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[beehive]

We have a 2010 model and it shuts down all the time.  Lately Zero has said we are out of warranty (on this 18 month old bike that came with a 2 year warranty).  The charger has failed for the 2nd or 3rd time.  So no warranty, no charger, glitiching and trying to kill one of my sons all the time.  Hmmm, quality customer service for a quality product, right?  Yeah, right...

[Richard230]

Zero is really working hard to fix the "glitch".  They called me up last night and asked if they could come to my home this morning, pick up my bike and take it to the factory for their engineers to check over.  I told them that my bike wasn't a very good candidate for the glitch, as it has only stalled a few times and there seems to be no pattern to the glitching.  But they told me that they wanted to check out the largest number of vehicles that they could during their investigations.  So at 11 am today a truck drove up and hauled away my bike.  I am now internally combusted for a while.     Hopefully, whatever they do to fix the problem my bike will get the modifications before it is returned.

I was told that (as has been previously mentioned) they are looking at a drifting encoder and dealing with controller issues.  I get the impression that Zero has been having a bit of a struggle with slow communications with the controller manufacturer.  When I was having stalling problems with the somewhat ancient  Sevcon controller on my GPR-S, my radio engineer friend found it difficult when he tried to contact them about using the programmer and the capabilities of the controller.  He didn't have much luck getting any response from the factory in England, but he did eventually track down one of their techs in the U.S. who was very helpful in answering our questions.  As usual, it all depends upon getting to the right person.   

[jpaulus]

Here's my latest. 

recap: Had the high-speed glitch in a bad way.  In August Zero took my bike back to the factory and ended up replacing the motor. 

9/1/12 11 days and 220 miles after receiving the bike back from the factory I took it for a fairly gentle ride and 10 miles into it it did something that had not happened before; it failed to leave an intersection from a stop.

9/4/12 Next 'ride', *every* acceleration attempt cut-out.  I got nowhere.

9/6/12 Zero picked up the bike and took it back to the factory.

Since the bike did nothing but cut-out it should give them good data again.  Just my luck.

[Lipo423]

Hate to say this, but too many generals and not enough Indians...
When I see a 60-70 team members company with 8 VP's (+ a few directors and other managers), I wonder who's dealing with the issues.

One more month gone, and they are still trying to figure this out (first post February the 17th, viewed as per today +5.000 times)

Disapointing, very disapointing.

[protomech]

Progress with the new firmware: couple hundred miles without issue, including taking bumps at full throttle. They're loading the firmware on more of their durability testing bikes now, as well as the TTXGP bikes. (surprised we haven't seen any glitches with those bikes, TBH).

Those of you that have had your bikes picked up should be seeing updates soon. I'm ready to take my bike back - as Richard230 says, I'm ready to ride and be able to trust the bike again.

[ColoPaul]

I've gone 600 miles without a glitch since they did a "sincos cal".   
Still, when the recall notice comes out to get the new Sevcon firmware protomech is referring to, I'll make sure to get it!

[Electric Terry]

I've recently had a bike that had progressed to be unrideable. It would cut out multiple times per mile and I got stuck and couldn't turn it back on.  The calsincos function can turn the sickest bike into a perfectly running bike if done correctly when that happens.  But you need terminal software and an OBDII (only 4 pins used) to USB connector stashed somewhere on the bike.  I have limited experience with this but I have seen hex values (corresponding voltages) change by over 100% due to different motor temperatures.  The hotter the better from what I've seen.  When colder (still warm) something that should be 2-3 volts shows up as 1-1.5 volts.  Although I may have a faulty controller, encoder or something else.  But believe it or not, my bike is running good now! Crossing my fingers!!!

[protomech]

Zero's engineer reports no issues with the new firmware, running on my bike and a number of others now. Hopefully we will see an official release very soon. Zero SHOULD (speaking for myself here) roll out updates to all bikes in the field .. I hope they don't require bikes to be shipped back for repair ($$ for Zero).

[kcoplan]

Hopefully they can at least figure out a way to have dealers do the update, or just ship cables and software to everyone!

[Richard230]

I think it would be cheaper (and much more customer-friendly) to fly a technician and their equipment to each owner's home to make the repair, if the local dealer could not perform the work and the bike instead had to be shipped back to the factory to fix the problem.  I figure that it is cheaper to fly someone around the U.S. and Europe rather than shipping bikes to the factory and back to the customer.  Hopefully, the modifications can be made without that much of a hassle.

[cirrus pete]

We have a 2010 model and it shuts down all the time.  Lately Zero has said we are out of warranty (on this 18 month old bike that came with a 2 year warranty).  The charger has failed for the 2nd or 3rd time.  So no warranty, no charger, glitiching and trying to kill one of my sons all the time.  Hmmm, quality customer service for a quality product, right?  Yeah, right...

Can you elaborate on how they are claiming you are out of warranty if you have a two year warranty?

[Richard230]

Well, good news, at least for me.    I just received a call from Zero.  My bike has been repaired and they will be returning it to my home on Monday.  I was told that the fix involved installing "firmware" and that they worked with Sevcon to resolve the drifting of the encoder.  I remain a little confused about what actually was done, as I have heard of software and hardware, but I am not too sure what "firmware" is.  Anyway, I was told that they did everything that they could to cause the glitch to occur on my bike and it continued to run perfectly.  So hopefully this is the end of that story and we can continue to ride our Zeros without further interruptions.  I assume that there will be a recall to install new "firmware" in all of the customer bikes that require it.

If the fix doesn't work, you will be the first to know.  But I imagine that someone like offthegrid will really give the fix the acid test, as he rides his Zero a lot more than I do - being that I am not "off the grid" and am still pumping hydrocarbons into my other motorcycles that I ride at least once a week.   

[protomech]

Firmware means the software loaded on an electronic device. In this case it is the software loaded on the controller.

If they're sending your bike back then I hope mine is on its way as well. I've missed it : [

[RickSteeb]

I have been waiting for a "breakthrough" to take my bike to the factory for the [two] recall updates, hoping to get everything dialed-in at one time...  As to the "glitches" on my own bike, I am now pretty certain that all occurrences can be attributed to an overheat situation.  Today, on my way from Sunnyvale to South San Jose, I was maintaining around 75MPH and keeping an eye on the left-hand side of the gauges for the red blinking thermometer icon; it showed up and I slowed down to ~65MPH and watched it turn off-- about 3 times in a 5 mile stretch.  My original "glitch", and several more, involved finding my way to the shoulder or doing an immediate coasting re-boot at speed on 101 [every time] without looking for the overheat indicator...

This all may well be a manifestation of hall-effect sensor drift/shift [at ~3800 miles now] causing excessive power dissipation/heating.  My last two "fuel" bars were blinking at 23 miles before I got home!  c.f. The day I took delivery, I only started pushing the depleted beast at ~31miles...  [all likely artifacts of my last bike being a V45 Magna, and trying to ride my DS at those velocities! ;]

[Electric Terry]

If the fix doesn't work, you will be the first to know.  But I imagine that someone like offthegrid will really give the fix the acid test, as he rides his Zero a lot more than I do - being that I am not "off the grid" and am still pumping hydrocarbons into my other motorcycles that I ride at least once a week.   

Lol, thanks Richard, I of course will do my best.  Nearing the 10k mark and close to 1000 miles glitch free.   Speaking of, the cutouts at low speed or stalling when stopped for an extended period have been completely fixed too.  These issues at least for me have nothing to do with the throttle assembly, nothing to do with the water proofing one the BMS (these may be potential issues, just were not for me) and were completely fixed with the recalibration of the motor to controller.  For a week or two I carried the diagnostic cable and laptop with me as the recalibrations would only last 50-100 miles before it happened again.  But about a week ago, when I got stuck and calibrated on the fly so to speak, it held and has held since. 

I'll probably carry the cable with me for a little while longer, (actually using it now for something different: to rebalance the pack when not charging as I'm quite far out of balance between my highest and lowest cell.  I'm within 25 mv now but was as far as 576 mv out of balane a few days ago.  The "dobalance" command turns on resistors on each bank to burn off energy on the highest 1-9 cells designated by a 1 for resistor on or 0 for resistor off.  awesome feature!!!)

I did not get the new "firmware" but have had success with the recalibration for now.  Good luck everyone getting back on the road!! This issue looks like it's slowly coming to an end as far as an unknown fix.