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[Richard230]

Here is a detailed positive review that was prepared for police departments by a retired police officer reviewing the 2012 Zero DS.  I note that this site also has other reviews of BMW's  IC "authority" motorcycle models.

http://www.policeone.com/police-products/vehicles/motorcycles/articles/6020324-Product-Review-The-Zero-DS-motorcycle/

[dahlheim]

great review.  his honest impressions of the bike's performance and virtues mirror mine.

[Richard230]

I visited my Zero (and every Japanese brand) dealer today and they had an "Authority" 9 kWh Zero S on the showroom floor.  I was pretty impressed with the way it was set up.  It had the oval "crash-hang-stuff-on-them" bars on either side, one of which had a siren on it.  The bike also had hard saddlebags, strobe lights, a windshield and 50/50 dual-purpose tires.  Everything was blacked out, of course. A very nice setup for urban stealth policing and off-road trail patrolling.  I was told that the bike was going to a local agency for evaluation within the next couple of days.

[protomech]

Not a DS?

Edit: I think a fantastically useful accessory for first responders would be a powerful inverter with 120V 60Hz 20A and 240V 60Hz 30A interfaces .. or better, build these into the motor controller. Yeah, it couldn't run for long, especially with a partly discharged battery .. but even a single ZF2.8 / ZF3 module could handle those power requirements, and it just has to run long enough to get more resources in place.

Here's all the things a 2012 S has to do:

Controller:
* converts battery 60-80V DC to motor 60-80V AC 420A
* converts generator 60-80V AC to 80V DC to charge battery

Charger:
* converts mains 80-265V AC to 80V DC to charge battery

Inverter (acc):
* converts battery voltage, 60-80V to mains voltage 120/240V 50/60Hz 20-30A

It seems like a very elegant solution would be to have one piece of power electronics that converts between AC and DC. Hang everything else (battery, motor, mains input, mains-like output) off of it.

[NoiseBoy]

If my understanding is correct it isn't quite that simple as a controller doesn't produce true AC for the motor, its more like DC but with the the polarity reversing very rapidly alongside 2 other rapidly reversing DC currents although perhaps the "flux vector control" on a Sevcon does it differently?

[Harlan]

Not a DS?

Edit: I think a fantastically useful accessory for first responders would be a powerful inverter with 120V 60Hz 20A and 240V 60Hz 30A interfaces .. or better, build these into the motor controller. Yeah, it couldn't run for long, especially with a partly discharged battery .. but even a single ZF2.8 / ZF3 module could handle those power requirements, and it just has to run long enough to get more resources in place.

Here's all the things a 2012 S has to do:

Controller:
* converts battery 60-80V DC to motor 60-80V AC 420A
* converts generator 60-80V AC to 80V DC to charge battery

Charger:
* converts mains 80-265V AC to 80V DC to charge battery

Inverter (acc):
* converts battery voltage, 60-80V to mains voltage 120/240V 50/60Hz 20-30A

It seems like a very elegant solution would be to have one piece of power electronics that converts between AC and DC. Hang everything else (battery, motor, mains input, mains-like output) off of it.

Not to get too off-topic here, but one of Tesla's really cool innovations, (technology originally developed by AC Propulsion I believe), is that the power control module functions as both a controller and a charger effectively cutting down the number of parts and saving weight.  I believe the power control module uses the motor as a transformer to convert the AC power from the grid to charge the batteries.

[protomech]

That's what I've heard as well, Harlan. I've also heard that's various litigation and patents surrounding the combination of the two..

Renault has something similar .. accepts up to 43 kW (400V 63A 3 phase) AC. Integrated into their drive system.

I can't wait until we've standardized on charging formats and can really roll out national infrastructure. Anyone remember the induction chargers for the RAV4 EV?

[Richard230]

Speaking of Tesla, my newspaper reports that they have announced that their Model S customers will be able to buy replacement battery packs for their cars at a fixed price of $8,000 for the 40 kWh battery, $10,000 for the 60 kWh and $12,000 for the 85 kWh battery pack.  Now that sounds pretty cheap to me, but I wonder how often you would need to replace the pack?  I assume that they figure that by the time you have to replace the pack battery prices would have dropped and this is their best guess of what it would cost some years down the road.

[protomech]

Notably, this covers battery replacements after the eighth year of ownership. Circa 2020. $150-200/kWh is markedly lower than today.. I don't doubt that Tesla has some guidance from Panasonic about cell cost roadmaps, but it's probably still a gamble on their part.

So far they have built around 1000 Model S vehicles.. so even if their cost projections are off by a factor of two, their total loss would be around $12M (iirc all S built to date are 85 kWh models). I'm also assuming there's no residual value left in the batteries for Tesla; Musk could easily resell the batteries to Solar City for offpeak storage purposes.

Tesla offered a similar replacement plan for the Roadster batteries, I believe it was $12k (paid up front) for a new battery in 5 (?) years. The recent round of Roadsters with discharged-to-death batteries were ineliglble for the replacement plan .. the 56 kWh battery replacement was billed at $32000 + $8000 labor and taxes. Yow.

I'd like to see Zero offer something similar for their bikes. At least the labor cost should be very small : P

Edit:

Tesla also covers the S (halfway down the page) with a 4 year, 50k mile warranty standard (similar to BMW 5 series for example). You can extend the warranty to 8 years, 100k miles for $2500 (bumper-to-bumper except tires). This seems like a pretty good deal .. compare to prices for a BMW 328i.

Tesla also offers prepaid maintenance plans, with home visits.. $1800/4 years for regularly scheduled visits, or $2400/4 years for unlimited visits. When I stopped by a Tesla store last year, the price was $1/mile roundtrip for a Ranger visit. At the time, the nearest Service Center was in Florida .. 1000+ miles round trip = $1000+ for a service visit.. no freaking way. The prepaid service plans would be a pretty easy call for me.. if I was in the market for a $50k+ car.

[NoiseBoy]

This should probably be split into a separate thread.  Using the motor as a transformer is a brilliant idea. Why didn't I think of that?

Bricked batteries is an interesting one.  A couple of people have whinged to me along the lines of 'oh sure your electric bike might be great until you leave it at the airport for a week and have to buy a new battery for £10,000" etc. but then if i put contaminated fuel in my gas bike or bounced it off the limiter for 3 hours it would break, so i don't do it. In the same way i wouldn't leave my bike unplugged for 11 weeks.  Im pretty sure there are many more ways to write off an ICE (which is still very expensive to replace) than there are to write off a battery.

I wonder if a sensible precaution would be to have a secondary backup, say a small 10Ah LiFePO4 12V battery in circuit with the BMS that would throw a contactor and take over to run the electronics when the main pack dropped below a set voltage.  All these issues are easily solvable with time.  Early adopters will always have more problems to deal with than those buying 10 years down the line but generally the major ones are few and far between even at this stage in development.

[protomech]

Or possibly have the bike disconnect all power completely from the battery at a certain voltage level. Self discharge will still slowly deplete the battery .. but in most reasonable cases this is not going to be a concern.

It took about a calendar week to ship my bike back from Zero. The SOC meter displayed 11 bars on power-on, and the first bar didn't seem to disappear abnormally quickly.

[benswing]

A police officer took a quick spin on a 2013 Zero S and it looks like he enjoyed it.  This video was taken in Long Beach after the International Motorcycle Show in Dec 2012, just a few days ago.

In the commentary, the author of this post wrote that the officer mentioned that his ears are ringing by the end of the day riding his BMW, and having a quite bike would be a welcome change.  Also, the whole sneaking up on suspects is fun, too.

http://www.torquenews.com/1079/what-happens-when-police-officer-rides-his-first-electric-motorcycle

[Richard230]

That is a great video, Benswing.  Thanks for posting. 

[trikester]

I was there. It was great to see in person and great again to see the video!

Trikester

[Richard230]

This police 2012 DS has been on my dealer's showroom floor for a while.  I wonder why? Other than having white hand guards, which should be painted black (IMHO), the bike looks really nice. It is well finished and accessorized.