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Zero Motorcycles

mrzuzzo said:
All the other electronic cars also offer fast charging.

There is a world recognized standard and multiple fast charging stations, some of them free, that use this 400V CCS plug.

My piece of shit Chevy Spark has it, and there are 2 free charging stations within a 10min drive from my house, and a paid one 2 minutes away.

Battery/climate issues shouldn't be a big deal with the moderare Bay Area climate IMO.

The engineers over at Zero need to figure out how to get fast charging on the bike. 5 minute recharge time would seal the deal for many.
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As stated in my previous reply... the problem (for Zero) is stepping the 400V charging station down to the 108V the Zero needs. And limiting the charge current to battery capability for this smaller (than a car) system. Those charging stations were designed for E car specs, not e-moto specs. And only a few brands of charging stations were designed to do a "handshake" with the vehicle being attached to provide that vehicles needed Voltage/Current requirements.

Quicker charge times is the holy grail for ALL electric vehicles.
5 minutes is really unrealistic though. Not in this Semicentennial.
 
m0t0_ryder said:
As stated in my previous reply... the problem (for Zero) is stepping the 400V charging station down to the 108V the Zero needs. And limiting the charge current to battery capability for this smaller (than a car) system. Those charging stations were designed for E car specs, not e-moto specs. And only a few brands of charging stations were designed to do a "handshake" with the vehicle being attached to provide that vehicles needed Voltage/Current requirements.

Quicker charge times is the holy grail for ALL electric vehicles.
5 minutes is really unrealistic though. Not in this Semicentennial.
Click to expand...

Charging a Zero is really not that hard. You just plug it into any normal 110 VAC at home.

Its when you want to charge publicly, that it gets more complicated. But what is nice is that since you can plug into a normal outlet, you can wheel your Zero inside and charge it. Its not like you are going to drip oil or coolant.

Here is the Zero Charge Tank semi-fast charger that I talked about before:
10-08080.jpg


There are no issues charging at any public stations that I am aware of because it provides the J1772 handshake/pilot signal to tell the charger to start charging.

The only issue with handshake/pilot signal is if you use a J1772 adapter with no handshake/pilot signal, yet you can buy a J1172 adapter that has the handshake/pilot signal built in from TucsonEV.

FYI, the Diginow Charger that will charge a Zero in under a hour fits in the 'tank area" just like the Charge tank and there is no need to worry about 400 VDC because you can just use a regular J1772 (Level 2) station or even a RV plug.
 
kuksul08 said:
Those are technology limitations, not brand limitations. If Yamaha released an electric bike it would have all the same things, they just might not be so up front about it.
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Zero is really pushing the limits of the motor tech they're using. They chose a motor/controller that isn't quite as robust as some of the other options (cheaper though!) and I'd posit a guess that with boosting performance they're running near the ragged edge of what is possible on that thing, thusly have to worry about timing the motor every 8k. Brammo, for example, doesn't have a maintenance requirement like that.

Zero's done a great job building a brand and such, but it's time for them to massively invest in the next real platform they're going to use if they want to stay relevant in the future.
 
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Z3n said:
Zero is really pushing the limits of the motor tech they're using. They chose a motor/controller that isn't quite as robust as some of the other options (cheaper though!) and I'd posit a guess that with boosting performance they're running near the ragged edge of what is possible on that thing, thusly have to worry about timing the motor every 8k. Brammo, for example, doesn't have a maintenance requirement like that.

Zero's done a great job building a brand and such, but it's time for them to massively invest in the next real platform they're going to use if they want to stay relevant in the future.
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Agree, I expect water cooling in their future.

I'd also like to see a full size bike. All of their bikes feel small to me. I'd like to see more fairing and more big bike styling, if that makes sense.
 
Gabe said:
It's improved like 3x since 2009, so yeah, it will improve.

You're not the market for an electric motorcycle. But you're in the 5th percentile for commute distance.
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My daily commute is 10 RT miles. So by your metric I am the target.
That being said I don't want to have a motorcycle for commuting ,then another one on the off chance I want to go to near by cities SF/Pleasanton where my friends/family live.

The second point is that unless one owns a house charging Zero, or any electric vehicle, is a tricky proposition. More so with Zero it seems.

When I lived in apartment the underground garage, rarity, didn't have 110v sockets. My work has charging stations, but reading last few posts I am not sure they would work with Zero.

As I said I want electric motorcycles to succeed, and when I ridden one I had a hoot, but range is not there.

For people who live in the city, like SF, charging is a limiting factor. As it stands now.
 
UDRider said:
My daily commute is 10 RT miles. So by your metric I am the target.
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UDRider said:
For commute only way I can make it to SF and back is if I buy the most expensive one, and even then it's at a limit of it's range.
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UDRider said:
That being said I don't want to have a motorcycle for commuting ,then another one on the off chance I want to go to near by cities SF/Pleasanton where my friends/family live.
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So you only have one motorcycle? That is very sad.
 
Gabe said:
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So you only have one motorcycle? That is very sad.
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What are you confused about? That I don't want to have two motorcycles that can be done by one that is not electric? Aren't you the one preaching frugality and stuff?
 
UDRider said:
What are you confused about? That I don't want to have two motorcycles that can be done by one that is not electric? Aren't you the one preaching frugality and stuff?
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Me preaching frugality? :laughing

I was confused because you said a zero barely had the range for your commute and then you said your commute was 10 miles.
 
Killroy1999 said:
Here is the Zero Charge Tank semi-fast charger that I talked about before:
10-08080.jpg


There are no issues charging at any public stations that I am aware of because it provides the J1772 handshake/pilot signal to tell the charger to start charging.

The only issue with handshake/pilot signal is if you use a J1772 adapter with no handshake/pilot signal, yet you can buy a J1172 adapter that has the handshake/pilot signal built in from TucsonEV.

FYI, the Diginow Charger that will charge a Zero in under a hour fits in the 'tank area" just like the Charge tank and there is no need to worry about 400 VDC because you can just use a regular J1772 (Level 2) station or even a RV plug.
Click to expand...

Nice.
See how things have changed in the 2 years since I left.
They were proto-typing the Charge Tank/connector while I was there but did not have a working version (that I knew of).

As for water cooling...
They did have a test motor (or two?) that was used on the racing Zero's that had very thin oil filling the motor stator cavity. The idea was to help carry the heat to the motor body for better cooling. The oil was thin enough not to hinder motor motion. Don't know how/where that program went.
 
Gabe said:
Me preaching frugality? :laughing

I was confused because you said a zero barely had the range for your commute and then you said your commute was 10 miles.
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Commute an in a distance I need it to go to be useful.
 
m0t0_ryder said:
As for water cooling...
They did have a test motor (or two?) that was used on the racing Zero's that had very thin oil filling the motor stator cavity. The idea was to help carry the heat to the motor body for better cooling. The oil was thin enough not to hinder motor motion. Don't know how/where that program went.
Click to expand...

The Hollywood Electric Supper Moto race bike has that liquid bath motor. I would not really call it liquid cooling, since liquid bath has no where near the potential of removing heat as liquid pumping through a radiator that has optimum air flow. Its a racing band aid.

Zero calls its passive cooling strategy "sophisticated simplicity", which is perfect for what Zero is. The Zero SR is quick. If they want to set a lap record, then they can add cooling to the battery, controller and motor at the expend of Cost, weight, maintenance reliability.
 
Killroy1999 said:
The Hollywood Electric Supper Moto race bike has that liquid bath motor. I would not really call it liquid cooling, since liquid bath has no where near the potential of removing heat as liquid pumping through a radiator that has optimum air flow. Its a racing band aid.

Zero calls its passive cooling strategy "sophisticated simplicity", which is perfect for what Zero is. The Zero SR is quick. If they want to set a lap record, then they can add cooling to the battery, controller and motor at the expend of Cost, weight, maintenance reliability.
Click to expand...

What year is your zero?

Cause there's a recall.

http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/recall/2015-zero-motorcycles-recall/
 
Does anyone here actually own an FXS? It seems like the two battery version would make a great commute bike for me. We have charging stations in the parking lot at work, or I could just take the battery inside and plug it into a wall outlet.

So who actually owns one?
 
flying_hun said:
Does anyone here actually own an FXS? It seems like the two battery version would make a great commute bike for me. We have charging stations in the parking lot at work, or I could just take the battery inside and plug it into a wall outlet.

So who actually owns one?
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The batteries are removable, but the charger is built into the bike.
If you wanted to charge the battery "off bike" you would need to buy a stand alone charger.
 
m0t0_ryder said:
The batteries are removable, but the charger is built into the bike.
If you wanted to charge the battery "off bike" you would need to buy a stand alone charger.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I read that on the Zero site. Thanks.
 
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