Pedalcommander.com It’s supposed to remove or improve the gas pedal response that most fly by wire pedals have to sone extent. It’s plug and play and It’s adjustable. I see they offer one for Gen 3 and 4. Lots of youtubes on it.
I used to wonder why my Prius always felt so much faster and more responsive after I washed it... It took a while to figure out why, but it turned out that it was because I use not just floor mats, but memory foam fabric covered bath mats on top of that and when I wash my car I don't have that thick stack of floor mats so the gas pedal touches the bottom of my foot in a different location which makes the car seem faster. The illusion is real... I'm sure there might seem like there's a millisecond or so improvement with Pedal Commander but for $300? Not interested.
Ok, so I looked on their site and found that the "PC27" is the one for a Gen 3 liftback like I have, and then I looked up the PC27 Installation Page to see how it attaches: Locate your accelerator pedal assembly plug connection Remove the plug from your gas pedal Plug male and female connectors into their coordinating plugs on the gas pedal. Make sure that both plugs "click" into place. In other words, it just goes between your go-pedal and the go-pedal input of the ECU. So, the very most it can possibly do is modify the input signal the ECU thinks it is getting from the pedal. That means it could quite easily do a bending of the pedal position curve, as they show in a graph on their product information page: ... which of course is the same thing you can already do with the normal/PWR/ECO modes built into the Gen 3: One difference is that the built-in ECO mode also makes some HVAC adjustments, whereas the Pedal Commander can only change the pedal position curve. The final curve between your foot position and the ECU's calculated power output will be g∘f where f is the curve applied by the Pedal Commander and g is the normal/PWR/ECO curve you have selected from the car's ECU. Another difference is that the graph from Toyota is missing a couple signs of utter bogosity that you see in the graph from Pedal Commander. The PC graph is showing a throttle-position vertical scale on the left aligned with an RPM vertical scale on the right. In real life there is no such alignment between throttle position and RPM. There are odd "Hz/s" labels on the two graph traces, which are bogus in two different ways. "Hertz per second"? Really? So, cycles per second²? That could be a slew rate, a change in how fast a frequency signal changes. But there it bumps up against the other bogosity: the pedal (in the Prius) does not send the ECU a frequency signal. It sends DC voltages. But there's other stuff in their "product information" page that is just ruled out by the reality of how their box attaches. Knowing that their box just replaces the pedal input to the ECU, you can work out the rest. If the ECU applies a maximum-throttle limit or a response-speed limit to the pedal input, it applies the same limits to the input from the Pedal Commander. If the computer applies any "delay" to the pedal input signal, it applies the same delay to the Pedal Commander signal. All you have done is plugged in the Pedal Commander where the pedal input signal goes. But we do have to assume these guys got at least one lawyer's advice about burying some nugget of truth in what they are saying, so they could point to it if their product claims are questioned. So, where is the little nugget of truth? "By sending the information to the computer this way, a couple of checks that the engine computer will make can be bypassed"—it turns out there are "a couple of checks" the ECU makes on the input from the go pedal. The go pedal is really two independent sensors. They both output a voltage signal that increases with the pedal position, but with sensor 2 always a fraction of a volt above sensor 1. This redundancy is there so the ECU can detect a malfunction of the pedal sensor: if it ever sees the two inputs not changing together, or changing but not having the right relationship to each other, it knows something is wrong with the input, and can go to a fail-safe condition instead of taking you on a death ride based on some failed sensor. Since the Pedal Commander just plugs in where the pedal does, it also has to supply both of those inputs to the ECU. The ECU will still check the two inputs against each other; there's no way the Pedal Commander can "bypass" that. (And the time to do the comparison is likely somewhere in the ballpark of a billionth of a second.) But there's a good chance that, for simplicity, the Pedal Commander isn't doing anything for redundancy or failure detection. It likely just has a single output circuit with two taps that are built to produce both signal voltages always tracking each other with the expected offset, so there can't ever be any sign of failure for the car's ECU to detect. In that sense, you could maybe say the ECU's "checks" have been "bypassed". Whether that's a good idea at all could be up for discussion, but at least it gives them some nugget of truth they could point to if somebody asked.
@Pedal Logic has a similar technology . He would know the differences, but the 3 "c" notes the company in the thread charges would take awhile to make up the gas savings . As someone who uses the Smart Pedal device, it does filter the signal and deliver better MPG's.
Its effect on MPGs could be as tough to measure as MPG effects always are. But to document its filtering of the signal would be super easy with a four-channel scope. Maybe another project for @mr_guy_mann?
I drive mostly in the power mode. I'm happy with that. Their webpage has pictures of muscle cars using the product. Found that interesting.
If some one else loans me one. Ain't paying nothing for a widget that "modifies" my right foot. Right now I'm waiting for the weather to warm up a bit. Have to do a few more captures for the RB thread, but 25°F high's is just too cold to be working a scope outside. Also- if you "want go faster", then why did you buy a Prius? Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
This seems so much more appropriate for the Gen 2 forum in regards to ECO MODE. A few months back was think about something like this and using a MCU in between the throttle connections. Then just today decided to perform an internet search since was thinking a simpler mechanical design to create an ECO MODE throttle response, other than mounting I guess compared to unplugging and plugging in something, and found this link. https://pedalcommander.com/products/toyota-prius Then just completed a "priuschat pedal commander" search to find a few threads. Looks like old news and great info above @ChapmanF . I think was the openinverter wiki where I wasn't certain if the throttle is like a to 3.3V or 0 to 5V signal that's analog pot or digital with a rotary encoder. I recall the gen 2 and gen 3 seemed different specs. I can dig out my two pedals I grabbed at the yard on the 50% off sale to test one of these days if no one else knows already the design and pinouts specs. I'll make a post on the Gen 2 Forum to see if anyone has used as well. Seems like can be made for like less than $20 electronically and maybe similar in price mechanically for a quicker return on investment and be open source
The pedal hasn't been a potentiometer since Gen 1. Starting with Gen 2, they've been making a no-contact style, with a moving magnet, and Hall sensors. Why the change? You can search the forum for "big hand syndrome".
SmartPedal.com has a device that is very good. I am using one right now in my prius. You can save some cash by using promo code "azusa"
So these pedal commander things and this kind of business is strictly for the drive-by-wire throttle bodies that have no cables nothing to adjust no mechanical throttle plate activation in other words?
Right, it's an electrical gizmo that you plug into the car's computer where the go pedal normally plugs in, then you plug the go pedal into the gizmo. The car's computer still thinks there's a go pedal connected to it, and it still does all the same computations and filtering and what not on the signal that's coming in, only the signal is coming from the gizmo instead of straight from the pedal. The one called Smart Pedal that Azusa mentions may have a little more going on than the others; I was reading a patent on it and it has an accelerometer built in so it can try to figure out when your foot is moving because of motion of the car, and filter that out. There is a thread about it, and there was at least one large-scale test being conducted in a municipal fleet. Might be about due for some results by now, I don't remember the timeline. They're looking for fuel economy improvements, of course, not zing. Probably a bigger effect for drivers with foot on pedal a lot of the time, not using cruise control.
So you think PWR mode isn't touchy enough? Thats wild. Its so touchy in power mode its hard to modulate the pedal well enough to stay in engine off mode for me when i turn that one on. lol
This is why I keep my Corollas that have an accelerator cable a physical connection to the throttle body carburetor whatever because when you really have to go and it's the middle of the night and whatever some electronics are broken at least you can hop in the Corolla and you have a cable opening and closing your throttle plate minimal electronic ignition and the car always runs unless there's been some kind of EMP boom we are good to go. These newer vehicles it seems that somebody could ride by your house with an electrical destructive device and kill off everything in your yard almost immediately yeah I know that's thinking crazy but still and then what about a device that I could put in my car so when I'm being accosted by some idiot I can just hit a button and it scrambles whatever it needs to scrambles and shuts their car off or burns up all the electronics under the hood with one push of a button can we make that happen?
I mean you say that but the drive by wire system rarely fails. Even on the ls400 with mechanical wire connection plus drive by wire connectionw where toyota wasn't sure if they wanted to fully convert neither fail for hundreds of thousands of miles.
Doesn't look like one is available for the gen 2 2004-2009 Prius model. https://smartpedal.com/collections/fleet/products/toyota?variant=40922116434
Ah, Hall Effect Sensor(s). Which also can be analog or digital output by design. Wondering which signal and specs for the gen2 and gen3?
analog. The last illustration in post #5, showing the redundant dual voltage signals that track with a certain offset, comes from the Gen 3 repair manual. Toyota Service Information and Where To Find It | PriusChat They come from redundant dual Hall sensors facing redundant dual magnets in the go pedal assembly. Toyota does it that way on purpose, of course. Ideally, these insert-between-pedal-and-ECU gizmos would also have redundant dual microcontrollers processing the two signals independently. I'm not betting on it.
