As an introduction to the topic, I just bought a 2013 Fiat 500e.
It's an awesome fun little EV with a 24kWh liquid-cooled battery pack and an 83kW BLDC motor. It's quick and sporty and has a 90mile range - actually better than the Leaf!
The down side is that it has had some random shut-down problems that can only be fixed by bringing it to the dealer for re-programming.
No big deal right - I mean, I'm an Ecomodder.
I'll just plug in my OBD scanner and see what's going on, right?
NOOOOOOO!!!!! After a bit of research, I found that's a good way to "brick" the car!
In fact, that has happened to two people, one who was driving down the freeway at the time.
That's right - according to the engineer who did the original programming, the CEO of Chrysler apparantly wanted to make sure the car COULDN'T be worked on by anyone else.
Because EV's are not "emissions vehicles," they don't have to comply with the OBD2 standards. This is why EV's are not accessable by standard OBD2 scanners.
Anyone who has worked with both IC cars and EV's knows that EV's are actually
simpler than modern IC engines. It should be possible to use the existing CAN bus technology to communicate with both IC and EV systems.
It seems Chrysler is using their same proprietary communication devices for the Fiat 500's. In other words, the hardware is the same, there's just something in the software to insure various commands absolutely DON'T go to the 500e's controller.
They are using this simple fact to scare people away from attempting to tune the car or fix things.
The truth behind this is that it is only the CAN messages that are causing both the intermittent problems AND the problems with standard OBD2 scanners. The controller's lack of CAN filtering ability is giving certain random CAN messages too high of a priority - one that will completely shut down the controller.
A good solution to the problem would be to log what's going on before the problem occurs. This would be possible with an off the shelf OBD2 data logger. However, this is not possible because of the STUPID decisions made by the CEO to ensure the car won't be a success.
So, the disruptive technology is to back-engineer the controller and other modules so that they will operate off standard OBD2 CAN messages. Thoughts?
There are many CAN messages used by IC engines that will never be used in an EV. If the EV community could get together and agree on which ones to "share" the whole process could be pretty easy. Thoughts?
- E*clipse