MG Drive Unit Reverse Engineering

[Jack Bauer]

One of the big projects I've worked on this year has been the MG drive unit. I'm not 100% sure which exact models and years of MG vehicle use this exact unit but am fairly sure the newer ZS and 5 are amongst them. It also "look" like some of the other drive units MAY use a similar control board but this has not been confirmed as yet.

I'm pleased to say that the V2 OpenInverter board now runs the drive unit in full FOC closed loop mode on the bench. I also have purchased a 2003 Volvo V70 to use as a test bed.

Anyway, for those interested here are some links and videos:

Github repo with lots of info: https://github.com/damienmaguire/MG-EV-Inverter

Videos :

[Jack Bauer]

Guess this was a giant waste of time then...

[Uppertown]

Guess this was a giant waste of time then...

I think it's an idea who's time will come, it's a neat unit, almost an electric diff it's so compact and I'm seeing plenty of MGs on the road so they should soon be plentiful and cheap at the breakers. Perhaps it will take off when we all come out of hibernation in the spring.

[Tomas]

What kind of power does this driveunit make?

[steveknox]

Do you have some basic dimensions for the drive unit? I'm wondering how easily it would fit in the subframe of a RWD car.

[vitecd]

Can I get the firmware, please?

[johu]

https://github.com/jsphuebner/stm32-sine/tree/MG_DU

Binary here, need to log in to github to see it https://github.com/jsphuebner/stm32-sin ... 5956937954

[Jack Bauer]

Thanks is the word you were stuck on.

[Beggernator]

I will say thanks. Have been looking at the rather attractive prices for the mg units and it's nice to see you have worked your magic again on getting things spinning.

[CMARAMLeaf]

This is fantastic! Lots of implementation possibilities from my point of view at least. I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s possible to make the version used by ram work in my truck. Looks like they’re quite similar.

[LRBen]

Scanned a drive unit today. From an MG ZS

Model is here:
https://grabcad.com/library/2017-2020-m ... ive-unit-1

[Jack Bauer]

So as I have never sold a single MG board and have given away the few boards I have in stock I decided to add all Kicad sources and production files to the GitHub repo here : https://github.com/damienmaguire/MG-EV- ... /tree/main

[crasbe]

I started a wiki page about the Drive Unit: https://openinverter.org/wiki/MG_MG5_Drive_Unit
It is very empty still, so if anyone wants to add some information, feel free

Yesterday and today I started to build a replacement for the funky parking lock actuator that is realized with a tree phase motor in the original application and a dedicated controller.
My plan is to replace that with a watertight NEMA 23 stepper (not the one in the picture, Beff Jezos didn't deliver it yet).

Hopefully this Drive Unit will gain some attention once Damien starts the V70 conversion and people notice it. It's a really nice, compact unit but yet very powerful.