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[centra12]

Hello

Does it make sense to rebuild a 91Ah battery that already at an 80% SOC the warning message MinCell: 3781mV and various other messages e.g. at 68%SOC-MinCell: 3322mV?
To remove the defective block and continue with 3 or 2 blocks.

Or will the parallel connection of the BMS cables at a bad cell the other three cells also damaged up thus the complete battery is scrap.
On my C evo, each battery block has its own BMS.

Is the new Zero SR-F/S also worked with parallel BMS cables?

[Kappi]

Hi Centra12,
the monolith is internally potted in resin, thus removing a block is not an option if single cell goes bad. Unless you have a modular fx or fxs.

Are your cell errors permanen?
What model are you riding?
How many miles do you have on it?

[centra12]

I do not want to remove a single cell but only a single 28S block.  Namely the block with the defective cell.

The question is whether it makes sense to do this if the other cells were loaded by the parallel connection of the BMS wiring and may also have taken damage.

[Demoni]

No idea how the Zero packs BMS are arranged.

If one of the parallel cells is bad it will cause the other cells in that chain to work harder. How much harder depends on how damaged the bad cell is.
You can get a sense by looking at the min cell voltage and comparing it to the next lowest. A massive difference in voltage would be a warning sign.

I spent a few years working with EV scooters (2kWh 72v 18650's). Occasionally packs would report low voltages from one of the parallel chains, when individually measured often only one cells showed 0v.
The remaining cells were discharge tested to verify capacity, most of the time they were just as health as other cells in the pack. Other times there was reduction in capacity or loss of voltage over time.

[centra12]

None of this is of any use to me.

Technically speaking, not much can happen because not much current can flow.
For troubleshooting, however, it is a really moronic construction.

Nevertheless, I would be interested in how Zero has connected in detail! The displayed voltage is only the sum of the four cells so the bad defective cell should still have a clearly lower/bad voltage or!!!!

[alby62]

cIAO  A TUTTI , vi  comunico che  dopo i proiblemi di ricarica  della  batteria   delal  mia  ds  2017  13 kw  che  cominciò a dare  problemi di ricarica  parziale   massimo ricaricava  al 75% tanto che   avevo preso accordi di cambiarla  in garanzia  con zero . nell'attesa  mi sono imbattuto  con un ingegnere tedesco , che   indicava  di ricaricare la batteria  tra il 5 e 20%   con varie  ricariche   e, la batteria  si sarebbe  riportata su valori  ottimali oltre il 90%, devo dire  che  è vero piano piano la  batteria  diopo varie  ricariche  si è riportata  al 90 - 93%, ora  dai primi di gennaio 2021 , sonomvarie  ricariche  che  arriva  al 100%.
 forse  è sensitiva   fionito  l'anno bisesto malefico del 2020, spera in un buon 2021, comunque  sta  di fatto  che  la batteria  è tornata come  nuova  , le  autonomie  anche  con queste temperature  piu o meno sullo zero, sono in linea  dello storico  circa   160 -170 km con una  carica . i caricatori  sono gli stessi  mai cambiati, anche  s e si pensava  che  fossero  cotti.  bene  , io ho scritto per dare  delle  speranze a  chi  è  nella  mia  stessa  situazione , mai arrendersi  la batteria  si può rigenerare , fate come  me .  cordiali saluti  e  buon anno nuovo.
 per  gl'americanio  .... state  lontani dal campidoglio

[caza]

Nobody has publicly rebuilt a zero battery. No one on this forum seems to have the expertise to do so but more importantly it really doesn't make sense too.

There is one person who replaced their entire monolith with nissan leaf cells, but in the newer bikes you would need to rewire the bike without the mainboard since it relies on communication with the BMS.

As already stated the batteries are all potted. They're really not reasonably disassemble/reassemble-able. For all intents and purposes you should really treat your monolith as a single part, and if it has issues then that part should be replaced. Even if you could reasonably replace a block of parallel cells, first you would have to source the exact farasis cells, which would be difficult since they don't seem to be available to buy for individuals. But these new cells would not be matched to the rest of your used pack, which would create problems for the longevity of the entire pack.

Is your battery still within the 5 year warranty period? This would be the best avenue to pursue. If it is not, this repair probably isn't worth pursuing.

[ms_smart]

Reading this thread I am a little concerned about the mindset and the longevity strategy of Zero. I have invested €27,000 in my fully loaded Zero SR/S. This translates to $32K. I plan to ride this bike the next 20 years. Fully understand, that this requires to repair or replace parts or the entire battery at some point in time. I am expecting, that Zero have or will have a long term strategy to support this wish.

Nothing wrong if a repair or replacement is a up to $10K investment. If this is required every 10 years this is still a good long term investment.

Best case would be, if Zero plans battery replacement into the design. I am guessing, that battery technology will improve the next 10 years and Zero bikes at this point in time may have 20 kWh or more. Why not offer this capacity as replacement to older bikes? Zero has to ensure compatibility of connectors and needs to upgrade the BMS. This would make it really easy to me to swallow a $10K pill.

[caza]

Reading this thread I am a little concerned about the mindset and the longevity strategy of Zero. I have invested €27,000 in my fully loaded Zero SR/S. This translates to $32K. I plan to ride this bike the next 20 years. Fully understand, that this requires to repair or replace parts or the entire battery at some point in time. I am expecting, that Zero have or will have a long term strategy to support this wish.

Nothing wrong if a repair or replacement is a up to $10K investment. If this is required every 10 years this is still a good long term investment.

Best case would be, if Zero plans battery replacement into the design. I am guessing, that battery technology will improve the next 10 years and Zero bikes at this point in time may have 20 kWh or more. Why not offer this capacity as replacement to older bikes? Zero has to ensure compatibility of connectors and needs to upgrade the BMS. This would make it really easy to me to swallow a $10K pill.

I think the longevity of the battery has proven to be pretty good. I'd expect 10 years out of the majority of zero batteries. But the cost of replacement is an issue, and the availability of that replacement is also an issue.

From what I've gathered, a replacement 14.4 monolith is approximately $6k. Plus labor. Since the 3.6 FXS module is 3K, we can reasonably assume that a lot of that cost is the actual labor of manufacturing the pack and not just the battery cells, so even as cells drop in cost I expect this cost to stay reasonably high.

Unfortunately I don't see zero changing their setup, the monolith is going to be a single part for the foreseeable future for several reasons. It just makes too much sense to fully pot the battery. To build it in another way would make it far easier to damage the battery from heat, vibration, or impact and hugely shorten the lifespan of the battery, as well as likely require the battery to be far less energy dense.

This is really a reality with almost all EV's. Even in packs like Tesla or Chevy where the batteries are not fully potted, the reality is that if you have an issue with the battery, you are replacing the whole pack. It is not reasonable or feasible to go through all the labor (and risk!) of opening up the pack to test and replace individual cells or even individual modules, and then have the resulting battery have mismatched cells of different capacities and internal resistance. The cells in the whole pack need to be matched.

20 years down the line? Yeah, you're looking at an expensive replacement. Hopefully cell costs and manufacturing processes have improved by then so that it's a less costly investment, but bottom line is it's going to be a significant cost. Again, this is one of the drawbacks of all EV's. It is why they drop so quickly in value compared to their gas counterparts, and part of why most EV owners do not intend to drive them for 20 years but rather drive them for a few years, sell them, and upgrade to something newer. Something we should really consider if we're buying an EV to be "green". Also something to consider in the supposed cost-savings of EV ownership. How much fuel and maintenance do you save in those 20 years with your EV, and does that savings justify the expensive battery replacement down the road?

My bigger worry is that zero, as a small manufacturer, will cut off support for replacement batteries for older models. In reality we don't know if Zero is even going to exist in 20 years. This could be true of small batch gas bikes as well. You can't assume any bike that sells, say, less than 10k worth of bikes a year, that needs specialized parts, to have parts availability 20 years down the road.  There's just no guarantee of that kind of long term support. But with gas bikes you can find and cannibalize another bike from the same year. You're not going to find another healthy zero battery from a parts bike in 20 years, which makes your options more limited or possibly non-existent. Even if the repair is easy and available, how many people are going to pay more than what their bike is worth for a battery replacement instead of upgrading to a newer bike?

Again, something worthwhile to consider for those of us purchasing these bikes in an attempt to stay green. Every vehicle has an end of life, but long term EV's will reach a point where repair is impossible or prohibitively expensive long before a comparable ICE vehicle, and that is going to contribute to waste/pollution in both production of replacement EV's and the discarding of the outgoing vehicles.

[Crissa]

We don't know if EVs are on average more or less long lived than ICE vehicles.  They simply haven't been around long enough.

But the early information says that while the oldest ICE vehicles continue to run... the average EV lasts longer.  Some of that may be due to which customers bought them, but some of that seems to be that there's no chance of catastrophic mechanical engine failure leading to having it parted out.

While there aren't many of the earliest Zeros running about, there seem to be a fair number of the post 2013 bikes still on the road.  And bikes, as a rule, don't tend to live that long anyhow.

-Crissa

[caza]

We don't know if EVs are on average more or less long lived than ICE vehicles.  They simply haven't been around long enough.

But the early information says that while the oldest ICE vehicles continue to run... the average EV lasts longer. 

-Crissa

Battery degradation puts a set life on EV's though. It will vary, but 10 years later there are already a large number of Nissan Leaf cars that have degraded past the point of usability, and they are being scrapped as replacing the battery doesn't make economic sense. The oldest of these cars are 10 years old. It likely won't be long until there are very few of these cars in use, despite being the #1 selling EV for a number of years.

Most modern EV's have much better battery systems than the 1st gen leaf, with active thermal management, better cell chemistries, and other improvements that increase their lifespan. But the batteries still have a set lifespan, and will invariably need to be replaced.

Like you said, the earliest ICE motors still run today. We already know the batteries in our EV's will not last the same amount of time, we don't have to wait for the overall EV reliability data to understand this. We also know that long before the batteries cease to function, they will lose useable capacity to the point where the vehicle is not as useful as it once was.

ICE might be more likely to have catastrophic failure, but this is not a terribly common occurrence, and nearly anything short of a catastrophic failure can be fixed and replaced for much cheaper than a 14-60kwh battery pack.

I'm not saying that EV's absolutely have shorter lifespans than ICE, just that the battery degradation issue makes maintaining an EV over several decades very different from ICE vehicles and potentially much more difficult and expensive, or at the very least, the costs are much less spread out, as instead of replacing a clutch or other worn out part every couple of years, you spend a lot of money on a new battery once or twice. But most owners, when faced with that huge one-time expense, will elect to move on to another vehicle. Which creates the potential for more vehicle turnover. This isn't an argument to dismiss the benefits of EV's, just something to take into consideration as we buy them.

[centra12]

As I have written here several times, I did not want to replace a single cell! I only wanted to remove the single cell block of the four cell blocks with the defective cell. The Zero will then only be operated with three cell blocks. Unfortunately, troubleshooting is not so easy with Zero's ingenious BMS design.
I hope the design of the new SRF/S battery is better thought out by Zero otherwise I feel sorry for the Zero dealers and owners of the new generation already.
If the owner still had a warranty, he would go to Zero and not to me, wouldn't he?

[Crissa]

As I have written here several times, I did not want to replace a single cell! I only wanted to remove the single cell block of the four cell blocks with the defective cell.

Oh.  Well, then you'd have to reprogram the BMS, as it needs to know how to balance the cells it does have.  And then you need to program the Mainboard on the bike to know the battery configuration.

It's not really simple and Zero doesn't let us do that anyhow.  They did make bikes like mine with one three battery segments in them, but had some sort of difficulty with them and stopped.  It sounded, from the tone of voice I've heard, that it was more than just 'too many models' juggling, but I don't really know.

Battery degradation puts a set life on EV's though. It will vary, but 10 years later there are already a large number of Nissan Leaf cars...

Leafs have a very specific degradation that's different from basically all other EVs, though.  They have a specific battery configuration that made it susceptible to uneven cell degradation due to uneven heat dissipation.

Next, ICE cars have an expiration date, too.  Motorcycles are no different really, except they have a higher chance of actually being damaged since they're exposed to the weather.  But this is actually a bonus for electric bikes, since their parts don't care if they're frozen or tipped over, and it's usually just connectors that fail from water damage (and not like ICE bikes don't have computers now a days!).

So no, we don't know that ICE will survive longer than EVs, but the evidence is no, they will not.  And the lifetime of most motorcycles is not very long to begin with.

Zeros don't see the kind of temperature abuse that Leafs did.  They also can cool themselves off easier, being without a big body over the battery.  They don't have the battery in a weird shape which leads to some parts getting warmer.  And they don't support DC charging.

Maybe we'll see some problems with the Energicas.  But I sorta doubt it, as they're designed to cool themselves off and tell the rider right away when things are too hot.

-Crissa

[caza]

Crissa, I mentioned that the leaf was different from most other batteries, but it still sets the example of what can happen. It's the worst case scenario that we've already seen, but the concept will still happen to other BEV's over a longer timeframe. I don't expect any other EV batteries to degrade as quickly, but I do expect them to degrade and fail over time.

Even in no weather, left in a garage for 100 years a gas bike can be cleaned out and started again with minimal cost.

A BEV, even if maintained at a decent storage voltage, will not do the same, and the repair costs and logistics are entirely different. This is the problem I am talking about that is unique to EV's.

Again, I'm not saying ICE cars invariably outlive EV's, I agree with you that we don't have enough evidence yet. I'm just pointing out this specific downside to EV longevity over the decades and should merely be considered. The other aspects you mentioned, like catastrophic failure in ICE vehicles and how fewer moving parts means breakdowns are way less likely in EV's are also important to consider.

The video you linked to on rust is fascinating, but only relevant if you're one of the people specifically dealing with that issue. The video cites 22 million people effected, out of the 227 million drivers in the US. This is a specific problem that only effects 9% of the driving population. The other 91% can have vehicles that last much longer that are not destroyed by the elements in this way. If you are one of those people, yeah I'd personally be way more worried about rust and elements than my battery longevity. But for the rest of us, it has no bearing on this conversation.

Saying bikes "don't tend to live that long anyhow" is dismissive and irrelevant. Plenty of bikes crash and wear in the elements, but plenty are well taken care of and preserved, these are the cases where what I'm talking about makes a difference, but even beyond that I'm talking about a problem that effects EV's as a whole, not just bikes.

As I have written here several times, I did not want to replace a single cell! I only wanted to remove the single cell block of the four cell blocks with the defective cell. The Zero will then only be operated with three cell blocks. Unfortunately, troubleshooting is not so easy with Zero's ingenious BMS design.
I hope the design of the new SRF/S battery is better thought out by Zero otherwise I feel sorry for the Zero dealers and owners of the new generation already.
If the owner still had a warranty, he would go to Zero and not to me, wouldn't he?

Sorry centra12, I misread your post and latched onto the "rebuild" aspect of it.

Unfortunately without access to zero's dealers tools this is unlikely to work. 

Even if you could tell the BMS and mainboard what battery is connected, you could have other issues if the bike was designed around having 4 packs and you go down to 3, you'll be pulling more amps per cell which may be above their rating and that could lead to overheating and more failures.

[Richard230]

My son-in-law will not buy anything new. Right now he is riding a 1986 Honda VFR700FII. Every time it stops running he bodges a fix for it, almost always it is an electrical problem. The bike currently has 125,000 miles on the clock and it is doubtful that he will ever retire the bike. He just loves fixing junk that breaks. Apparently it is a challenge that has turned into a hobby.  He has no interest in riding my daughter's 2014 Zero.

His current car is a oil-leaking 1988 Honda CRX.