openinverter forum

Hi everyone. I never know that you all existed until the other day.

A little about myself:
I'm a former Toyota Master Diagnostic Technician from a local dealership, who left that industry to go work for my public water utility in the instrumentation dept.
I currently program RTU's for the control and operation of across-the-line and VFD control of 3ph 480V (or a few 260V) motor and pump modules.
I also currently am an Adjunct Professor at my local community college teaching automotive and currently teaching Hybrid, Electric, and alternative fuels as a course.


Here's the story on my projects:
I own a 1991 Toyota MR2 with a 3.5L V6 engine swap from a 2007 Rav4 installed.
Ever since the Toyota Highlander HV was released, I have dreamed of installing that power train in reverse in an MR2. The downfall was that with Toyota's factory inverter, I would have ended up with rear axle regenerative braking. And in a vehicle with the engine weight in the middle-back, that's not a good idea.

SO! My brain never let things go, and here we are on the next iteration of ideas. What if I just took the MGR from a rav4 HV and placed it on my front axle as a supplement source of power? AND a way to recover some kinetic energy to help charge the batteries? like an F1 KERS system.

Like I said, up till I started looking for a video on R&R hybrid powertrains to show my students, I never knew this community existed.


What do you guys think of the possibility of using one of the smaller and more compact Toyota inverter assemblies to run a single motor/generator I/O?
Maybe using the second MG circuit for plug-in charging?
And pairing it with a modified Highlander HV battery pack where I can place half the batteries behind each seat, and exhaust the battery heat to the outside air ducts?

What controllers are you guys using for battery management ECU's?
I see some interesting info on custom logic boards for Prius inverters. (I haven't had a chance to do a deep dive yet on this)
How would you tie the logic board info in to the CANBUS and share info with my existing 2007 Rav4 V6 ICE? (throttle position,brake pedal, and clutch pedal status)

Side-note:
My MR2 does not have ABS, and as such, does not use any of the modern ABS/TRAC/EBD systems where I could share that CAN info.
My VSS comes from a 2001 electronic speed sensor mounted to the transmission. It spits out a digital signal in relation to vehicle speed, sends it to my instrumentation cluster, and the cluster sends back a signal that seems to keep the 2007 rav4 ECU happy.
In factory form, the ECU is looking for a VSS signal from the ABS module.

recommend reading the wiki : https://openinverter.org/wiki

you’ll get a understanding of the core openinverter system capability’s, which covers most of your questions.

Bms systems, most try to reused what is already there. Some are more tricky/ invoked to get functioning. Toms SimpBMS is a great starting point.

It's a shame you weren't around a couple years ago when the first big wave of Toyota reverse engineering was happening. Probably would've saved Damien a lot of time.

Johannes has been working on the Prius Gen 2 inverter for a while, but there's still a bit of a laundry list for features that it could have if it were fleshed out more. This of course takes time and effort.

There is a Zombieverter VCU that's main goal is to be a VCU hub for all EV projects, which will... I'm fuzzy on the idea but I think that it would be a common CAN framework where you could have it understand different vehicles depending on which you selected. I don't know if Prius is on the checklist yet, I suspect it's Leaf and Lexus heavy right now? I haven't heard a dumbed-down enough explanation of what it is and how it can be used.

Here's some of the isolated efforts at producing and configuring various boards for the Prius:

https://openinverter.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Gen2_Board

https://openinverter.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Gen3_Board

The MGR has so far been a bit of a disappointment, I don't think anyone's gotten reasonable power out of it yet? A few have tried.

MattsAwesomeStuff wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 7:17 am The MGR has so far been a bit of a disappointment, I don't think anyone's gotten reasonable power out of it yet? A few have tried.

50kw of peak output is modest my ANY modern standard to be sure.

My MR2 already has a modified factory ECU for the V6 and is already pushing about 300hp at the wheels.
I wanted to add the MGR to the front axle as a helper in acceleration and mainly as a recovery source of energy.

It would not be for primary propulsion. So I would need to be able to sync it's acceleration with that of the ICE in the back. It would be great if the ZombieVerter allowed for control of the tip-in, and PID control of the MGR, based on the existing pedal position sensor.

I've watched a few of Damien's videos recently. The ZombiVerter seems promising to do what I want to do.
I just need to hash out what I want to do for a charger, What size battery I can fit, and which Toyota inverter would be compact and sized appropriately for the 50kWh motor. Fitting the inverter and the MGR in my front trunk, places it perfectly for both airflow and cooling.

Does anyone have a motor curve on the 2018+ Rav4 MGR? Looking for output shaft RPM vs. Motor RPM input.

The advertised performance curves for the MGR don't really matter because nobody here has been able to get anywhere close to them. I've seen at most about a third of the advertised 50kW in my tests.

Zombieverter dose not provide full control over the power stage of the inverter it’s plugged into. a replacement board for the Prius inverter is what your after.

If you run a high pack voltage you may resolve some of the power issues folks have been having with the mgr unit. But that’s just theory.

celeron55 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 9:27 pm The advertised performance curves for the MGR don't really matter because nobody here has been able to get anywhere close to them. I've seen at most about a third of the advertised 50kW in my tests.

Hmm, I wonder if a RAV-4 inverter would change that.... hmmm.

Hi, I am trying to do the same thing, I have a thread running "Hypercar car hybrid" in "Toyota Lexus" viewtopic.php?p=37404#p37404. We should join forces here.

What you need is a non RPM controlled mode so simply throttle who only adjusts current demand. More throttle = more help.
Less throttle less. By going constant 'current mode' you make sure that both engines don't fight each other.

Now for regen you might want to insert brake pressure signal.. as long as no pedal input means neutral ...you are fine I think.

Now for Traction Control you will need something and implement a maximum rpm too (else you can get a run away situation).