Hi Everyone. I'm a hacker and recently acquired a 2013 volt to play around with and to eventually turn into a full blown Drag race car. Yeah I know sounds dumb, but well it is something I am going to enjoy.
I have been setting up enhanced calibration stuff for the hybrid controllers in the 2011,2012,2013 chevy volts and ampera for tuning with EFIlive on the engine controller.
The scan tool is superior to what you guys have for options at the moment, and is free to check out at www.efilive.com. The tuning calibrations will be released probably in a few days, or email me if you want them faster.
The purpose I was trying to do was to get more mpg out of the engine when it was running on gas, But also allow alternate fuels to be run like e85 or e100.
Also get a lot more power and instantaneous torque when I hit the throttle. The ramping in rate of the throttle in its current state sucks. If I floor the thing I want instant tire blowing torque like any other performance electric car out there.. The way they feed in the throttle is horrid the way it is now and wont even chirp a tire...
I have disassembled the whole cpu code for the e78 that it is using and found what I feel to be most of all the hybrid functionality tables being used and have identified what they are changing while driving. Currently about 600-800 tables. As soon as I am done they will be available to anyone with EFIlive software.
After release of the volt Cal files, My next project is then hacking the electric drive motors controller. "this is where the goodies will be for tire roasting, breaking shafts stuff will be for drag racing.....
I have found some throttle progression tables today that I'm hoping will make the car amazing.....
You are half correct, The file is NOT ENCRYPTED sorry to tell you.. It does however have checksums, which is the case for all calibrations on every car out there. If you make a change on the calibration without fixing the checksums, it still works, it just throws a code for eeprom error, which is easily fixed by just fixing the checksums.. IT does NOT BRICK THE VOLT... sorry....
It is all software based, so it would require a flash to a different dash program from a 2013, and engine computer flash, and a flash to the electric drive unit to make that work also would require a few tweaks.
To make this happen, you would have to use TIS with your mdi box to update all the modules on a 2013 to get the base files. Online tis will dump them into a directory cache. It will contain one file for every segment that is being flashed per controller and another file that is the bootloader file. What you need to do is then unzip the files one by one and RENAME them to the ones of your 2012, But you have to make sure each is correct as you could easily mess something up if you name them in the wrong order. Once you do that, you go to update your 2012 controller, and tis will not re download something if it is already in that cache folder, it will just use what it has in that folder, so basically you are making it so tis and your mdi box will flash in the different code from the 2013 but keep your vin number stuff correct.
I haven't tried it yet on this exact car type, but it works on all others so far since 1996..
Its just a spam post for the company ... WOT will back this up, no tuner is going to be messing with the Volt, the modules all cross check each other, and within the firmware, its encrypted, check sum and probably other protections. Change a Value and your Volt is a brick.
You don't think there might be some "diagnotic" mode that lets another controller step into the network and "replace" the stock controller?
I'm not too interested in hot rodding a Volt, or running E85, but remapping the throttle or kicking the ICE on to burn an ounce of gasoline for non-electric cabin heat could be useful.
And isn't one of the reasons the Volt doesn't burn rubber when floored from at rest in Sport mode because of traction control? I've not fiddled with turning off TC but would imagine that one could "burn some rubber" by doing so.
That said, I'm well aware that burning rubber is counterproductive to rapid acceleration ;-)
TC does not allow you full power. You never get full power. Most you get is about 105-109kw applied to the motors from what I have seen after you are higher in the mph.. Right out of the hole it is fed in very slowly. My point for full power is to allow stickier tires and make it hook...
Well, I hope it's real, and I am another interested hacker who just hasn't had time to get into this.
Checksum bricking is trivial to defeat, FWIW, that's not much of an obstacle if you know it is there. It's very weak DRM.
(cross post edit)
Yes, frying tires is in general a way to go slower. Though heating them up a little tends to help traction a little later. And yes, you can spin the Volt tires if you turn the TC off and are in the right situation. Barely. I have. Obviously, if the road is wet, it's easy to spin them and keep them spinning.
The Volt's motor drivers are current limited, as is obvious from the nice histogram published here a few times. Increasing that might be pretty problematic on a few levels:
1. Semiconductors won't take it.
2. You depolarize the permanent magnets in the motors.
3. You cook the batteries
Now, as an old drag racer, one might not care about some of those - we did all sorts of crazy things and sometimes went through an engine or more in one season - only a few miles total lifetime! It's one thing when you can get a new block etc at a junkyard cheap, perhaps another if you have to get into a Volt tranny to replace parts you can only buy new, if indeed you can even buy such major parts as motors new from GM without dealer install (huge extra surcharge in other words).
Well, I hope it's real, and I am another interested hacker who just hasn't had time to get into this.
Checksum bricking is trivial to defeat, FWIW, that's not much of an obstacle if you know it is there. It's very weak DRM.
What implications these modifications might have on your Voltec powertrain warranty coverage however is another story. As jessebubb@ yahoo.com states simple checksum correction can eliminate the associated DTCs however these same (now incorrect) checksums (and various other artifacts) are already commonly being used to identify such tampering and voiding warranties on commonly modified vehicles such as the Duramax and Corvette.
Which is exactly why I am only an observer at this point. I fully modified my last car's ECU, but that had a long history of being "mod friendly." I'll watch and wait with the Volt for now. The risk versus reward just isn't there for me.
Also, the OP mentioned running E85 or E100. I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but that won't be done with only software tweaks. While you will need software to remap the injector duty cycle and latency, the Volt's stock injectors are not up to the task of flowing 30%-40% more fuel. Also, even if you can find a way to eliminate the acceleration throttling, the stock tires aren't going to be up to the task. Maybe if you dropped the PSI down to the low 30s, but what are you going to gain? 1 second on the 0-60 mph time?
All of those are small hurdles to a dedicated tuner, of course, but strapping a rocket pack to a pig doesn't make it an astronaut.
Not spamming, just informing you guys of what is going on with what im doing. You are way wrong to say the ecm calibration is encrypted. Show me proof of this. As im currently modifying the calibrations in mine as we speak.
lol
If something is encrypted, the binary file would be scrambled, which it is not, here is just a reference, here is the main idle table in gear in RAW hex.
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
The address for the call point is starting at 6EF76 for the table. Here are the values for the same table converted to data that you would understand.
Full power at low motor RPMs (and therefore low back-emf from them) requires more current. The reason you see more power at higher motor rpms is that the same current (the limit) is more power at the higher voltage the motor drive switchers can then use without exceeding the current limit. It's obvious as hell what they are doing from this:
There could be any number of reasons they have a fixed, hard, limit on peak current as I mentioned above. I would certainly find the datasheet for the switcher semiconductors and maybe even use a scope and clamp-on meters to see how much fudge there is there - in fact, such a current limit is often applied in hardware, not software, via a current measuring shunt and a comparator in the switch driver - it's faster and more reliable in protecting things, and all the switcher designs I've ever seen (lots in many years as an EE) do it that way.
Full power at low motor RPMs (and therefore low back-emf from them) requires more current. The reason you see more power at higher motor rpms is that the same current (the limit) is more power at the higher voltage the motor drive switchers can then use without exceeding the current limit. It's obvious as hell what they are doing from this: View attachment 9849
There could be any number of reasons they have a fixed, hard, limit on peak current as I mentioned above. I would certainly find the datasheet for the switcher semiconductors and maybe even use a scope and clamp-on meters to see how much fudge there is there - in fact, such a current limit is often applied in hardware, not software, via a current measuring shunt and a comparator in the switch driver - it's faster and more reliable in protecting things, and all the switcher designs I've ever seen (lots in many years as an EE) do it that way.
You can see at near 20mph is where it starts to feed in the 109kw. Even if I can't get anymore kw at full throttle like you are thinking, I would at least like the ability to have that full 109kw at low mph. Time will tell...
support for 2011 and 2012 has been added to the public release at www.efilive.com you guys can download it and check out the stuff if you like for free.
Email me at jessebubb@ yahoo.com and I can send you stock bin files so you can check out the software.
Ill be done with 2013 volts in a day or so. I will be adding in ALOT of hybrid tables once I verify on my own personal volt what they do and if I can see it beneficial to being in the software.
My guess as to why they don't let the vehicle have full power out at 0mph is that the main target customer base is not speed/racing oriented. Nor have those customers owned any sports cars in their lifetimes. Which if they gave someone full 250+ft of torque, they would probably wreck......
We've worked together in the past. I'm a new Volt owner too and although I wasn't looking to modify the volt I did ask the EFI Live guys if there were any plans to add I more Hybrid pids. They said not likely but perhaps you might be able to drive tha initiative further?
I have a shop and although I don't do that much calibration/dyno tuning work I was planning on exploring and learning everything I can on this vehicle. I also want to get it on my chassis dyno at some point and compare it to the EV1 I tested back in 2002. Here is a copy of that dyno test:
Hey Scott, the volt was kinda a side project which is probably why the email request you got was thrown down like it was. The time it takes to put vehicles into software is crazy. I have probably 3 months of on off in just putting in the car line, the profit potential for it is 0. I was doing it for my own curiosity as well as the other people on the forum that want to REALLY understand what is going on inside the car they OWN. There are drivers and there are tinkerers... I was just helping out the tinkerer.....
As for the pids, When im done adding in the rest of the 2013 stuff, I will look into adding in more enhanced pids. It takes for ever to do and a lot of peek/poke to the controller/ then finding out exactly what is being sent/received and the format it takes to make it readable useable feedback data.. I thought what was in the software already was already a TON more than what the tech2 and mdi does.... ill have to revisit it..
another thing to add is, that the gas engine is not being used like a conventional engine. It is just powering / producing energy for the electric motors. So by making it more efficient, would reduce the gas loss per kw produced.
Cam phasing, fuel type, changing torque output, will all change the mpg overall when in gas charge modes.
It would be cool to have a new driving mode added - "Drag Mode"!! Rev the engine up, apply full electric and mechanical power to the wheels and let er rip! (warranty voided, obviously)
Good luck with your work! It's always nice to know how these things work and are linked together. One of the things I've always used HP Tuners to change on my past vehicles has been shift points. Obviously there aren't shift points in this car, but it would still be great to have access to address the little things that bug, or something bigger like adding Hold mode to an older model!
Speaking of "Drag Mode", does anyone (looking at you WOT) know *exactly* why there is a 101mph speed limiter built in? When I floored my Volt recently at a place that was safe to do so, the car was still accelerating happily when it suddenly powered-back and the 101mph warning message flashed on the screen.
Why the limiter? If there's a technical reason, I'm all ears, let's hear it! If it's just another "nanny-state" reason, then it's BS and I'd like to know how to work around it. Or at least maybe we could have a "track mode".
In any case, I want to thank wait4me for his technical diligence, and also WOT for his frank and un-biased response to this kind of hackery.
I think it's awesome to have someone obviously very smart like wait4me want to take some time to hack the Volt. Been waiting for this and interested to see the results.
Yes "wait4me" there is a lot of skeptical people this board that will know you down. Please don't let that bother you. Keep doing your experimentation!! I am so sick of the volt programming only giving you a 10.5kw when the battery is actually 16kw!
Welcome wait4me. interesting work... as a 2011 users I cannot really test anything at this point -- but if you need some testing on a 2011 PM me..
I would presume your work/product include a restore function.. (restoring the orginal table/checksum), but did not see that in your posts or the
As many here are less interested in race-level performance but would be interested in various tweeks (hold, temp expand of battery buffer, e.g. occasionally charge to 90%, go 2 more miels on battery, modify table to for ERDTLT), or modest improvement in power mapping (super sport).., access to full 100% regen just by taking foot of gas (super L), etc..
With respect to PIDs I've been digging and have a spreadsheet of those I've been able to label. Clearly you guys have access to more data and Test tools.. if you gather logs with both MDS tool reading anc can-bus monitoring I may be able to help match up stuff.
Very intersting to see whether this would out! It would be very good if we could 'jailbreak' the Volt. As far as we know, the Cadillac ELR has the same Voltec drivetrain and battery. That makes it likely that the extra power and torque is just a matter of changing a few software parameters. As GM admits themselves that they have learned more in the past years, allowing them to be less conservative. Using the jailbreak we can tap into that ourselves (at our own risk, obviously). Personally, I'm not interested in any ICE improvement since I use it so little. But it would be very cool to replicate some of the ELR tuning in the Volt:
Reduce the torque softening by allowing higher currents at low speeds. With a little luck that is just one parameter value. That could make a true 'sport' mode. Changing the current limits to bump up the power from 111kW to say 130kW is likely possible as well. The components are likely heavily over-designed. But I do suspect that that involves a lot more tables.
Open up the charge window by an extra 2 kWh. It might be hard to reverse engineer that parameter, as it likely affects other components such as the on-board charger and the range estimator. But its worth it. Looking at the weight of the batteries it seems that the Volt is tuned way more conservatively than other EVs. Just compare the effective (usable) power densities of the battery packs:
Lithium-ion max power density: 0.20kWh/kg (most laptop and phone batteries, using near 100% charge window)
Chevy Volt: 10.5kWh/197kg = 0.05kWh/kg (65% charge window)
Tesla model S: 72kWh/544kg = 0.13kWh/kg (85kWh model using 85% charge window)
GM's conservatism is understandable, but it results in a lower range. Seems like we could get 25% more range by using the same larger charging window as the Leaf or Tesla do. Since they also think they can get 10 years of life out of the battery, its possible that its not that bad for battery ageing.
Tesla model S: 72kWh/544kg = 0.13kWh/kg (85kWh model using 85% charge window)
GM's conservatism is understandable, but it results in a lower range. Seems like we could get 25% more range by using the same larger charging window as the Leaf or Tesla do. Since they also think they can get 10 years of life out of the battery, its possible that its not that bad for battery ageing.
Conservative isn't bad, especially for a new technology. The Volt doesn't have people reporting the car being "bricked" (Tesla has had some cars that used up the battery while parked for extended periods of time, requiring a new battery), or quickly degrading batteries (Nissan estimates 76% battery health after 5 years in Arizona).
The option to extend it (especially on rare occasions) would certainly be nice. I'm thinking of people who are normally 100% EV, but every month or so they find they have an extra errand to run, and the gas comes on 2 miles from home. That could be eliminated with (I'm guessing!) very little impact to the battery health.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
GM Volt Forum
1.2M posts
84.7K members
Since 2007
A forum community dedicated to Chevy Volt electric car owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about hybrid performance, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, maintenance, reviews, and more!