WARNING - Sabvoton/March Motor Controls/Motopulse

[zombiess]

*** Update *** I've been contacted by my sales rep who is now working to resolve this issue.

Hello all,

I wanted to post about my negative experience in dealing with this company. As many on here know, I'm the North American dealer for Greyborg. I've been seeking a good controller to match up with the Cromotor so that I may create a reasonably priced package for high power setups that many desire. I ended up settling on Sabvoton after evaluating several choices.

I recently ordered several of the Sabvoton 96150 controllers from paul.chen@motopulseinnovation. The initial order went very smoothly with Paul supplying all the technical info I requested. The service level was excellent at this point and I felt comfortable moving forward with my purchase of several controllers and sent several thousand dollars by wire transfer.

The order took a little longer than expected due to some Typhoon's in Asia interrupting the burn in process, but they delivered the controllers to me by DHL and I received them on the 4th of August. I opened them up and examined them on the 4th and noticed some things seems off. I sent an email to Paul, who is my only contact, on the 4th with some questions I had. Since then I have sent several emails and received no response back.

I believe that I have been China'd once again. Getting China'd is when you order from a company in China and you receive goods, but they are either defective or incorrect. Then the seller just disappears and no longer responds.
It appears I am now stuck with a lower model controller than I payed for which is quite frustrating and makes it more difficult to impossible to recover the funds invested.

I'll be sending this thread to see if they will respond at all to me. I am not pleased with this transaction

I want to get the word out to anyone that is looking to do business with Sabvoton/March Motor Controls/Motopulse Innovations that they should be very cautious. If this company responds to me I will update my experience. I waited 6 days before posting this to give them a chance to make it right as I do not like giving negative reviews.

 

[ambroseliao]

Sorry to hear that zombiess. This is my biggest fear in working with vendors in China and on eBay. You have some recourse on eBay with their feedback scores which vendors seem to really prize! However, dealing with a company directly without any recourse is a HUGE gamble.

The one way to buy directly from China is through Aliexpress.com where they hold your funds in escrow until you approve the funds be released when you are happy with your order. This has saved my behind a couple of times and I'm grateful for the protection this provides...

 

[Alan B]

Sad to see this. Best of luck.

 

[zombiess]

Good news, the company rep has responded to me and I am now working with him to get these controllers exchanged for the correct ones.

The rep I've been working with stated he was in a remote location with no internet access.

 

[Alan B]

That's hopeful.

 

[Cicada]

I love your job, good luck.

There is one thing that I never got with this persistent Sabvoton experiment you run...
You are one of the most inspiring dudes here on the ES, known as someone that knows what is doing and always looking for the best...what is wrong with Adaptto controllers?
I believe that if some customer is looking for a building in that league of power and budget
would be also very keen to get the best controller, no?
For few extra bucks you get the best product, a company here to stay with very good communication
and a tool that is already in the future...
just think to the integration with bms, antiskid, slave a second controller, use any charger....Hey.

 

[zombiess]

what is wrong with Adaptto controllers?

There are some technical things I do not like in the design. Same goes for Sabvoton, but I'm less concerned with them.

If I could mate either control system to my own power stage design it would make an amazing controller, but that is not going to happen. Neither party is interested in making an amazing reliable controller, so I'm on my own and working with Lebowski.

 

[neptronix]

I haven't been following the lebowski controller threads too much..
But.. do you plan on having lebowski-type controllers for sale at some point?

 

[zombiess]

I haven't been following the lebowski controller threads too much..
But.. do you plan on having lebowski-type controllers for sale at some point?

Absolutely yes! I'm a one man band right now so it's a pretty tall task on top of my normal day job. I just completed some testing this weekend of a prototype 18 FET controller and sustained 12.5kW for several mins at 100V. Plan is a 18-24 MOSFET TO-247 150V controller capable of frying any ebike motor. Stoopid burst power such as 300A battery @ 125V.

You can follow my build thread in the motor tech section.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=58341

Don't hold your breath for a release before summer of next year though, but you never know when I'll go on a design burst. I'll post in the general forums when I start looking for testing guinea pigs.

This has been a passion of mine for 2yrs now. It's a long way to go, but it's a personal quest to see things done the way I prefer them in technology and as a business.

 

[litespeed]

You have my respect as well. Here is to your future!

Tom

 

[John in CR]

Never ever deal with a reseller. You buy in wholesale quantities...maybe not large quantities, but sufficient ones. Plus didn't you help them with the variable regen? Deal straight with Sabvoton at Sabvoton.com . Kathy@Sabvoton.com has been there from the beginning. Resellers will always just send you what they have, not necessarily exactly what you want.

The controller factory I started working with in the last year has such a customer oriented system that the controllers are essentially custom made. Of course that would apply to their more typical customers like scooter factories, but I got lucky in my timing and provided a benefit to them by fixing all of their English stuff...even the English version of the programming software, and I'm helping launch a presence in Spanish too. As a result of my free assistance I get their max discount price schedule. Mosfets, boards, cases, etc are included in their item number in the ordering process, but what impressed me the most is when I pop open a controller, there's my company name right on the identification and inspection stickers right on the board inside the controller.

Too bad they're running so far behind schedule on the release of their high power FOC sine wave controllers, which were supposed to be out very early in the year. Apparently some of scooter factories had issues with even with the v1.2 controllers they got. I tried warning about the low inductance controllers, but none of the guys in the technical department speak any English, so everything is filtered through my service rep. The only good thing about it is their refusal to let anything substandard out the door.

My only issue is how conservative they are with the current limits, but it looks like I will finally get approval for a special programming version that allows higher battery current, while lowering the phase current. That's exactly what I wanted. I don't know why they were so concerned, since the controllers have a temp sensor that first rolls back the current limits and then if the second temp limit is reached it cuts power totally. I guess it's to sell more of their TO-247 controllers, since they have all the way up to 36fet models with irfp4468 and 4568 mosfets.

Thanks for the warning about that supplier of Sabvotons, because I want to get a pair of FOC controllers to see what all the fuss is about.