The accuracy of the on board performance monitoring feature ("accelerotometer") used in Corvette C7 Stingray and 2015 Z06

Everything that +General Motors  uses in their cars, cost is always the foremost factor.  There is no exception to this rule, even when cars perceived as the flagships of the brand are involved.  Since anything that can be found on the cheapest car produced by GM can be also found on the most expensive cars (with the currently very notable difference being DTC on Cruze econo box due to Chinese market demand), quality always takes the back seat and number of features offered does not equal quality improvements.

There are multiple examples of this corporate mentality that can be found on the newest Corvette, already mentioned many times in this blog (AFM, DI, VVT, navigation system and on and on and on).

However, here is another and very interesting example of this approach, the so called performance monitoring system.  This system includes parameters that are very important to buyers of high performance vehicles and include lateral and linear acceleration numbers. 

Here is the funny part, regarding gullibility of the Corvette C7 buyers, especially buyers of the latest disaster, 2015 Corvette Z06.

So far, results of the tests conducted by automotive magazines have been beyond embarrassing, the car simply refuses to perform as previously advertised by the GM marketing and presented ad nauseam by chief Corvette C7 mouthpiece, +Tadge Juechter .

What to do when everything fails and size of the Z06 buyers penises escapes from the visible range?  Not surprisingly, the buyers attempt to extract results matching the advertisements themselves.  Of course GM already provided them with a great piece of propaganda and morale booster, the onboard performance monitoring system. 

Thus, the buyers of the cars that failed to perform proceed with their own attempts to prove the testers wrong and GM right, using these onboard features BUT without absolutely understanding how they operate and how accurate they are.  Of course, there is absolutely nobody in GM who would care about this part and foolishly dispense with the urban myths that surround the car.

As with everything else, understanding this "performance monitoring system" before relying on it to deal with reality could help but as with everything else, the Corvette inbreeds prefer to rely on integrity of GM and just ASSUME the figures they see are as accurate as they can be, apparently more superior to the stationary testing equipment (very pricy in most instances) that professional testers use.

First of all, people typically do not understand the difference between accuracy and precision, very frequently mistaking one for another.  To put it simply, precision is meaningless when there is no accuracy and the picture can be easily drawn of a sniper with great grouping of shots but heavily off the target.  This analogy is fully applicable to the onboard performance monitoring the newest Corvette uses.

How does this system work?  Realistically, there is no system to speak of, the entire data acquisition is ran off the onboard diagnostics system, federally mandated OBD II and routed through another federal requirement, CAN bus to the Cosworth data logger.  The typical misconception among Corvette sheep is that the system works off the GPS but it really does not, it would be too expensive for GM to take this route and thus, OBD II based system is used and acquired performance data is simply overlayed over GPS acquired location information (in real time) to create an illusion of GPS data acquisition.  The whole set up is very clever, keeping the buying public completely fooled and allowing GM to charge healthy profit margin.

Technically speaking, there is nothing wrong with OBD II system, it certainly should be very precise but there is a problem and a big one, with regards to the accuracy.  The system is based of the wheel mounted speed sensors and it cannot be calibrated, and without ability to apply corrections due to certain variations. 

As of now, GM has not published a single piece of information regarding accuracy and precision of this performance system nor did GM tested this system against other systems, already known for their accuracy and precision.  Usually, this is not a problem since gadgets like these are advertised as FIY, without any "official system logger" claims.

However, this is Corvette crowd, already beat up by failure of the newest Z06, even Juechter is not that stupid to tell them that any results displayed by that system fail to include pitch and roll corrections and rely on the accuracy of the speed sensors that cannot be calibrated to reflect wheel diameter of the wheels variations or changes in the tire pressure.

Do some of the buyers realize this part?  Of course some of them do, it is not very difficult to exploit the ignorance of the masses.  What happens when car happens to have sufficient suspension travel and leans under heavy cornering?  What happens when car squats on hard take offs, like those practiced during take offs from the dig?  Poof goes the accuracy!!! Incidentally, the newest Z06 sits pretty high and has plenty of suspension travel.  Certainly, it may be a bit complicated for the sheep to figure out what the implications are.

Objectively speaking, the buying sheep cannot be blamed to grasp to any available opportunity to invalidate the performance condemning results that seem to be multiplying as time goes by but realistically, ignorance is not the best approach-unless someone makes living selling these turds or so called aftermarket "upgrades".

The more time the newest Z06 is around, the more the comedy surrounding it resembles the set of "Idiocracy" movie.   Throw these people a bone and they jump on it gladly.