[kidaho]

Hello,
This is one of the most helpful forums I have ever been on. I have learned a huge amount and am super grateful that sites like this exist. Sorry for my first post to be a bit of a nastygram but I just wanted to make sure what happened to me doesn't happen to other members or friends.
The goal was to have a full fendered 1969 Tesla SDU powered Baja bug. The guys I contacted to build the car were Sletton Engineering. I seriously can't say enough good things about Tim Sletton and their shop. They build some of the best class11 race cars in the world and always over deliver on what they say they are going to do. They made some videos about the build,see below. Polykup on the other hand has been a disaster. Long story short, terrible customer service, as in, taking days and days to answer phone calls or emails if at all. Eventually we gave up on getting the car to run with their system. With help from EV west, great company, and switching to a t2c, great product, we got the car running in no time. Polykup's only solution was that I needed to send the entire Tesla small drive unit and VCU to France so it could get re-flashed. I told him that I was not removing the Tesla motor and sending it to France. Then he asked me to send him the VCU and he will look into it. That was six weeks ago. Nothing. Of course I asked for a refund on the VCU and software many times and he refused to return a penny.
On the bright side the car is just getting buttoned up now and should be on the road with in a month. Please feel free to ask any questions about the build and I will do my best to answer. Can't wait to get it on the road.

Thanks

 

[EV failure]

Is that the only reason

 

[kidaho]

he provides terrible customer service, no directions, and the system could not be paired so it never ran forcing me to buy a different system, the t2c. Others have reached out to me with the same experience, I can't confirm there are any cars that he didn't have his mechanic do that ever ran. Also I sent the vcu back to him for a look and he kept it. Other than that I guess that's the only reason. Have fun

 

[EV failure]

he provides terrible customer service, no directions, and the system could not be paired so it never ran forcing me to buy a different system, the t2c. Others have reached out to me with the same experience, I can't confirm there are any cars that he didn't have his mechanic do that ever ran. Also I sent the vcu back to him for a look and he kept it. Other than that I guess that's the only reason. Have fun

Well I gave him a car and money and I haven’t got it back and he wants more money

 

[Rockcrawler]

My name is Kyle I'm the guy with lots of hair in the above video.

I worked on kidaho's bug for months. The "kit" that Polykup sent was very difficult to work with. The vast majority of the components in it are not what I would call automotive grade. They lack a water/dust/vibration resistant housing and have small delicate connections. I had a hard time identifying the parts and finding manuals for them.

After wiring the battery boxes and HV circuit, I roughed in the low voltage to get the car in a functional state. The plan was, after I got it working, I would clean up the terminations, routing, and add nice labels etc. I could never get the motor to spin. I could get the contactors to close correctly, I had a healthy canbus, tripled checked connections and just couldn't get the motor to do anything.

The only person I have ever had contact with at Polykup is Sam. His reliability to either pick up the phone or call back in a timely fashion was usually not very good. There were times where he would pick up multiple times in a day, and others where he wouldn't respond for weeks.

Last time we tried to troubleshoot the car, we were on the phone and we walked through every part of the system. I had removed everything except what was necessary to just make the motor spin. Sam said yeah, it should be working now, there must be a problem with the inverter board, send the motor and the vcu back to me and I'll send it back to France to have it reflashed.

Instead of taking the car apart to send components around the world, we tried a different vcu that was on the shelf a couple hours away at EV West and it brought the car straight to life.

There's lots more to say, but for now I'll leave it alone. If you are thinking about using the Polykup system I'd recommend to use something else. Feel free to message me about anything more specific.

 

[remy_martian]

It's not a "Polykup system" - the VCU is made by one of the first guys to spin up a Tesla LDU, who lives in Europe. I think he worked at CERN and then went off on his own building automotive widgets.

Before my time, but I think he used to hang out on this forum, years ago. From what's been posted here, he allegedly won't support customers that did not buy his VCU from him.

It looked like Polykup was going to do some rather nice looking software development - it did look impressive on the website and I almost fell for the horror story people in this thread have shared.

 

[piotrsko]

I'd need a list with only ten names. After Damien went and built his first control board there were many attempting to replicate that effort, some even blatantly stealing the intellectual properties. There were also others with very impressive web sites and vaporware. Fun times.

 

[remy_martian]

Advantics (who I could not remember last night) no longer have their VCU listed for sale on their website, so it looks like they may have pushed all support off to their resellers, like Polykup 😬

The semiconductor parts shortages have made these a chore to produce and support, so not surprising they've become red haired stepchildren as products.

Sprinkle in people way over their heads and too lazy to RTFM or do their own homework and eating up tech support time, non-technical resellers, and alleged crooks, and you get this kind of B2C mess and walkaways.

It would be interesting for someone to write up a replay of these IP wars in the entertainment section. I've read bits and snips about squabbles and theft, but it'd be an interesting read if it was consolidated.

List of LDU controllers?

Damien
Johannes
Michal
Jack
Jason
Ingineerix (sp?)
AEM

who else?