GS 450h/rx450h/outlander which one to pick?

[0tik]

Hello there.
The idea of buying a hybrid and try to increase its battery (or turning it into EV) keeps bothering me more and more. By the knowledge gained here there are only three oem inverter+trans pairs that can produce 150-200HP output. GS 450h/rx450h/outlander(can't find gs300h in similar price). If you know of any other car with powerfull inverter+motor combo, then please let me know.
Now about my problem. Gs450h is well documented with ready made board from Damien. Therefore it looks like the easiest choice. Rx450h was my first pick as it is a SUV BUT there's no info about its inverter and scarce info about motor. Outlander is a lot more expensive than Lexus, less comfortable to drive and also not much is documented about its inverters and motors. One other time and money consuming thing is - I'd have to buy not one but two boards because it's 2 front +1 rear motors. I have to choose which car to buy.
PS. Is there a thread with power consumption statistics of gs450? I have found only a single thread where it is implied 30kwh/ 120km. Which is atrocious.
Thank you for your thoughts in advance

[SuperV8]

I like the idea, in theory, of just modifying a hybrid by removing the ICE and fitting more batteries - however while the motor/driveshafts are sorted - from my 'limited' understanding/research they tend to be even more integrated with the rest of the vehicle electrical architecture - which for me would be even more of an electrical/coding challenge than just mounting an electric motor axle in any car. Depends on your skills?

Also buying a hybrid in the first place will be generally more than an ICE with a clapped out engine.

Nissan leaf motor can make those sort of numbers or more.

[crasbe]

One thing you have to remember: For the GS450h, only the communication between the Hybrid ECU and the inverter was reverse engineered, however none of the CAN messages that are sent within the car.
You can obviously kick out the Hybrid ECU, but then the rest of the car will be EXTREMELY unhappy.

I remember that a couple of years ago, you couldn't even do any chiptuning with modern Lexus cars because so little information was known about them and they weren't hacked yet.
You can probably expect to put in many dozens to hundreds of hours getting everything working, just from a software perspective.

[0tik]

I'm suspecting you are missing my point. I don't care about being able to integrate zombieverter into a hybrid vehicle. It is all about about not having to weld and hacksaw anything. Zombieverter supports a narrow amount of inverters/motors. Lexus and Prius cost the same but Prius motor is not powerful like the others. Buying leaf doesn't make sense to me. What's the point. It's already electric. After all it looks like GS450h is going to be the easiest to work with software-wise. Perhaps this is the answer to my question. But now that I think of it, I still have no idea what needs to be done from start to finish.

[lsh3rd]

It's an interesting prospect, but I'll elaborate a bit more on earlier comments:

1. Will you use the factory instrument cluster? If so, are the CAN messages that talk to it reverse engineered? If you have a whole car, you might be able to stand a chance of sniffing the CAN bus to reverse engineer this. It'd be best to start with a running vehicle.
2. Will sub systems like ABS work in the absence of the vehicle's VCU? Older cars separated these controls well, but newer cars might be more tightly integrated.
3. How integrated are other sub-systems like HVAC? Does the HVAC run from the combustion engine? How tightly integrated are the controls.
4. How integrated are the factory dashboard controls into the factory VCU?

Some of this will be problems you'll encounter in any conversion. A lot of this stuff is simpler in older cars. The GS450H was a very expensive high-end vehicle when it was new, so it has the potential to be very challenging to squelch all warning lights on the dash and make every subsystem work properly. It'd be best to shoot for something that didn't give up any functionality over the original vehicle.

I agree that to a degree that starting with a hybrid is compelling from a simplicity standpoint, but I think you are potentially trading off mechanical simplicity for electrical and software complexity. Having said that, solving these problems would earn you guru status.

[arber333]

I'm suspecting you are missing my point. I don't care about being able to integrate zombieverter into a hybrid vehicle. It is all about about not having to weld and hacksaw anything. Zombieverter supports a narrow amount of inverters/motors. Lexus and Prius cost the same but Prius motor is not powerful like the others. Buying leaf doesn't make sense to me. What's the point. It's already electric. After all it looks like GS450h is going to be the easiest to work with software-wise. Perhaps this is the answer to my question. But now that I think of it, I still have no idea what needs to be done from start to finish.

What i would investigate is how can electrical system part operate without its gasoline engine counterpart. Then you would need to keep the fist one alive by any means possible and simulate the second one. That could mean changing some sensors or sensor inputs on ECU analog side and installing PWM signal generators to keep the car thinking engine is actually running at idle if needed.

[0tik]

1. For an instrument cluster - I can do a DIY one or splice up one from compatible BMW.
2. I asked about ABS system before and didn't get any answer. I guess that's because it depends on the ABS system itself/car model it is from.
3. HVAC system is optional. I live in middle of Europe and got used to no HVAC since childhood. Heating is going to be managed by Webasto.
"It'd be best to shoot for something that didn't give up any functionality over the original vehicle."
If only there was a way to check this before buying car for conversion. Sadly there's none in my case. People from openinverter don't go into details on this topic in their conversions either. At least not in case of the cars I want to convert.

"think you are potentially trading off mechanical simplicity for electrical and software complexity."

My guess why people do not go my way is that it's a lot cheaper to buy old cars for conversions. If auxiliary parts from Lexus (gas/brake pedals) won't work then I can always swap them for the ones known to work. Although I heard it's steering wheel is drive by wire. This might give troubles. It's not connected to the wheels. Gotta dig into that.

Arber333 that's what I am going to try first. Unplug ice and see what works. If abs/lights/something important won't work then I'll try tinkering with pwm signals. If everything else fails then I'll stick to driving a 250HP hybrid car for a while.

[Pete9008]

Be great to see this done but don't underestimate the complexity of modern cars. Everything seems to talk to everything else and if one module does't give the right data all sorts of weird faults will occur.

If your skill set doesn't already include embedded software, CAN bus (and other communication busses) and lots of reverse engineering be prepared to start learning!

I'd only consider doing it if I had two cars, one to convert and another fully working one, still with the ICE, to compare and refer to when the conversion doesn't do what's expected.

[galstaf]

Arber333 that's what I am going to try first. Unplug ice and see what works. If abs/lights/something important won't work then I'll try tinkering with pwm signals. If everything else fails then I'll stick to driving a 250HP hybrid car for a while.

Interesting.. So options for "disabling" the ICE? Just disconnect the starter motor perhaps? Would the entire car cease to function if the ICE cannot be started?
Starter motors go bad; it seems ridiculous to shut down the whole car when there is battery life available to move the vehicle.
If disconnecting the starter actually works, then perhaps just keep removing parts of the ICE but leave the sensors and ECU intact . The car may bitch about no ICE, but hopefully continue to run without it.
Simultaneously add more battery cells in parallel to compensate for the missing engine.

The lack of HVAC would kinda suck, but there are 3rd party electric driven AC and Heating systems that could be controlled independently of the car perhaps.

Anyways... Please do let us know if you move forward and what you find! This is an interesting ongoing project potentially!

Cheers and best of luck.

[galstaf]

Another thought is to just leave the ICE in place. Obviously it will make everything really heavy, but adding the additional traction battery capacity would negate need for the ICE to have to start very much. (you could even hard switch the starter solenoid coil so the car literally cannot start the ICE unless you want it to).


You could always dramatically reduce the size of the fuel tank to 20 liters or so, and use that space for batteries. That way the ICE will just be there for emergencies (and HVAC lol).

These are all my theories, so anyone with more knowledge of these systems (pretty much most folks on this forum) please set me right. I am starting to seriously consider this idea!!

[lsh3rd]

No, there is no starter motor per se in a Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive system. The MG1 "Motor Generator 1" is inside the transmission and either starts the combustion engine or generates power to send to the inverter/battery. The combustion motor provides power to MG1 or optionally power to the torque split planetary gearset depending on how much power we wish to tap from MG1. That's the very brief and simplified version - if that has your curiosity, look at Weber University's videos. They, unfortunately do not have a GS450h video, but the way the Prius works is essentially the same.

When users go full EV with the GS450h, they lock the input shaft solid, which effectively locks the MG1 to MG2. MG2 drives the wheels. By locking them together, MG1 can be used as a second motor for additional power. I believe that newer "plug in" cars essentially do the same thing.

In addition, Toyota HSD uses a boost converter in the inverter to boost a relatively low voltage pack to a higher voltage. The boost converters are kind of wimpy, so generally speaking EV users bypass them and send a full nominal 360V to the inverter directly. If you try to drive a car with a lower voltage pack through the boost converter, you'll likely smoke it.

So, at this point keeping the combustion engine in place really has no useful function. It'd be better to open that space up to house more batteries.

[0tik]

I recently realised that reason why nobody is doing such conversions REALLY is about money. Buying such car just to convert it to ev is irrational money and work-wise. Also- Potential profit from such upgrades (either full EV or just upgraded plugin) is negated by the lack of clients. The only reason for doing all of this would be for personal satisfaction. If I ever get my hands on gs450h, I'll make sure to write here about it.

[LeeB]

This is exactly the situation I am in. I have two Lexus GS450h cars. I bought the first as a donor for an EV build and because I couldnt source a decent battery I just drove it around as a hybrid. When the traction battery came up with a fault i replaced a cell and carried on.

I then bought a BMW hybrid battery to start the conversion but decided to buy another GS450h to convert so I had one fully running original to do CAN sniffing, and the other one to convert. I also got one of Damiens GS450h VCUs but now cant decide whether to go for a ZombieVerter

Also I am still tempted by seeing if I can replace the original Toyota hybrid battery with the BMW 12KWH battery - it only cost me £1300 so is a cheaper fix for a failed GS450h traction battery than going to Lexus and may give me loads more range!

[0tik]

This is exactly the situation I am in. I have two Lexus GS450h cars. I bought the first as a donor for an EV build and because I couldn't source a decent battery I just drove it around as a hybrid. When the traction battery came up with a fault i replaced a cell and carried on.

I then bought a BMW hybrid battery to start the conversion but decided to buy another GS450h to convert so I had one fully running original to do CAN sniffing, and the other one to convert. I also got one of Damiens GS450h VCUs but now cant decide whether to go for a ZombieVerter

Also I am still tempted by seeing if I can replace the original Toyota hybrid battery with the BMW 12KWH battery - it only cost me £1300 so is a cheaper fix for a failed GS450h traction battery than going to Lexus and may give me loads more range!

Firstly - mod second car for extended battery. After it works, try to splice wiring with zombieverter. If that works(and there are many things that might not work), try connecting HV battery bypasing voltage booster and connecting straight to the inverter. This is the way I would go about it. If gs450h has similar BMS to the Prius then it should be as easy as installing can bridge on BMS and spoof SOC. Prius can handle wide range of voltages (https://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/Prius_PHEV_TechInfo). But that's pointless. Just plug dr.prius app and check voltage yourself. Although it would be best to stick with stock nominal voltage. For GS it would be 288v/80cells of li-ion. That's all of my armchair engineering for now.