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[Kappi]

Hey everybody,

I managed to get the SR out of hybernation today.
The weather was a crisp an sunny -6°C (21°F), pretty chilly but the man wants to ride, so what to do?

The preparation
When I turned on the bike, the app showed a battery temp of 3°C, supposedly warm enough to charge up from its storage SOC but not ideal.
Thus, I used an infrared space heater to warm up the bike and the battery, radiating at the block first from one side and then from the other and vice versa while using the on board charger to increase the SOC.
Once I had the battery up to 10°C I connected the external charger, charged up to 100% and let it balance to about 5mV, all while still pumping heat into the pack.
When everything was charged up, the battery sat at a "toasty" 19°C.

The ride
Say what you will, but heated gloves and a warm (an I mean really warm, like "lets take a hike to the pole - warm" outfit are indespensable.
The roads were white with salt but free of ice and I managed a comfortable 40 km on slow country roads, along icy river bends and snow covered fileds, with 75% SOC left, all the while the battery surprisingly keeping its temperature of around 20°C.
However, my feet were rapidly approaching the same figure (warm suit but summer boots) and it was time to find someplace warm.
Luckily, I had the option of taking the Autobahn back to where I started (speedrun).
The bike held a comfortable 155 to 160 kph for allmost the whole distance of some 30 km. On downhill patches, the SR would creep up to 170 kph and would loose a little momentum on uphill stretches but never fell below 150 kph, while the motor temp hovered around 110°C (the cold has its benifits). In the summer, I get a heat warning after maybe 5-6 km of WOT.
Leaving the Autobahn with an SOC of 28%, I stopped at a local store to get a coke and some juice from the charging station, then rode on home.
I was surprised to see that the app showed a battery temp of 40°C prior to charging, despite the cold weather.

The aftermath
To keep it short, 3 hours of meticulous cleaning the geht the salt dust out of every crevice of the bike.

The summary
I am quite happy with the range under the above conditions, I could have gotten a lot further If I had kept my speed down, but so what.
Power restriction: Not a lot, however on warm days on a full charge the speedo will show 174 kph indicated at top speed.
One our of riding and three hours of cleaning plus the time spend prepping the bike... Was it worth it? Totoally, would recommend and do it again

What are your experience with your bikes in the cold?
What is the coldest weather in which you have used your Zero?
Feel free to comment.

Best regards and happy riding

Kappi

[JaimeC]

Far more important than heated gloves is an electric vest.  A good electric vest keeps your core warm which in turn keeps the rest of your body feeling warm.  I've ridden in some STUPIDLY cold weather with the only electric being a snug-fitting vest UNDER my insulating layers (makes no sense to put the vest on top of a sweater).

My feet never get cold.  I find when my fingers start feeling cold it's because I'm tensing up and squeezing the grips too hard which is a "normal" reaction when you start feeling cold.  Unfortunately, this cuts off the flow of warm blood into your fingertips.  I find that relaxing my grip and wiggling the fingers gets them feeling warm again.  Once I figured this stuff out, I don't miss having the heated grips that my K1200LT has. 

[Kappi]

A heated vest is something I yet have to add. Jamie, what you describe regarding core temp makes sense. I have had the same experience with warm hands: As long as your fingers are warm, the rest of you doesn't feel that cold either.

[Crissa]

Huzzah for cold Of course, I have only been in that cold twice in my life, a couple days spent in Chicago a few years back

-Crissa

[JaimeC]

My record for cold weather riding has to be the Crotona Midnight Run the year I entered.  Unfortunately, I didn't finish as I missed a turn, got hopelessly lost and eventually found a familiar highway and just took it home.  For those of you unfamiliar with the event, it is typically held in late January/early February on a Saturday night/Sunday morning closest to the full moon.  It is a timed event where they mark when you leave the sign-up, and when you hit the various checkpoints along the way.  The idea is to AVERAGE 30 mph.  If you do a steady 30 miles an hour and not get lost you will hit the checkpoints at the prescribed time.  It is scored like golf; the lower the score the better.  You get two points for every minute you hit the checkpoint EARLY, and one point for every minute you hit the checkpoint LATE (this is to discourage speeding).  You are not allowed to use GPS or any other electronic navigation aid; that is cause for immediate disqualification.  Trying to read a route sheet by moonlight is a challenge in itself.

I digress... before I abandoned the ride to head home, the thermometer on my K1200LT read "9F."  That's nine degrees above zero Fahrenheit.  The bike has a heated saddle and heated grips and I was wearing an electric vest and you better believe I had everything cranked to the max!!  The worst was my breath fogging on the face shield and freezing into "snow."  Opening the face shield to let in air was NOT an option.  That was the first and ONLY time I ever entered that event.

[domingo3]

My cold riding experience is much simpler, since I do it every day in the winter.  The coldest I've done is 8F/-13C.  To me, Hippo Hands blocking the wind are much more valuable than heated gear.

Preparation:
Turn on bike and go.

The ride:
Range is about 30% less than summer.  The limit on top speed is really unpredictable.  I ride an FXS, so it's much more susceptible to current limiting than bikes with the larger battery.  Sometimes I can reach close to max speed, sometimes it's limited to 70MPH or so at full SOC.  When SOC gets below 50%, I can sometimes be limited to 50MPH.  Other times I can still go 75MPH.  I've been unsuccessful at finding correlations to conditions (eg ambient temperature, battery temperature, etc.)  I wear different amounts of layers based on how cold it is and how far/fast I'm riding.  If I get cold on a ride, I note where I got cold and adjust next time I ride.

The aftermath:
Plug it in right away and charge to 80%.  I clean it periodically, but not every day because I'll be riding again in 12 hours.

[Kappi]

Hi domingo3,

apart from the current limiting, have you noticed any other temperature related issues withou your bike?

[domingo3]

Apart from the range reduction in the cold, which is pretty universal, I do see some weirdness in indicated SOC.  It's not really an issue of concern and I think it's just difficulty with estimating the battery state. I'll often do a partial charge when I get home and then plug it back in when I wake up.  There's been times when indicated SOC actually goes down by several percent over an hour or so while charging.  On occasion, I've actually seen SOC go up while riding for a couple of miles before starting to go back down.  This seems to make up for the "missing" increase in charge and everything balances out as far as range goes. Really nothing more than oddly interesting.

Hi domingo3,

apart from the current limiting, have you noticed any other temperature related issues withou your bike?

[Crissa]

Always makes you uncertain after the SoC starts going up when you're putting miles on

But it does seem to do that when the battery warms back up.  Temperature seems to compress SoC like a spring, but the true consumption of SoC is linear.  So while it's colder, you get fewer miles per SoC, but when it uncompresses, you can see the next few miles take lots less SoC per mile, to the point of getting negative SoC per mile.

So weird.

And I don't ride in anything supercold, but I do change climactic zones coming out of the mountains and can get a huge swing in temperature during a ride.

-Crissa

[staples]

I'll second everything domingo3 said. My FXS acts the same in cold weather. I think the worst I've seen is being limited to about 40mph when the temperature was maybe 15ºF at 40% SoC. Also the SoC drops much more quickly the lower the SoC got in the cold temps.

[SkyYeti]

I've been riding all winter here in the UK.
The limiting factor for me is ice. If they haven't gritted the roads then I'm not riding.

I've had loads of 0 degree (C) rides to work this winter, the worst being minus 3 I think.
A good chunk of my ride is on a motorway, which can get a bit chilly at 60mph.
Heated grips on max, heated gloves on max, heated jacket on 75%, with a big waterproof/windproof outer jacket.
Boots and trousers not heated and sometimes my brain can't work out whether I'm cold or not..  .. feet and legs feeling real cold but upper body warm as toast..

In terms of range I seem to lose about 10% on my SR/F once we're down to < 2 degrees C.
My commute round trip is 60 miles and I can charge at work, so the range reduction doesn't really affect me much so I don't pay it much attention

Looking forward to some warmer/dryer weather though.
It's not much fun riding home in the dark on roads that were gritted but there are suspicious shiny patches on some of the corners 

[Kappi]

Does the UK use a lot of salt on the roads?

[SkyYeti]

It depends on the region/county and whether the local council stockpiled enough salt before winter
But generally, yes, if the nights drop below freezing the trucks will be out gritting the roads.
In my area they tend to skip the smaller side roads, so it can be a bit sketchy getting from my house to a main (gritted) road, but after that it's usually okay.

[umrath]

I picked up my DSR Black Forest (used 2018) from a dealter 200 km away from home and I wanted to drive home.
At -5 to -10 degree Celsius - but sunny, about 2 weeks ago. Roads were dry.

It was my first real ride on an electric motorbike (except for a very short test drive quite a while ago). But I'm quite experienced with electric vehicles in general as I drive electric cars for 4 years. So, I felt comfortable doing this and was prepared for whatever will hit me.
I had a friend with me that drove my car home. I had an option to warm up any time I needed it.

The plan was to drive increments of 50 km and charge at those and warm up during this time.

My clothes:
- heated gloves (running out of juice about 30 km from home)
- snowboard boots (the warmest boots I have)
- jogging trousers and sweater under my regular motorbike clothes
- ski trousers over my motorbike clothes
- regular winter jacket over my motorbike clothes
- thermo overall over everything

I was starting to sweat whenever I stepped off the bike. And I needed some help to get dressed because of the wealth of clothes I wore. But I had a friend with me. And once I sat on the bike I didn't feel the clothes anymore.

During the ride my body was super warm. Absolutely comfortable.
Feet got slowly colder over time, but not uncomfortable.
The last 30 km I actually felt the impact of the heated gloves - or rather the lack of it. It got really cold and I had to twiddle my fingers to keep them warm enough.

The only issue that I encountered was the bike itself.
Despite the expected 6 kW charging speed I never managed to exceed 3 kW. So, being dragged down to essentially half the speed the whole drive took much, much longer than planned.
I also lost a lot of time testing different charging stations and cables (I had the standard Typ2-Typ1 charging cable that came with the bike and additionally a Typ2-Typ1 adapter to be able to use regular Typ2 cables attached to certain charging stations). The problem was the same wherever I tried to charge.

Eventually I settled with charging at 3 kW (actually rather 2,5-2,8 kW) at one station while sitting in the car watching Netflix.

I chose to truck surf home to conserve energy and avoid charging even longer. Which worked nicely.

Eventually I realized that the charger itself is faulty and will not charge >3kW even when the battery is warm.
I will drive to bike to a repair shop next days.

[Crissa]

Too bad about the faulty charger!

-Crissa