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[David S]

Hi, so recently my onboard charger has been overheating the battery on my 2017 SR. Last night after charging up from 50% to 98%, it took about an hour and a half for the battery to cool down enough for me to ride it. I live in Vegas and usually charge in a casino parking lot, outdoor temperatures have been around 100 degrees.

Some history, I've had a 2016 SR before this which i also charged through the summer and never had this issue. On this 2017, the first charger went out after a couple months and zero shipped a new one. After that i had an issue with the battery cutting out power. After zero tried several different solutions, they ended up having to replace the entire battery. The new battery isn't cutting power but this is the one new issue I have now. I'm curious if i need to bring it back to my dealer again to have this diagnosed?

[togo]

Get some shade on that battery.  Lightweight reflective is good, make sure there's airflow.  Think lean-to rather than stretch-over.  Something made for a car dash, for example, and some clips and bungees.

[David S]

This is while its being charged inside a parking garage, no sunlight.

[mrwilsn]

I have never seen my battery get so hot I couldn't ride....in fact I don't even know what the cutoff temp is where you can't ride.

At 50C (122F) the bike stops charging but you can still ride.  In order for the battery to get so hot you can't ride either charging isn't stopping for some reason (bad BMS or faulty contactor etc.) or the battery somehow keeps getting hotter after charging stops (this would be super bad).

It could be a bad temp sensor too or bad calibration and the battery maybe isn't actually getting that hot.  I would definitely take the bike in and send bike logs to Zero with times when it overheated.

What battery temp did you see in the app when you couldn't ride?

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[togo]

Mr. Wilson knows more about this stuff than I.  Good to see you in the forums again, Mr. W.

[David S]

Thanks Mrwilson, I didn't check the app for the temp, but the battery was definetely very hot. It was very warm to the touch. Sounds like I will have to bring it in again for them to check it out.

[Doctorbass]

While sitting in my garage ( at about 21 degree C) i also noticed that the charger heat of my 2017 SR was easily transfered to the battery. I measured up to 45 degree C at the bottom of the battery.

My concern was that the 2017 use new long brick and  cells stack are vertical.  This mean that cells at the bottom receive more heat than cells at the top so they could age diferently witch could  on a long period degrade cells differently and affect battery internal resistance uniformity over the cell stack witch could make these to perform differently and over the time loose some Ah due to cell imbalance created by non uniform aging.

I discussed to the Zero battery designer about that and he said that the cell to cell heat transfer is good so the heat migrate easily from one cell to the next so the heat should be very uniform and distrivuted  over the all cells and only have minimal temp diff from the bottom to the top.

However i still dont like that the charger transfer most of his heat to the battery.. this certainly make cell to age faster.

Doc



 

[NEW2elec]

I think I would like to see the charger (V2 supercharger replacing current chargers) moved to the top or tank area and drop the battery box, lowering the center of gravity just a bit more.
Maybe charger to the tail and controller near the tank with a frontal heat sink.

[MrDude_1]

I think I would like to see the charger (V2 supercharger replacing current chargers) moved to the top or tank area and drop the battery box, lowering the center of gravity just a bit more.
Maybe charger to the tail and controller near the tank with a frontal heat sink.

You dont want to lower the CG of the bike. The lower it is, the lazier the handling. If you were flipping over doing wheelies, sure... but no one is wheeling their zero unless they're intentionally doing so.

[Wolfsbane]

I have the same issue on my 2017 DSR. Interestingly, fast charging with the DigiNow Supercharger solves the problem. The bike is fully charged before the onboard charger heats the battery up too much.

[Doctorbass]

Yeah thats something i have discussed with Liveforphysics. He said that fast charging is so quick then the battery mass make it remaining  lower temp because  quick charging time is too low to let too much heat transfer to it. I think  Terry installed 4 of the SCV2 at the onboard charger location. They produce more heat but it last 10 time less too

Doc