[ausev] EV Electrical vulnerabilities, was Filmmaker looking...

[Chris Robison]

On Mon, October 23, 2006 7:56 pm, Ian Ward said:

> I'm not sure that this weakness may be contrasted with EVs, given the
> complexity, expense

Actually, considering the role of a controller in an EV, as being one of
its four major components, I would say that especially when treated as a
"black box" component an EV motor controller represents an example of the
simplicity of EVs.  It may be complex inside, but the interface is
typically very simple making its installation in a car doable by a
relative novice. And more importantly, in a fault situation, I think
diagnosing an EV problem as being a controller failure would be fairly
straightforward, at which point it's a relatively simple issue to send it
for repairs or replacement.  Finding the true cause of ICE problems seems
a lot more problematic, requiring the incredibly expensive diagnostic
systems around which Dan and others have built their careers.

and especially the (current) scarcity of EV
> controllers.
> At least replacement parts are available for fried ICE computers.

This is true.  There is not really a big enough market around EV
controllers, but hopefully one good source of them will be caught up with
his huge months-long backorder within the coming year.


>
> EVs have so many benefits over ICEs, that my inclination would be to avoid
> confusing the issue on a flimsy tangent.


In general I have to agree with this position.  There really isn't enough
data to suggest that EVs more advanced than Aaron's Henney have any
advantage over modern computer-controlled ICEs in this respect.  We're
talking about a very rare event, the frequency of which seems inflated
only by the millions of potential internal-combustion targets currently
out there. It will be a long time before there are enough EVs in the wild
to give us good data on what random lightning strikes can do to them, and
in the meantime I think that groundlessly suggesting that they're more
tolerant to it is not a very tenable argument to make, if we want to be
taken seriously.


  --chris





>
> From: ausev-bounces at austinev.org [mailto:ausev-bounces at austinev.org] On
> Behalf Of jtp
> Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 9:04 PM
> To: AustinEV News Announcements and General Discussion
> Subject: Re: [ausev] Filmmaker looking to document the conversion process
>
>
>
> Arvin,
>
>  Any amount of time as you need it, even to re-shoot over and over to get
> the story exactly right.  Since I had emailed you last, I have checked
> with
> other techs around town and they have seen similar computer lightning
> wipe-outs.
>
>  Dan Petit
>
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