Pardon my ignorance , but isnt VO2 max "the maximum" ?
How can you go 170% of your maximum?
Isn't that like these people that say I gave it 110%? It's rubbish, you cant give 110%....
In this regard when they talk about VO2 they talk about the effort you can sustain, much like Functional Threshold on which most training targets are based.
That is to say, for example, at peak when my 20min power was 305W and VO2 was 69ml/kg/min, certain intervals would call for efforts at lets say 150%. These intervals weren't 150% for the same 20 minutes FT was measured, they were 455W for say 3 minutes - that's the significant difference. Sprint power, for example, for me, is around 1170W, but that's a 5 to 12 second output, after which it dies off rapidly. When you look at these numbers - 1170W vs 305W, you might be tempted to think it's 380%, but that's not how it works.
What it does, however, mean, is that you couldn't expect me to sit at 350W for 20 minutes, or 305W indefinitely as an FT.
As far as finding our your actual VO2 outside a lab, I don't believe there's a reliable way to do this. You can find certain CP and FT values via other methods, but you won't get an accurate value of ml/kg/min outside a lab, nor power at that level due to the inability to reliably measure it.
To address the original issue, the problem with Tabata intervals - and most intervals, for that matter, is that people generally don't do intervals right. Most often they go out and hit whatever power output for that period as hard as they can, and if you look at the power output graph you end up with this pointy thing that starts off high but tapers off towards the end of the 20 seconds, 1 minute, 4 minutes etc - whatever duration they're doing. HR might remain that a high level, but power is undoutably not sitting at the same level.
For me to do proper Tabata intervals, I'd need to be trying to aim for somewhere around 650W for 12x 20 second intervals, as towards the last 4 to 6 sets I certainly wouldn't be producing 800W consistently for 20 seconds.
The same is true for 1 min intervals. You see people just starting out as hard as they possibly can, but a graph might show over that 1min it starts at say 600W but ends down around 300W. Last time I did any intervals I knew I had to find a rythym to sit at about 415W for 1m - which isn't always easy being so precise.
Anecdotally, yes, I can say that Tabata Intervals are great at rapidly increasing base ability to retain short-duration intensity. In a lab however? That requires a lot more proof that they're any better than other methods. But, there's certainly no harm.