A Meeting of Worlds

On the heels of Vegas, renown for combining a “best of” sanitized approximation of Paris, Venice, Rome, and Cairo, team Vonnen made our way to Thunderhill Raceway – a combination of the best features of Sonoma Raceway, Laguna Seca, Buttonwillow and more – minus the car destroying barriers.

As before with Shift Sector, our journey began before the sun rose, fueled in equal parts by caffeine and a full tank of 91 octane. Also as before, the Tesla Model 3 tagged along, and true to form, its proclivity for superchargers introduced us to off-the-beaten path roadside attractions – in this case, the Vacaville outlets.

Making Good Speed

With a goal of making the 8:30 a.m. drivers meeting, progress on the 3-hour drive to Willows, California was swift, and thankfully, uneventful. But it was our speed at the event that ultimately mattered more. As a private event, the format for the day, we learned, would be simple. Rather than being broken out into drive groups with pre-determined sessions, we would be able to run as often and as long as we wanted. This turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, there was no time pressure to stop futzing with the power delivery algorithms in order to get the car out on track and actually test them out. On the other hand, we did really need to get the car out on track in order to put it through its paces… and get it out on track we did.

Stress Testing Shadow Drive

The premise behind Shadow Drive has always been to develop a system that could not only handle, but thrive, in an environment where it was being pushed lap after lap for hours on end. In order to do this, we needed to validate that the system was capable of cooling, replenishing, and managing itself seamlessly and predictably – and it performed these functions in spades, exactly as it was engineered to do. What we perhaps hadn’t as fully appreciated was the profound impact the phone app had to the driving experience as we were able to use the Shadow Drive app interface to play back the previous lapping session and relive the entire experience as seen from a power delivery standpoint. We could note the exact amount of power being delivered or regenerated, for the precise amount of time, on a turn-by-turn basis. In fact, this entire experience was so gratifying that we are very much determined to work it into the app experience as something that could enhance a Shadow Drive owner’s track day – or even street driving on their favorite stretch of road.

In Good Company

As at Shift Sector before, we found ourselves rubbing shoulders, but thankfully not paint, with a bevy of GT2s, GT3s, McLarens, and other high caliber track weapons. However, as this was a dynamic setting – as opposed to running point to point – the ability of a car to continue to turn in lap after lap, despite temperatures in the 80s, proved to be the variable that determined whether a car spent more time in the pits cooling and recuperating or out on track dominating the asphalt. Full credit here to Porsche – as robust as our system has demonstrated to be, it would have been all for naught if the rest of the car, including engine, brakes, and suspension, weren’t also up to task.

We had one mysterious intermittent clunk that turned up with PASM on, but seemed to resolve with PASM off, so the day was able to continue without incident.

As a small, private event of just 40 or so cars (dwindling by attrition down to 10-15 by day’s end) we would like to say there was a strong sense of comradery among the participants, but this actually wasn’t the case. Far from a character indictment, this was just as byproduct of owners and teams being entirely focused on pushing their cars to their limits and maximizing time out on track.

Stories to Tell

The day ended as it began – with the Vonnen car driving back just as it arrived, only with GoPro batteries depleted and drivers sated from a long day’s workout. With straight line and road course testing well underway, team Vonnen is just getting started in our racing validation efforts. When we will call these efforts “good enough” is not entirely clear, but if the team has any say, it doesn’t sound like that will be anytime soon.

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V2V – Vonnen to Vegas

Welcome to the Serengeti

Long before the sun rose, team Vonnen made their way from the Bay Area to Las Vegas the mecca of all things automotive aftermarket, the annual SEMA show. Hosting everything from monster trucks to stanced Ferraris, SEMA serves as fascinating cross section of the car hobby. The scale of the show cannot be overstated – each year it hosts 160,000 industry professionals to what can best be characterized as the Serengeti watering hole of all things four-wheeled.

Target Markets

With just hours to spend on our single day outing, our mission was highly tactical. We would need to be disciplined in tuning out crowds, the noise, and the sheer overstimulation of the event and make our impact where it most counted – identifying key industry partners and forging alliances that would enable Vonnen to scale quickly and reliably in our key target markets.

Illuminating the Path Forward

Although much of the trip is now but a blur, we came away impressed in two key respects. First, was the relative ease with which key industry players understood – and in fact, embraced – the core value proposition behind Shadow Drive. It has long been obvious to us that the aftermarket industry is moving away from mechanical power adders and would be looking to OEM level innovation for the new path forward. What was less obvious was how apparent to outsiders Shadow Drive’s significance as a new technology in the market would be. As it turns out, although Vonnen is far from a household name, it was almost like they were expecting us (or someone like us) to come along and illuminate the path forward. Second, despite all the challenges of complying with tightening regulations around noise, emissions, an uncertain global economy, and talk of autonomous cars moving us all towards transportation pods over driving ourselves places in cars – the passion for owning and personalizing cars very much remains alive and well.

The Collective Passion

Yes, legacy approaches get displaced by new technologies – but SEMA has seen all this before. As once-ubiquitous hardware like carburetors were replaced with first mechanical, and then electronic, fuel injection and body on frame cars and trucks over time gradually all became unibody, the collective passion around modifying cars never waned or died – it just adapted. In this Serengeti-like environment, the survival of the nimble, the clever, and the alert flourishes while the complacent find the future decidedly less rosy.

The Right Side of History

We came away from the proverbial watering hole with a profound respect for the historical legacy that precedes us, but in equal measure, an affirmation of why Shadow Drive is poised to be on the right side of history. It will be interesting to see what SEMA 2029 looks like.

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Day 1

Silicon Valley Cowboys

When presented with the opportunity to run a ½ mile top speed challenge on an airstrip located in an inland cattle ranching community located midway between Northern and Southern California, Team Vonnen did what any self-respecting group of car enthusiasts would – we went in the complete opposite direction and headed for the coast. No car transporters. No trailers full of spares. Just a Shadow Drive equipped Porsche 991 and miles of scenic coastal Hwy 1 to devour to take the long way to Shift Sector in Coalinga, California. One of the perks of being located in the Bay Area is access to some of the best driving roads in the country. Yes, we turned what could have been at three-hour trip into an all-day driving adventure, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Going West to Go East

Our journey began with the moon and stars still out early on Saturday morning as we departed Vonnen headquarters in Santa Clara. With “Stealth Mode” selected on the phone app, and a tank full of premium, we made quick work of the twists and turns of Hwy 17 with Shadow Drive providing a healthy shove when called upon as we worked our way around slow moving trucks and oblivious Teslas on autopilot – (Bill, our VP of Engineering, driving one such example as a chase vehicle with additional team and family members aboard ). As for the Porsche, thanks to my propensity for car sickness as a passenger, I had the pleasure of piloting it on the way down with my two sons in the back seat and Andrew, the man behind our social media presence, riding shotgun and squeezed on all sides by camera gear. A mix of German hip hop and early 90’s trance provided the accompanying soundtrack.

The fall colors took on a warm glow as the sun rose as we made our way to the famous surfing town of Santa Cruz (shout out to the Banana Slugs!). After a quick breakfast, our route took us south through Monterey and Carmel before winding our way into Big Sur. Anyone that has driven this section of the Pacific Coast Highway can appreciate the breathtaking views and vistas this afforded. While the 911 made an obligatory stop at the Post Ranch Inn to take in the view, on the other side of the highway, the Tesla supercharged itself back to full capacity.

Climbing to the Heavens

Once past the famous Bixby Bridge, we took the Nascimento-Fergusson Road turn off by Lucia and made our way east and skywards towards the Fort Hunter Liggett military base. Given the cloudless sky and empty road, this took on a particularly dream-like feeling as the high-performance Tesla and 911 played cat and mouse up the mountain, stopping periodically to capture video, enjoy the views, and let the kids’ stomachs settle.

Once up top, and with the views of the Pacific now behind us, the road was no less spectacular as the majestic redwoods of Big Sur gave way to California Oaks and their twisted branches.

With the setting of the sun, the sky turned red, then purple, and almost otherworldly as we cleared the summit and made rapid work of the Fort Hunter Liggett – humoring the “troops” with a quick stop at a tank on display, and then eventually ending our journey at the Harris Ranch for dinner – where the manure smell outside gave a sense of the best entrees to order inside (hint: it’s not the salmon).

Day 2

Arriving at a Vehicular Smorgasbord

Race day began with a quick coffee and pastries before heading to the track for the mandatory driver’s briefing. On display, as expected, were an impressive array of modified supercars and muscle cars – from McLaren’s and Lamborghinis to Challenger Hellcats and Corvettes – no matter where one’s allegiance or preference stood, there was a little something for everyone.

Our mission was simply to try out various modes in fine tuning our power delivery. We had a sense of how soon power should come on and how it should taper off when pushed up to its limits, but validating this in a controlled environment with a Vbox on hand to capture data proved to be invaluable in fine tuning our different drive modes.

Turning our Heads From Left to Right

The format of the event, which was now on its second day, followed what one might expect. Cars, and a handful of motorcycles, would line up side-by-side on either side of an airstrip and race from one end to the other with the times displayed for fans watching in the bleachers. An exuberant announcer, shouting over a soundtrack of top 40 hits, would use phrases like pulling a “sneaky sneaky” or taking a competitor out to Gapplebees for a Gappetizer to describe the action unfolding. Cheesy turns-of-phrase notwithstanding, this was actually helpful as the first car to trip the timing lines on the other end wasn’t always the fastest as measured by trap speed – the criteria for winning a race.

During our day out, the fastest car of a day, a BBi customer’s GT2, provided both the highest recorded run on Sunday with a trap speed exceeding 203 mph, and the most drama, with a dramatic high-speed spin into the dirt midway down the course and well past 100mph. Apparently, the highest speed recorded had been the day before by a Lamborghini Huracan Performante at a startling 218 mph at the ½ mile mark.

Beyond Thunderdome

As for the Vonnen car, with nearly a dozen runs under our belts before the desert wind became unbearable late into the afternoon, we called the day a success and made our trip back in what could only be described as a setting that looked like a cross between a Mad Max movie and the tornado from the Wizard of Oz. The kids were duly impressed with their first of many sightings of enormous tumbleweeds rolling in front of the car providing an added element of excitement to the homebound journey.

With an obligatory stop at Pea Soup Andersons – an odd choice for a dinner venue that may have that had something to do with Supercharging we topped of our respective tanks for a triumphant return to Vonnen HQ. All told, the car and system performed flawlessly both on and off the track and the crew arrived back in time for the children’s bedtime with no tickets, mechanical issues, or accidents in or out of the cars to speak of.

Next in queue is a track day at Thunderhill and an open house here at Vonnen, so stay tuned for details on those.

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