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guity's gpr-s experience

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guity:
This is to document my experiences with buying a gpr-s in case it might be informative for anyone thinking about doing the same.  I just sent the check for the machine today, and hope to write short descriptions of the process of purchasing, receiving, and owning the bike.

Electric Motorsport currently has a fairly small shop in Oakland not too far from the Bay Bridge.  I was told they are moving to a larger shop soon and hiring more employees to increase manufacturing capability.  Currently their primary sales person is Todd Anderson.  Todd seems very patient, not at all pushy.  He either gives you an answer to your question, or if he can't, he quickly gets the answer from someone who does know.  The only negative I have seen so far is that Todd doesn't have a lot of spare time on his hands, so if you are going to contact him about something, you will have better luck if it is a pressing matter.

For test-riding, Todd had me ride 2 bikes, and also he rode alongside on a third bike which I couldn't ride because it was actually destined for a particular owner.  This third bike was interesting because it was a special configuration of a 72 volt system with an induction motor and enough (Thundersky I believe) batteries so the bike could go 80 or more mph.  The bike was selling for $13,000 (pre-tax) as opposed to their current stock gpr-s, which is selling at $8,500.  When it got up to speed, it left the other bikes way behind.

The first bike I rode had already been sold  to a guy who had changed his lifestyle to the point where he didn't want the bike any more by the time it was manufactured. He was now wanting to re-sell it without having ridden it.  It was a 60-volt system with an ac induction motor and re-gen braking.  Didn't like it at first because it seemed a bit sluggish from a standing start and top speed appeared to be 52 mph.  But the bike only had 14 kilometers or miles (don't know which) on it when I first got on.  Martin, one of EM's primary engineers, said there is a breaking-in period with engines with brushes so the top speed should increase as it gains more miles during the breaking in period (I think he estimated the break-in period to be around 50 miles).  As Martin stated, by the time I finished riding the bike it had 28 k/m on it, and one last maxxing out of the speed on a long flat straghtaway went up to 56 mph.  During the course of the ride the voltage meter, which started out at 67, dropped to around 62.  (A level of 58 was said to be the point where it would be a bad idea to drive it further).  Picasso happened to be on the scene, and asked me what how much the voltage was sagging when all the juice was used.  I actually watched one the next ride and told him the answer, but I can't trust my memory on what the exact numbers were.  Picasso didn't look too surprised at the numbers I reported, but for all I know, he might have been hiding his shock and dismay.

Todd wanted me to try a stock 72 volt bike, but there was none available (a lot of bikes were being shipped back from Ohio, where EM had been successfully participating in a big motorcycle race/event).  Martin actually volunteered his bike which is apparently stock, which he uses to commute to work every day.  It had been programmed to have a quick response to the throttle, which I liked.  It was significantly faster from a standing start, and easily reached more than 62 mph in the short straightaway I maxxed it on.  The bike was pretty much what I needed, my only complaint being that I will miss the tall forgiving suspension of my dual sport xl350r and the similarly soft suspension of the Zero bikes I have tried.  

Todd suggested the stock bike could be enhanced a bit (especially range-wise) by replacing the stock 40ah batteries with 60ah batteries (adding around $750 to the stock $8,500 cost).  So this is the configuration we came to agree would best meet my needs riding and cost-wise.

The next day (also, the day this is being written), I called Todd and we confirmed a deal for this configuration, which Todd said would be assembled between 3-5 weeks.  I have just now sent EM a check for most of the cost of the bike, and when the check clears Todd will be sending me pdf files of information on correct handling/usage of the bike...

skadamo:
Congrats guity, that is awesome! I talked to Todd and saw the GPR-S bikes in Ohio and saw them in action. Nice bikes, wish I got a chance to ride one. Thanks a lot for the write up on your experience. That is cool that EM is willing to custom build the bike for you. Looking forward to hearing how you like it.

Did you inquire about the $4500 lead acid model? Just curious how the performance compares to the 8500 $ model.

guity:
Skadamo,

I didn't really ask about those lead acid machines.  I wasn't really interested in them and I was already suffering from information overload.  However, I believe that Todd Anderson might have briefly mentioned them as being one of the driving factors in re-locating the shop to achieve a larger work area and a greater number of employees.

guity:
Just received a call from Martin of EM last night.  Martin is bringing a load of bikes down to Los Angeles and mine will be among them.  Apparently EM has been waiting for weeks for the appropriate battery charger, a Zivan, to be shipped.  It still has not shipped, so they finally decided to place a stock charger on the bike and let me drive the bike that way until the Zivan arrives.  Then they will ship me the Zivan, I will install it in place of the stock charger, and ship the stock charger back up to them.  

Apparently the stock charger is unable to actually charge the 60ah Thundersky batteries on the bike to the fullest extent.  (Martin's figures indicated that the stock charger was .4 volts short on each cell; they were being charged to 3.8 volts instead of 4.2 volts)  So the bike should be just fine to drive, but won't have maximum juice after being charged.  However apparently Martin has already  ridden on the bike 50 miles to break in the motor (on a single charge) and reported that those 50 miles (at low speeds) didn't use up much more than half of the available voltage.

Unfortunately for Martin, since he has so much experience and knowledge, I pretty much grilled him on just about every question I currently have about electric motorcycles.  He was even patient enough to tell me what a battery management system has left to do if a controller takes care of current to the motor and the charger handles current to the batteries.  (Can manage the batteries down to a cell-level, preventing damage from occurring due to a single cell being over charged or over discharged and provide monitoring information that also goes down to the individual cell level, while the controller is only dealing with the bike's array of batteries as a whole.)

At any rate, am fully stoked again and looking forward to the moment of arrival, to say the least!

guity:
Martin delivered the bike yesterday, and I love the damn thing.  Now I just have to figure out how to drive it and how it works!

Martin had already put about 59 break-in miles on it, and had opened up the Etek-RT motor and cleaned any break-in debris out of it.  He had me drive it briefly to see if it was as responsive as I wanted, and at my request he used his laptop to adjust the throttle-up and throttle-down response times in the controller settings to make the bike touchier.  The bike is now set to be pretty sensitive to throttle twists, which on the plus side makes it feel nice and nimble.  The other side of the coin that you need to keep your throttle hand completely steady or can find yourself kind of jerking along.  I like having it set that way partly because focusing on keeping my hand steady kind of fills in some of the void left by suddenly not having any gears to shift.

I never really thought about how much I tended to use the engine to slow my XL350R down, and since my new bike has no re-gen I am afraid it might drive me a little crazy just using the brakes all the time. 

So far I have driven the bike around 44 miles.  When Martin and I first turned it on, the voltage was showing at about 82 V charge, and Martin told me not to drive it for more than 60 amp hours.  When I got off the bike last night the amp hours were at 59.6.  The voltage was still up and around 73 V.

The intended charger for the bike has still not been sent and I think that EM has really gone the extra mile as far as bringing the bike down to Los Angeles when the opportunity arose, and substituting an external, temporary charger to be used until the Zivan is shipped.  I am a little bit worried because at first Martin thought there might not be enough room left inside the fairings to mount the Zivan, but he kind of peered inside and saw some space and changed his opinion on this.  Having the charger mounted on the bike makes the difference between being able to charge the bike at only one location or being able charge the bike almost anywhere.

Connected the charger to the bike at about 8:00 PM last night (Surprised at how loud it is when it is charging.)  At 4:30 AM, unable to sleep, went down into the garage to check it out, kind of assuming that charging would be completed.  But the charger was still humming along.  DIsconnected the charger and turned on the bike.  The bike came up at 77 volts.  That was worrisome to me.  I turned off the bike, re-connected the charger and left it humming.  When I came back to check at 7:30 AM, the charger had gone silent and one of the red LED's on the charger had turned green, the signal that charging was completed.  Now the bike voltage reads 87.4 .  It seems strange that the charging process took so long and that most of the voltage increase was achieved in the final 3 hours.

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