[Eli5] How can software updates in Electric Vehicles “unlock” more range. Isn’t range something that should be determined by the efficiency of the hardware?
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Updates can make your car work better which could increase your range. Basically the software just gets better at controlling the hardware. Just like how a person that isn’t very good at using a knife might take 30 second to chop an onion and a chef could do that in 3 seconds. It’s not that the chef has super strong and fast muscles, they just know how to use a knife better.
There’s also the more devious version where the hardware can go a certain range but the software is preventing it from doing so. I don’t know what the underlying mechanism could be, might be stopping the battery from charging past a certain percent.
It’s too expensive to have different assembly lines to create cars that actually have different ranges. They make only the max range model, and limit the others via software.
Edit: Since people don’t believe me: [Tesla Boosts Car Battery Power During Irma, Raising Questions of Control](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/business/tesla-battery-irma-upgrade.html#:~:text=Tesla%20drivers%20in%20Florida%20got,range%20to%20outrun%20the%20deluge.)
> Starting in 2016, Tesla produced a run of Model S and X cars equipped with battery packs built to have 75 kilowatt-hours of capacity but constrained by software to have access to only 60 to 70 kilowatt-hours of power. The company began producing cars this way to streamline manufacturing; **it could produce the same type of battery but provide different price points, charging customers up to $9,500 for an upgrade to full capacity**.
I would imagine it’s reconfiguring the way the car drives to be more efficient. Better anticipation, better power management while driving.
The analogy is a gas powered car can have different ranges purely down to the skill of the driver.
I don’t have a specific answer, but all aspects of battery usage are likely controlled by software. So improving the software could, for example, make acceleration control “smarter” in ways that use less energy. Regenerative braking could be improved, or climate control systems, etc. be fine tuned. This would all be within the physical limits of the hardware already installed.
Remaining battery capacity is estimated by the voltage between the two leads. As a battery depletes, it’s voltage drops from a maximum to a minimum. Advanced systems “learn” how these values shift over repeated cycles, too.
All a software limiter has to do is base “0% remaining” off a higher-than-necessary “empty” voltage, limiting the depth of discharge the battery is allowed to reach.
If you had a machine that chopped wood, and it used the same power and height of a chop each time, it’d use the same energy each chop
If you installed software that was able to analyze the wood and the axe and the weather conditions and whatever else may be a factor, then adjust the height and strength of the chop to try and guess the minimum power required to shop each piece of wood, you’d massively improve the efficiency of the machine’s energy consumption.
A car would be similar, if there’s a more efficient way to accelerate, brake, steer etc.. you could save a lot of energy.
Over thinking it queef!!! By chance are you a engineer? Duh!!!
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