would assume...

 

[jjlink]

The baseline you see in the snapshot is most likely due to my computer/monitor, lights, furnace, DVR, etc. Now with live monitoring I can walk around the house with my iPhone or Andrroid tablet and shut unneeded things off to trim down that baseline.

 

[rickmaz]

jjlink=> we did a similar thing at our house, before we went with a grid-tied solar system, and found our average electricity usage was 9Kwh/day. We put in 24 solar panels, and for the two years we've been using them, we made about 300kwH excess electricity for the year. I'll be using that for the car, and putting in 8 more panels too. So far the 'i' has been giving me 5-6 miles/KwH. I drive about 25 miles/day on average.

 

[jray3]

Sorry I've been away, this forum is really taking off! I took delivery of my car on Dec. 29th, and am just about to pass the 500 mile mark on the odometer. The car's a hoot to drive, and meeting my range expectations. As an experienced EV owner with a highway commute, I had no illusions about the EV range estimate. Three days in I did a worst-case test run. Filled the car with 2 adults, 2 kids and hit the highway at night. Total distance, 44.41 miles, 11 of which was on surface streets. Cruised at 65 mph with headlights, heater, and windshield wipers going. Stopped at IKEA to charge, but their blink stations require a membership card to activate, and the staff had no clue about the "courtesy card" that the Blink support hotline said would be present. So, we sipped on Level 1 at a friendly restaurant (870 Watts, according to my Kill A Watt meter) before heading a few miles to a friend's house for a 50% J1772 charge to get home.

Regarding the hacking subject of this thread; Torklift has announced that they'll have a bolt-on trailer hitch receiver available by month's end. They are located right around the corner from my office, so I'll try to check it out and report back. This would be just the thing for carrying bicycles or a lightweight cargo platform.