[lottos]

Originally Posted by dimitri

First off, the link where Soliton1 can be purchased http://rebirthauto.com/soliton1byevnetics.aspx

You may want to update that link to this one as it includes another place:
http://www.evnetics.com/wheretobuy.html

[dimitri]

To all those asking for videos of burning rubber, sorry, this is not a race car and I didn't sink 20K in it to break something just so you can enjoy the video of me cursing Soliton1 and its damn power

This is a commuter vehicle with automatic transmission, so it will behave as such. Although I admit that original Protege5 wasn't as peppy as the one I have now

After few tests and adjustments I settled on slew rate of 400 Amps/sec, which gives me excellent acceleration just short of tire screeching. I also reduced max battery current to 450 Amps, because dumping 600 amps from the battery didn't turn out as much fun as I expected. After few tests of full throttle runs, I got too excited and didn't notice how low my battery got.

Good news is that I got to test LVC protection from both the controller and my BMS, bad news is that I limped home for half a mile at 20 mph and my lowest cell was resting at 2.6V . I immediately started charging and few minutes later all cells were north of 3.0V , whew, I hope there is no long term damage.

LVC works great, as soon as my pack hit 104V controller started pulling back to maintain voltage sag and keep it at 104V. Few seconds later my BMS started beeping and also cutting the throttle in half, so together those 2 systems provided battery protection and allowed me to limp home and get out of traffic. However, I would rather avoid this kind of thrill in the future and watch my SOC

I also noted that drawing 500-600 amps from the battery makes those copper links and terminal bolts quite warmer than ambient temp, although the battery casing didn't get noticeably warmer. So I chickened out and reduced my max battery current to 450 amps, better safe than sorry...

[Bowser330]

Originally Posted by dimitri

To all those asking for videos of burning rubber, sorry, this is not a race car and I didn't sink 20K in it to break something just so you can enjoy the video of me cursing Soliton1 and its damn power

This is a commuter vehicle with automatic transmission, so it will behave as such. Although I admit that original Protege5 wasn't as peppy as the one I have now

After few tests and adjustments I settled on slew rate of 400 Amps/sec, which gives me excellent acceleration just short of tire screeching. I also reduced max battery current to 450 Amps, because dumping 600 amps from the battery didn't turn out as much fun as I expected. After few tests of full throttle runs, I got too excited and didn't notice how low my battery got.

Good news is that I got to test LVC protection from both the controller and my BMS, bad news is that I limped home for half a mile at 20 mph and my lowest cell was resting at 2.6V . I immediately started charging and few minutes later all cells were north of 3.0V , whew, I hope there is no long term damage.

LVC works great, as soon as my pack hit 104V controller started pulling back to maintain voltage sag and keep it at 104V. Few seconds later my BMS started beeping and also cutting the throttle in half, so together those 2 systems provided battery protection and allowed me to limp home and get out of traffic. However, I would rather avoid this kind of thrill in the future and watch my SOC

I also noted that drawing 500-600 amps from the battery makes those copper links and terminal bolts quite warmer than ambient temp, although the battery casing didn't get noticeably warmer. So I chickened out and reduced my max battery current to 450 amps, better safe than sorry...

Can you expound upon "excellent acceleration" ?

[dimitri]

Originally Posted by Bowser330

Can you expound upon "excellent acceleration" ?

Sorry, today I wasn't very organized, playing with settings and killing my pack , etc. Tomorrow I will try to do more formal 0-40 and 0-60 and time them. Again, keep in mind, this is Mazda Protege, not Formula1

[Bowser330]

Originally Posted by dimitri

Sorry, today I wasn't very organized, playing with settings and killing my pack , etc. Tomorrow I will try to do more formal 0-40 and 0-60 and time them. Again, keep in mind, this is Mazda Protege, not Formula1

Any data would be a great contribution to the community. The more data the better!

what will you be using for the timing?

[danimal]

Dimitri, I was wondering how many " a few times of full throttle test" it took to discharge your batteries. I'm sure having fun reduces range but I was wondering how bad it is with a lead foot.

[dimitri]

Originally Posted by danimal

Dimitri, I was wondering how many " a few times of full throttle test" it took to discharge your batteries. I'm sure having fun reduces range but I was wondering how bad it is with a lead foot.

Its a simple math, with 1C rate you can drive for one hour to 100% DoD. Yesterday I was pulling 3C-4C , which would only last 15-20 minutes to 100% DoD. Also, I did not start with fully charged pack since I used the car prior to controller upgrade and didn't have a chance to charge up, so I started with about 70% SOC. It took about 20 minutes to drain the pack, which makes perfect sense considering that I only occasionally let go of the pedal . So, it all adds up, and that is one of the reasons I set controller to limit battery current, because I want to enjoy decent range/speed balance despite my better half's lead foot

[dimitri]

OK, so my pack charged up over night, all looks good despite deep discharge yesterday.

I just did a quick run to time 0-40 and 0-60 and get some data from controller.

Controller comes with a little logger program, you connect the laptop to Ethernet port, run the logger and it will display live data, while saving 100ms samples to a text file. Later I import the data into Excel and make a graph.

My 0-40 test came out to 11 seconds and 0-60 to 25 seconds. OK, stop laughing people , I told you this wasn't Formula1

Here is the graph, you see 2 parts where full throttle was applied and held. First part was 0-60 acceleration, then I let go of the pedal to mark it on the log, then floored it again just to run to the first stop sign about a mile down the road. By the time I let go of the pedal I was cruising at 75 mph.

Left axis on the graph shows throttle and motor current, right axis shows duty cycle in %, battery voltage and controller temperature in Celcius.

As you can see, controller is limiting motor current to maintain my preset limit for battery current, that's why you don't see full 1000 motor amps.

Maybe one day I will remove the limit and do another test just to satisfy this forum's hunger for high power

0-60 run.JPG

[Lordwacky]

Originally Posted by dimitri

This is a commuter vehicle with automatic transmission, so it will behave as such.

....

So I chickened out and reduced my max battery current to 450 amps, better safe than sorry...

So I've been following this thread for a couple of days now. I'm super excited about this new controller it looks freakin awesome. You guys really did a nice job putting it together, a lot of thought went into the feature set. everyone involved should be proud.

My only question for Dimitri is, why did you end up going for such a high powered, high performance controller when clearly all you wanted was a commuter vehicle? Seems like a Curtis or Synkromotive would fit the bill nicely while saving ~$1k.

Not trying to crap on the thread, or your build by any means. I'm just courious, does the Soliton1 offer anything other then high power that would make it worth the expense to the lower power side of the spectrum? A lot of the throttle calibration/ interface features seem really nice, but I think the sykro offers similar options.

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by Lordwacky

...
My only question for Dimitri is, why did you end up going for such a high powered, high performance controller when clearly all you wanted was a commuter vehicle? Seems like a Curtis or Synkromotive would fit the bill nicely while saving ~$1k.

I believe Dimitri had a Curtis on his first conversion, so he could probably give reasons for not choosing a Curtis the second go around. I could give reasons, too, but I'm hardly unbiased...

Anyway he didn't pay a premium for the Soliton1 because he was a beta tester (the first, actually).

Originally Posted by Lordwacky

...does the Soliton1 offer anything other then high power that would make it worth the expense to the lower power side of the spectrum? ...

I think this is a very legitimate and eminently reasonable question, and my answer might surprise you - if you are not interested in spirited performance from your EV then the Soliton1 is probably not worth the price.

I mean, lots of people - especially lots of people here - are more interested in how cheaply they can convert their vehicles than anything else. They don't seem to mind the crappy performance that comes from saddling a modern vehicle conversion with a "shoebox" controller that reaches current limiting from overtemp within a minute of driving. If any of those style controllers could deliver even 500A continuously they would be fine for most daily drivers... the problem is, they can't. Not a single one of them has the heat removal capability to meet their claimed current rating for more than a few seconds every couple of minutes (and some don't even come close to their claimed current rating, ever... Kel...cough...cough...ly...)

From my perspective - never having seen or tried one personally, that is - the Synkromotive controller appears to be the best choice for smaller and/or lighter vehicles like Dimitri's. There are lots of "features" built-in to the Soliton1 that make it compelling for people with LFP battery packs, and it is certainly easy to install, setup and use, but we are under no illusions here that such is enough to get people to pay $1000 more for it than a Synkro... no, the only reason you will pay that much more money is to get more than twice the power handling capacity...