Having read this whole thread I think something may have been missed.
I have a Nissan Leaf in the centre of England and I have given up using public L2 charging in favour of Chademo. L2 is destination charging only so only fine if you want to be there for hours but even then you might turn up and find it occupied by someone who can be there for any length of time as it is a parking space with a charging facility so you can't rely on it ever.
Chademo is a rapid charging space which happens to have somewhere to park so as long as the charger works you should be able to use it, even if it means a shortish wait which can often be minimised by discussion as the other vehicle owner shouldn't be far away either in distance or time.
Where Chademo chargers are doubled up, even if that means only one charger each side of the freeway/motorway, access and reliability improve dramatically. Nissan and *Renault electric cars have a back up plan which is free flatbed trailer recovery to the nearest working charger or home. *Not applicable to Renault EVs if not on expensive battery lease agreement to be clear.
Now to Zero, as a 35 year long biker engineer I have test driven all the 2015 models on a short run recently and was thinking the DS would best suit my location on small uneven country roads miles away from a big town.
Only when I realised that Chademo was no longer a factory option did I drop that idea in favour of the Zero FX as home charging only means no long bike rides out of range without relying on night time stop over recharging on any of their models.
I suspect Zero know they are losing sales without Chademo and there is a reason that they dropped Chademo and just maybe it wasn't just because of the unfinished Chademo standard.
Not just the motor but the battery heats up whilst discharging. The faster the discharge the faster it heats up. Add rapid re-charging and that means more heat in to the battery pack and also less time for the motor and battery to cool down through conduction and convection.
If you can charge faster you will be tempted to both ride faster and go further needing more charges and soon the motor overheat power down restriction will become a regular occurence. More important the battery warranty which, as I understand it, is age and mileage based only, could well be be the subject of expensive to fix warranty claims which would pile future motor and battery liabilities on to Zero which I don't believe they can afford to risk especially with the current buy back scheme being recently implemented.
Their original battery packs were white coloured externally right? Now they are fashionably distinctive and black coloured so there is the added solar load that a black surface absorbs for them to consider as well.
After multiple rapid charges in succession and high speed motorway driving from one charger to the next several UK Leafs have refused to charge at the full rate or at all due to thermal overload even in our moderate climate! I haven't experienced this but I have seen a max temp of 48 Celcius or 118.4 Farenheit in our Leaf where the battery cells are in shade in a metal case under the car and better spread out and so have less concentrated thermal mass than the Zero and no possibility of direct solar heating. The Leaf has a watercooled 80kW motor in the airflow under the car. Zero motor is up to 50kW air cooled only but with next to no airflow!
I would be very interested to hear from anyone with a large Zero battery pack equipped with Chademo about their experiences of thermal overload of motor and/or battery. How many back to back charging & riding sessions have you successfully done on a sunny summer's day? Meanwhile I am firmly sat on the fence as I can't afford a lemon as there are no dealers or repairers willing to commit to warranty work in the UK right now despite what you may have heard.
Poll
12 (50%)
Author
Topic: Who wants ChaDeMo (Read 7879 times)