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[Lipo423]

Richard,
Any pack would need the "conditioning" or "break in" process -whatever we call it- in order to achieve maximum performance...Unless the company that makes the Li-Mn cells (E-one Moli Energy Corp, I believe), have an agreement with Zero and do some charging/discharging cycles...I really question this, and I'm with you that Zero is expecting the customers to take care of this process.
In any case as I mentioned earlier the packs (from Zero specs) last around 3000 cycles, which would mean that advertised maximum capacity -9Kw- might be even lower than the cells real maximum capacity (this is what the life-cycle theory says)

[dkw12002]

I have read in the past that there is a time issue with Li batteries, at least some, so that the lifetime of a battery might involve time as well as recharges. In other words, if you had a new bike and battery, never put a mile on the bike, but say kept the battery charged, would it still have 300,000 miles of riding left after say 3 years of sitting idle? Also if you took a battery that had never been charged but was now 3 years old, it would also not have 300,000 miles left on it? Anyone know if this is true? If you put say 20,000 miles on a  Zero S per year (big battery), could you really expect the battery to be working good in 15 years? How about 10,000 miles and 30 years? Seems unlikely.

[Lipo423]

That is a fair statemet. The battery ages anyway. Rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries have a limited life and will gradually lose their capacity to hold a charge. This loss of capacity (aging) is irreversible. As the battery loses capacity, the length of time it will power the product (run time) decreases.
The battery life is a combination of time/charging cycles. Usually a high quality Lithium battery would last 5-6 years before loosing a reasonable capacity (they do not just die)...as soon as you respect a basic things:
- Never charge above 4.2V / cell
- Never discharge below 2.7V / cell, or storage a battery drained
- Avoid charging a heat pack whenever possible
- Charge at 1C
- When storaging for a long period of time keep the pack charged at 30-40% of total capacity
- If you avoid deph discharge, you increase battery life/cycles

One important thing to check is batteries manufacturing date (I guess in Zero's case should not be a problem as they have a nice demand, so the bikes leave the factory right away with fresh battery packs).

[dkw12002]

Thanks, I was afraid of that.  6 years will probably not equate to 308,000 miles for most riders. I think people are expecting longer service since most people will not ride 50,000 miles a year. I will put about 3,000 mi. a year on mine.

[Lipo423]

No problem. That's one of the reasons why there are miles, not years on the bike specifications  -and I understand why...each rider has different riding style/habits/requirements, and that would set the battery life expectancy 

One of my electric bicycles (purchased in 2004) has still the same NiMh pack - with only around 30% of capacity left, and I treated the pack really badly 

In any case, you would change the bike before reaching such a mileage  . Anyone wants to bet?

[protomech]

We don't really have 10 years of experience with lithium-battery vehicles, so it's hard to see what the endurance will be. Certainly we've all experienced laptops that had batteries died within 3 years with only incidental use, and cell phones that died within a few years. Those devices aren't really designed for a 10 year lifespan, and typically their batteries are good for a few hundred cycles at best anyhow.

Nissan has a 8 year / 100k mile warranty on the Leaf packs, which protects against outright failure (provided the battery is not abused) but does not cover gradual capacity loss. Nissan claims ~30% capacity loss after 8-10 years but does (edit) NOT guarantee such loss.

Chevrolet has a 8 year / 100k mile warranty on the Volt packs. Since the Volt can use at most 10 kWh of its 16 kWh capacity, it's likely even as the pack gradually loses capacity that a 10 kWh buffer will always be available - at least within the warranty period.

Hyundai warranties the lithium packs on the Sonata Hybrid for the car's lifetime. A hybrid battery pack has significantly different usage patterns from an EV pack, but it's encouraging that the pack is at least warranties against outright failure.

Zero's warranty is much shorter (2 years) but hopefully their packs will last a similar length of time. I'll be happy if I get 10 years of useful life out of the original pack on an e-moto - and I'm planning for a 30% capacity loss after 8-10 years.

[Lipo423]

I agree with you. The experience is limited, especially with Lithium
The expected long life-span is based in projected battery chemistry reaction under a "normal use" where normal use is in reallity a super accurate and perfect ideal use (which would never happens, because we are planning in using the vehicles, not "nursering them")
I would be very surprised if the packs last 10 years and still keep 70% (including the ones on E-cars), but hopefully I'm wrong, as I would suffer the consequences when I will get my new ZF9

[dkw12002]

Given the info of the price of a replacement big battery, which would have the best future resale value? A) a 2012 Zero with 150,000 miles on it in 2014, or B) the same yr. and model Zero with 1500 miles on it in 2016? From what we know now, it would be "A", the Zero with the most miles and newest battery, right? In fact, it looks like mileage is not the important factor here since every other replacement part pales in comparison to the battery in replacement cost if that is even practical to replace a battery. 

[Lipo423]

Yep, I would agree with you that Option A would have the biggest re-sale value; battery aging would be the challenge not mileage...
I'm really curios of electric vehicles re-sale value (in Spain we normally look at Gas vehicle's age in years, not miles)

Concerning future battery packs trends/cost, Lithium prices have been dropping from -30 to -50% in the last few years,  which pushed some of the manufacturers to shift production to China, this should make the packs more affordable over time.

If the fuel prices keep up -or raise more- I'm seeing the new battery technologies coming up in 4-5 years (some car manufactures like Toyota are already investing heavily in developing their own battery cells)

[ZeroSinMA]

Maybe I should start a new thread for 2011 Zero S owners who are thinking about upgrading to a 2012 Zero S ZF9, but I'll start by posting here.

I'm a 2011 Zero S owner who is thinking about upgrading to a 2012 Zero S ZF9. It won't be cheap, so I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it.

After reading this thread it appears that users are getting more like 60 mi in real world mixed riding street and highway riding versus 100 mi as advertised. Scanning the posts on the thread, I summarize the data as:

@ ave. 75 MPH:  35 Miles
@ ave. 65 MPH:  40 Miles
@ ave. 60 MPH:  50 Miles
@ ave. 45 MPH:  55 Miles

I'm getting 40 mi out of my 2011 riding at an average of 35MPH and 30 mi at an average of 40MPH.  It appears that the 2012 is approximately 50% better versus 100% as the marketing materials on the Zero site state: 100 mi UDDS vs 50 mi UDDS.

A 50% improvement strikes me as rich for taking a $4,500 depreciation hit in one year. That translates into a cost of $2 per mile.

In the above I compare the Zero S to a Honda 250 for the purpose of comparing depreciation costs.  

Unless I'm missing something, a Zero S 2012 upgrade for a 30% range improvement is a mighty expensive proposition, hardly worth the $4,500 one year depreciation loss. I know it's not fair to compare the Zero to a gasoline bike but it's worth noting that upgrading from a 2011 to a 2012 is more than ten times more expensive from a first depreciation standpoint.

I'm thinking I should wait a year or two for either the price to come down or the performance to improve else I'll be shelling out $14,700 in two years for the use of one Zero S.

[protomech]

30 miles @ 40 mph vs 55 miles @ 45 mph is just about double.

Some thoughts on depreciation:

1. The bikes start off costing 2.5x - 3x the CBR250's MSRP .. depreciation will generally scale with MSRP. I would expect the CBR250 (with 10% depreciation) to depreciate down to $4500 - $450 = $4050, not $4250. 10% vs 40% depreciation is still much less, of course.

2. The bikes are still rapidly developing. The 2012 bikes are a significant upgrade over the 2011 bikes, where most gas bikes haven't made significant technical progress in the last 10-20 years (at least for a basic 250). The only thing driving down the cost of older 250s is expected deterioration of the bike through age and use, not significant advances in the new bikes.

3. The bikes in 2010-2011 were available with significant rebates. Rebates have an unintended consequence of greatly suppressing the used values of the bikes - if you can get a new Zero for say $10k MSRP less $1k federal rebate and $2-3k in state incentives, then you would expect a used bike that has already qualified for what rebates it may to start its depreciation cycle as if it cost $7k new. We may see the used values of the bikes start to rise now, since the federal subsidy and some of the state subsidies have lapsed.

Bottom line is that you're correct, selling the Zero after a single year to buy new again is likely to result in a bath. A better approach may be to wait for the 2013 bikes and then consider upgrading to a 2012 once they have taken their own depreciation plummet -- and compare that to what you get with the new 2013 bikes.

At some point the field will mature, and the technological advances will start to come less quickly. Prices should start to stabilize at that point. But right now it's sort of like buying a computer, you have to buy it for what you need it to do, not future resale.

It's possible that Zero might do something like an owner loyalty rebate, like Brammo has done with the Enertia and Enertia Plus. You might even ask them about that - can't hurt!

[ZeroSinMA]

Thanks, protomech. Agree 100% that Zero needs to offer computer upgrade rebate type offers as the incremental value improvements are similar to that of computers and not at all like gas bikes. I suggested such based on that exact reasoning to a sales person there who I've been in touch with via email.

Overall not impressed with Zero's marketing. Engineering and customer support are top notch, but product marketing/product management is not so good.  They are making all the classic mistakes of a tech driven start-up company, selling features versus benefits and so on.

Don't get me started on the advertising. Who do they think their target customer is for a motorcycle that costs 3x more than an equivalent powered gas bike but has 1/3 the range? 18 year old skate boarders?

It's frustrating to watch Zero's marketing folks go at it like cubs f'ing a football. Such a great product. Engineering worked hard. What a shame.

After riding the bike 2000 mi since last May i have never once encountered anyone who had ever heard of Zero motorcycles. Small wonder they are having so much difficulty building a dealer network. Dealers count on the manufacturer to create demand. They want buyers walking in the door. The last thing they want is prospects walking in the door to ask, "What's that?"

At the end of the day all dealers care about is margins. Usually that comes from options and maintenance and repairs. As the Zero is virtually maintenance free, they're going to figure out how to get more money into the hands of dealers off the original purchase price, add-ons and upgrades. Run it like a computer company that sells via dealers the way Apple used to. Or go the other way and open Zero retail stores the way Apple did to sell the consumer product differentiation from Win PCs.  

[Richard230]

I think that Zero is currently focused on supplying new motorcycles to their retail dealers. They are letting their dealers perform all of the customer relation tasks, including setting prices and cutting deals (such as what Hollywood Electrics is doing).  I just found out that the 2012 Zero S that is being reviewed by City Bike was not a factory demonstrator, as I had thought. It is a demonstrator on loan from Monroe Motors in San Francisco (who also sells Ducatis, Moto Guzzi and MV), which, interestingly, is located only about 5 miles from Mission Motorcycles, where I bought my Zero.  (I hope the SF market for Zeros is large enough for two dealers that close together.)

This is nothing new for a factory to not want to talk to an individual customer.  You can't get the time of day out of any of the other motorcycle brand distributors, either.  They all deal directly with their retail dealers and let them deal with the individual customer.  Whether or not you feel Zero is a big enough operation to follow this path at this time in their history I guess is a matter of opinion.  But I can understand the concept from a business standpoint. However, that still doesn't mean that they have to be curt when contacted by a former customer or a future customer.  All they have to do is to be courteous and refer you to a salesperson at their closest retail dealer. That is the way I would have handled ZeroSinMA's inquiry.   

[ZeroSinMA]

Richard230, Yes. Full disclosure, I've been a regional sales manager, national sales director, and run two companies that sold product exclusively through dealers over the years so, yes, you are correct, the sales guys at the factory should refer you to the nearest dealer. However, in my case there's no dealer for 225 miles, so I bought direct. Almost a year later there is still no dealer for 225 miles. I've tried to help. I've approached several local dealers myself, recommended they carry the product, even offer to buy a new Zero S through them if they sign up. They all think it's too expensive for the limited range. So I have to deal with Zero directly.

[protomech]

After riding the bike 2000 mi since last May i have never once encountered anyone who had ever heard of Zero motorcycles. Small wonder they are having so much difficulty building a dealer network. Dealers count on the manufacturer to create demand. They want buyers walking in the door. The last thing they want is prospects walking in the door to ask, "What's that?"

I rode 5 miles to my local bike shop looking for a license plate kit - they didn't have anything that looked like it would work, but the sales guy had at least heard of Zero.

What are people doing to mount their license plates? It looks like the bolt holes in the AL plate are too wide to mount across the black plastic rear piece. Are people mounting them sideways (long ways up)?

Edit: drilled two holes at the top and mounted the license plate sideways.