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[NEW2elec]

Not able to support the markets they're in. Customer repair times are often measured in months, sometime years. Customer was in our shop today asking for our help with a Zero SR they bought in April or May 2019 that was out-of-commission since late May 2019. Got to back and while on the way to annual test the bike shut down again and wont restart.  From what I understand its either bad software or controller... again.  We gave him the number of the lawyer handling the class action, but I think he's going to suit in the UK.

What kind of BS is this?
There have been far too many good examples of "Zero" doing a great job for customers, myself included to waste peoples time and money and maybe killing the company so they never get a fix all while making some bottom feeding lawyer a bunch of money.

I've had too many people on here refusing to believe their "best friend" dealer shop isn't really working hard to fix their bike. The problem must be mean old Zero has their arms crossed and refuses to help.
In the end they almost always end up going with the fantastic advice of trading in that weird electric thing ( for pennies on the dollar for what they paid) and getting a good old gas bike. 
Then they will have to bring it in regularly to have constant fixes, I meant to say "routine maintenance" in their service center.  Only for a few years though as they also tell everyone they need to do that bad trade in deal again on another new bike.

The SR should have been shipped back to Zero and let them fix it but I bet the first dealer wanted to keep the tab running at their shop.

[Crissa]

If I ever hear a tech saying 'bad software or controller... again' I know not to trust that tech.

It doesn't matter if it's a PC or a motorbike.

-Crissa

[wavelet]

I guess you missed my post or didn't want to accept it.  You can get a cord that lets you charge from a level 2 socket now.
The fact it's only pulling 650Ws don't matter if it's sitting there all night.

So can you make it work now with no house or garage?  Yes
Would it be nice to be able to charge it faster?  Yes
At a cost of $3500?  Not for me and certainly not for poorer people.

Still is it likely that Zero will be coming out with a bike like your saying you want next year?  I am guessing yes.

Really if you can't get "there" and back on a single 100% battery charge on a FXS you should get a bigger bike.

I think you missed where I said charging overnight isn't an option as there's time limits for public charging stations. It's happily pay that price for the option, in fact I did to get a charge tank on the S. I don't get why people here are so hostile to the fact that my use case is different. This is a different market. I'm not asking you to tell me how to make it work. It doesn't work. I'm asking why you think Zero hasn't updated the bikes to make them attractive here.

Instead, all I'm getting is people telling me I dont' need what I need because I should be ok with the US use-case. This is really weird. Anyway, abandoning this thread. Doesn't seem like there's an interest in a constructive discussion about how these bikes could own a lot more market share.

Let me take a stab at it; I'm sympathetic, as I live in a far more crowded country than the UK -- virtually no detached houses. It's a very big problem for car EV adoption.

You shouldn't think of Zero as a motorcycle company like BMW or Triumph, and certainly not like Yamaha or Honda. They're essentially a small startup, and have very little bandwidth to do engineering or testing. There's also likely a supply chain volume issue: You need decent production volumes to get very good prices from suppliers. A 3.3kW charger is excellent for Europe (and would be for me, in a 240V AC country), but would be serious overkill in the US, in addition to the engineering reasons Crissa brought up. To offer it on Euro/UK models, it's quite possible Zero would need to pay a lot more per charger for the existing US ones, because they'd be splitting the order.
You may not realize this, but Zero only makes a 4-digit number of bikes per year (low 4 digit, as far as anyone knows). It's only been several years since Zero was even able to get Showa, Pirelli & Bosch to sell them components -- they were too small previously.

Zero is constantly struggling with handling overseas importers -- I think they went through two in Australia (and there isn't a current one), they had one here in Israel who quarreled with them, they canceled the agency agreement  and for over a year there was no support for ~200 local owners (they recently settled on a new one). This subforum has lots of bad storie about the difficulty of long-distance support for a complex product by a small product.

Even on the newest platform with the most expensive bikes, the SR/F & SR/S, Zero still doesn't wire the two chargers differently for the UK which would have allowed >3.3kW charging from 7kW chargers -- they hobble UK buyers so as not to need a different version for the UK as for the rest of the EU, see this thread.

The e-motorcycle market (aside from the 50cc equivalent e-scooter which is already large in Asia) isn't going to get large anytime soon; range is simply insufficient for sport-touring, touring or adventure touring, which leaves track bikes and commuting -- but most commuting can be handled on e-bicycles or e-mopeds / e-scooters.

Zero has to be very careful so they won't suffer the fate of Brammo, Alta, Mission Motors etc.

[Crissa]

And it's not like Zero isn't trying:  Their cooperation with companies like Exro may give them the circuitry to bring out some wizardry that lets them have cheap, reliable configurable chargers or batteries that charge differently, or enhance their performance, like the demo with the motor with multiple coil setups.

It's exciting stuff.  But it takes time, and they have to be careful how much of what they order.

They can't escape that the biggest advantage of the electric motorcycle is that it never, ever needs to go somewhere else to charge, get fuel or oil.  They're super self-contained.  That is their one big thing.

-Crissa

[DonTom]

They can't escape that the biggest advantage of the electric motorcycle is that it never, ever needs to go somewhere else to charge, get fuel or oil.  They're super self-contained.  That is their one big thing.

Isn't that true with all BEVs?

-Don-  Auburn, CA

[Crissa]

They can't escape that the biggest advantage of the electric motorcycle is that it never, ever needs to go somewhere else to charge, get fuel or oil.  They're super self-contained.  That is their one big thing.

Isn't that true with all BEVs?

Yes?

But you don't buy a car when you want a motorcycle.

-Crissa

[AutoE]

Wavelet...
THIS IS PATENTLY FALSE
" Zero is constantly struggling with handling overseas importers -- I think they went through two in Australia (and there isn't a current one), they had one here in Israel who quarreled with them, they canceled the agency agreement  and for over a year there was no support for ~200 local owners (they recently settled on a new one). "


NOT at all true. IMPORTERS, DEALERS are constantly struggling to get ZERO to fix outright defective bikes.  AUTO ELECTRIC did not quarrel with ZERO.  Auto Electric politely asked ZERO to abide by the law and their warranty obligations.  ZERO telling a customer to bury a year old FX that BURST INTO FLAMES while being ridden is one of hundreds of examples.

Photos available.  There's also a ZERO that caught fire on Highway 1, batteries that alighted in a shed, 20+ motor failures and over 120 battery replacements... these are the results of DEFECTS, not "support" issues.

[Auriga]

You can find a picture of every kind of vehicle catching fire, from Teslas to gas bikes to Zeros. Any high energy vehicle/battery can do that in adverse conditions.

Zero would have told you(as the old distributor/dealer) to properly recycle defective batteries. They even pay for the recycling cost. I've done it quite a few times now. If the owner takes the batteries and buries them, that's on the distributor or the owner. Please stop lying.

Dealers are not really struggling to fix bikes, and I've seen no evidence of any defects outside of the obvious warranty campaigns. And you have provided none. 2020 has been a bit harder with a pandemic and wildfires almost burning down HQ, but we continue to receive the same support we always have.

It certainly didn't stop Zero from partnering with a larger distributor in Israel. It's unlikely Zero will ever tell us why they terminated their relationship with Auto Electric, but it seems you're a very unreliable source of information.
It could just as easily be that Auto Electric was engaged in fraud, and Zero had enough. But I have Zero evidence of that. I only have rumors and the fact that they terminated the relationship before they had a replacement lined up.

And the fact you're waging a one man war to try to discredit Zero in every way possible, with zero evidence. No real lawsuits, no class actions, no hordes of angry Israeli Zero owners.

They're hardly perfect bikes, but they continue to improve at a fairly rapid pace.

[wavelet]

Wavelet...
THIS IS PATENTLY FALSE
" Zero is constantly struggling with handling overseas importers -- I think they went through two in Australia (and there isn't a current one), they had one here in Israel who quarreled with them, they canceled the agency agreement  and for over a year there was no support for ~200 local owners (they recently settled on a new one). "


NOT at all true. IMPORTERS, DEALERS are constantly struggling to get ZERO to fix outright defective bikes.  AUTO ELECTRIC did not quarrel with ZERO.  Auto Electric politely asked ZERO to abide by the law and their warranty obligations.  ZERO telling a customer to bury a year old FX that BURST INTO FLAMES while being ridden is one of hundreds of examples.

Photos available.  There's also a ZERO that caught fire on Highway 1, batteries that alighted in a shed, 20+ motor failures and over 120 battery replacements... these are the results of DEFECTS, not "support" issues.

So, you didn't quarrel with them? BYO term then. It doesn't matter -- "quarrel" doesn't make any judgements as to why or who's responsible.
I've no idea what exactly transpired, and have no dog in this fight.
I don't and didn't own a Zero, or work for the new importer, and never had any bike-specific interaction with you (beyond talking to you briefly on the phone a few years ago to get more information on what level of support owners of the bikes could expect in the country, when you first started importing them. I appreciate it can't have been easy to get approval from Zero to import the bikes with our tiny market, and to homologate them with our primitive and bike-hostile Ministry of Transportation)

However, over half your posts in this forum, in multiple threads, are serious accusations against Zero, that frequently have nothing to do with the subject of the thread.
You have never, not once AFAIR, substantiated these accusations, despite at least a dozen requests to do so.
Not to mention, many of the accusations are completely hyperbolic.

ZERO telling a customer to bury a year old FX that BURST INTO FLAMES while being ridden is one of hundreds of examples

Hundreds of examples in Israel alone? Only about 200 Zeroes bikes were ever sold here. Every single one was defective?
And

photos available

Really? So how come you never posted one here, despite many requests?

It's getting really, really, really tiresome, amounts to threadcrapping, and I don't understand what you think you get out of it. You've been told by multiple posters here that they don't & won't take you seriously without evidence.
It's a big shame, because you clearly have a lot of experience with Zeros which could help many folks here, and when you do make substantive posts, they're to the point and useful.

f you have specific evidence for the numerous accusations, by all means give it -- you'd be doing a lot of people an important service, warning them away from life-endangering and/or inherently defective, expensive, products.
If you don't, or don't / can't give it, for whatever reason, STFU already.

[princec]

Well, there are multiple instances of examples of Zero dealership support on this very forum and tbh it doesn't look great. Direct support from a niche enthusiast manufacturer's engineers is worth gold, and Zero appears to somehow have erected a cold corporate wall of Nope. Energica on the other hand have a mole or two in here which is very shrewd of them. It's little things like that that form the opinions of potential customers.

Cas

[NEW2elec]

Well lets look at what a dealership should be like by going to one of if not the best Zero dealerships, Hollywood Electrics.
First you know Harlan and his guys know these bikes backwards and forwards.  He helped make the SRs and his shop has made modifications and accessories exclusively for these bikes.

Zero knows HE knows what they are doing and HE knows what to ask or suggest to get an issue resolved.
Harlan is never going to shrug his shoulders and say I don't know what's wrong with it, screw this thing what you need is this Ducati over here.
That is what you will get from a lot of old school bike shops though.  Not all of them for sure, as some of the techs see the future coming and embrace it while others want to keep the status quo.

My own experience was a bad battery that resulted in Zero shipping my bike across the country, replacing my battery, and shipping it back with a new charging cord thrown in and it didn't cost me a dime.

[Richard230]

Well lets look at what a dealership should be like by going to one of if not the best Zero dealerships, Hollywood Electrics.
First you know Harlan and his guys know these bikes backwards and forwards.  He helped make the SRs and his shop has made modifications and accessories exclusively for these bikes.

Zero knows HE knows what they are doing and HE knows what to ask or suggest to get an issue resolved.
Harlan is never going to shrug his shoulders and say I don't know what's wrong with it, screw this thing what you need is this Ducati over here.
That is what you will get from a lot of old school bike shops though.  Not all of them for sure, as some of the techs see the future coming and embrace it while others want to keep the status quo.

My own experience was a bad battery that resulted in Zero shipping my bike across the country, replacing my battery, and shipping it back with a new charging cord thrown in and it didn't cost me a dime.

Regarding Harlan and Hollywood Electrics: That is the difference between having an electric engineer own a motorcycle shop and having an appliance or furniture salesman owning a motorcycle shop. Especially one that sells and services electric motorcycles. 

[princec]

Unfortunately it doesn't play well with the narrative that EVs are zero-to-low maintenance devices which you just plug-n-play with, which is a major selling point in the EV world. People are wanting a thing that just goes and goes and needs nothing other than consumables replacing, not a thing that requires the wisdom of a single wise old sage that lives up the top of a mystic mountain to diagnose its many and frequently document major component failures.

Cas

[Crissa]

But no class of device never needs help.  Even appliances in the kitchen.  If your repair tech doesn't know their foibles, they won't repair it right the moment you get a tiny piece of ice or lint in a drain that makes it not work.

And bikes have lots more moving parts.

-Crissa

[princec]

It's generally not the moving parts that are breaking - it appears to be hugely expensive four figure repair parts that don't move, and when they break the bike is effectively a very expensive doorstop. It can't be swept under the carpet under the rose-tinted spectacles of EV fandom: it's a real problem, and it needs acknowledging, or it'll not be addressed, to the detriment of all.

Cas