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[Crissa]

I have found few hills steep enough to generate much regen.

That said, there's one on my standard exercise route that gives me back 5% if I take it at speed.  That's 5% I would have burned off in braking, and if it were flt, had to expend energy to traverse.  Going up the hill the other way takes alot less than 50%.  I can get back not 100% but closer to 50% on the right hill.

Sure, it may be limited, but within those limits there's alot of space.

-Crissa

[Curt]

Saying "110% of the battery" is confusing at best, because it means to say "110% further than an ICE vehicle that has the equivalent range in the flats," but instead implies EVs have more range in the hills. And an ICE doesn't have a battery to be more than 100% of.

The reason I say power from regen is insignificant other than to save the brakes is that if I regen 2000ft down Page Mill Rd, I get less than 1% back vs the 20-25% to go up.

[princec]

Mostly, as they said above, because the battery simply can't take charge in that fast. I hear there have been some promising developments using supercapacitors to store braking energy in and then bleed it back into the battery at a more reasonable rate.

Cas

[JaimeC]

Back on the original topic:  Sam, I'm curious as to how you maintained the battery in those four years?  I know when I bought my 2016 Zero, the recommendation was that if you weren't riding it, leave it plugged in.  A year later, after more research was done, Zero radically changed that recommendation to this:
https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/owner-resources/Cold-and-Hot-Weather-Operation.pdf

So I'm wondering if the range might've also been impacted by the earlier practice before anyone knew any better and if people now practiced the newer guide lines their batteries may last longer?

[Richard230]

Back on the original topic:  Sam, I'm curious as to how you maintained the battery in those four years?  I know when I bought my 2016 Zero, the recommendation was that if your weren't riding it, leave it plugged in.  A year later, after more research was done, Zero radically changed that recommendation to this:
https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/owner-resources/Cold-and-Hot-Weather-Operation.pdf

So I'm wondering if the range might've also been impacted by the earlier practice before anyone knew any better and if people now practiced the newer guide lines their batteries may last longer?

Before I gave my 2014 S with PT to my daughter, I kept it plugged-in all the time for almost four years.  If doing that affected the battery's capacity, she hasn't be able to notice it and neither did I while I owned the bike. 

[JaimeC]

Back on the original topic:  Sam, I'm curious as to how you maintained the battery in those four years?  I know when I bought my 2016 Zero, the recommendation was that if your weren't riding it, leave it plugged in.  A year later, after more research was done, Zero radically changed that recommendation to this:
https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/owner-resources/Cold-and-Hot-Weather-Operation.pdf

So I'm wondering if the range might've also been impacted by the earlier practice before anyone knew any better and if people now practiced the newer guide lines their batteries may last longer?

Before I gave my 2014 S with PT to my daughter, I kept it plugged-in all the time for almost four years.  If doing that affected the battery's capacity, she hasn't be able to notice it and neither did I while I owned the bike. 

Honestly, when the recommendation was to leave it plugged in, Zero warrantied the original battery for five years, or 100,000 miles (whichever came first).  Once they changed their recommendation, they changed the warranty to five years, UNLIMITED miles.

Seriously, 100,000 miles in five years is 20,000 miles a year.  Even when I had just one ICE bike I rode every day and traveled extensively I was hard pressed to put that many miles on it in one year.  For all intents and purposes for me, the warranty terms are IDENTICAL.

[TheRan]

Saying "110% of the battery" is confusing at best, because it means to say "110% further than an ICE vehicle that has the equivalent range in the flats," but instead implies EVs have more range in the hills. And an ICE doesn't have a battery to be more than 100% of.

It's not confusing and it's not saying that, all it's saying is that with regen you can utilise more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery. If you're making the assumption that that means greater than 100% of the range on flat then that fault is with you, like wise if you thought that an electric bike would get the same range in a hilly environment as it would on flat ground. We all know, or should know, that climbing hills uses more energy. Likewise range is reduced when it's cold out, at higher speeds, or when you don't tuck for better aero. These things apply even to ICE bikes so riders of those should know these basic facts of efficiency, if they don't then all of this is going to confuse them so there's no need to cherry pick one thing that Sam said.

[Crissa]

I still would point out that I've never hit the limit on the regen capacity except in hard stops, and I already avoid those.  It takes a really steep hill to go over regen, like 10% or above.  Few roads do that.

-Crissa

[Curt]

It's not confusing and it's not saying that, all it's saying is that with regen you can utilise more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery.

There we go again with the non-conservation of energy! If you believe that, I can tell you about a recently black hole observation where the particles shoot out "faster than the speed of light."

And my on-topic comment was that the video failed to compare original range to current range.

[TheRan]

It's not confusing and it's not saying that, all it's saying is that with regen you can utilise more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery.

There we go again with the non-conservation of energy! If you believe that, I can tell you about a recently black hole observation where the particles shoot out "faster than the speed of light."

I'm not saying the battery can hold more than 100% of its capacity, which is obviously impossible, but rather that including the energy regained from regen allows someone to travel using more energy than the 100% capacity of the battery.

To make it simpler let's use an actual battery capacity instead of 100%. Say we have a 25 MJ battery (roughly what a 7.2kW/h Zero is), without regen you can only ever use 25 MJ of energy to move the bike on a single charge. With regen you might regain a megajoule or two which can also be used to move the bike, so the total energy you have available to you is greater than 25 MJ or 100% of the battery capacity.

[princec]

Err....

Cas

[Richard230]

It has been my observation with my 2014 and 2018 Zeros that I have never seen the SOC increase more than 1% when activating the regen function, not even while braking lightly down a miles-long hill. And of course, when the battery is topped off, the regen is not available until the voltage drops a bit after riding about a mile or so.

[Crissa]

For it to show via SOC you need:  A long, steep hill; weight on the bike; and a regen setting that doesn't create more rolling resistance than your weight and the acceleration granted by the hill can overcome.

There's a hill that I (and many other drivers) coast down so that we can coast up the other side.  This hill isn't steep enough for me to regen at all.

Every time I do get to use regen, even just coming to a stop, I get more range than I otherwise would have.  So yes, with regen I get to use more energy than my battery's initial capacity.  If you only count energy spent and remember that potential energy is a thing.

-Crissa

[TheRan]

It doesn't matter how little energy you get from regen, it's still energy regained. You're also only thinking about it at a single point, one single hill, and just because the SoC doesn't go up by 1% doesn't mean there's no energy going back into the battery. Likewise if you went up a hill but didn't see the SoC drop you wouldn't think that it didn't use any energy to get up that hill.

I've never seen my SoC go up from regen, I don't go down any particularly long hills, but I certainly do gain some energy back from using it and that delays the rate at which my SoC goes down.

[Crissa]

If you change your regen settings, what you should see more easily is your Wh/mi change.

-Crissa