Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ZeroMark]

My 2014 DS 11.4 was working great all of these years.  Because of my previous job, I was only commuting like 3 miles each way/day so I've got 20,000 miles on the bike.  Bike performance flawless, strong, and could easily reach over 85 on highway for sustained amounts of time.  Lately, towards the end of last year, I took it out and was going down a road at 65, when all of a sudden it started slowing down.  Battery around 85% or so.  Couldn't add throttle.  When Itried to by holding it down more for increase in throttle, the display went to -- instead of 85% and started blinking.  I had to pull over because the bike basically stopped powering the motor.  Left it by side of road for an hour and returned.  Came back 1 hour later, turned on key and it went to 35%.  Got on bike drove home and recharged back to 100%.  Last 3 trips on bike, same issue.  Around 85%, If I'm going 50+ mph, bike starts slowing down.  Now I figured out that if I back down to maybe 30-35 mph I can continue driving, but each application of throttle more then about 35 it will cause the motor to slow down/lose power.  Basically allowed me to limp to where I can get to and plug it in.

I have't tried to read the diag codes on the battery brick in the little circular window, but at 6 years, I'm wondering if my cells are misleading me into thinking that 100% is still 100%.

Today's trip 3 miles up one road to the home improvement store, and it was doing in again once I got over 50 mph - and that was starting at 98% on the gauge at the start out of the garage.

Try to ride 14 miles each way to work for my new job is out of the question.  I can't trust the bike for short trips, and I know it can't possible do the long ones.

Anyone else see this behavior?  It's like the more current you apply, the faster this condition arrives and the greater the change I will be stuck somewhere.

Is it practical to think my dealer here in Las Vegas could replace bad cells in the monolith if that's the problem, or is 6 years the practical life of my 2014 DS 11.4?  I want to ride my Zero to work down the 215 freeway for 14 miles, but I can't even get up and maintain freeway speed anymore.

Mark (ZeroMark)
in Henderson, Las Vegas, NV
2014 DS 11.4

[Crissa]

Only time I had that behavior, something had shorted the battery terminal.

Yours is clearly not working right, but there are other bikes older still running fine.

-Crissa

[Richard230]

I had something similar to that happen with my 2010 Electric Motorsport GPR-S. It was caused by bad battery cells failing when their voltage dropped faster than than the other units - because the batteries were crap and not designed to deliver high power for any length of time, in spite of their brand name "Hi Power". 

It is quite possible that one or more of the cells in one of your battery modules is failing. But the individual cells can not be replaced as they are thoroughly potted. You would have to replace an entire module with a new one and then there would be the problem of the fresh battery pack not working well with the older units. My guess is that if you want to keep the bike your best bet would be to have a Zero dealer diagnose your problem, and if a bad battery is the issue, then have them replace the entire battery pack with new ones. Not cheap but it would likely be less expensive than buying a new electric motorcycle and would keep you on the road for many more years. As near as I can tell, the 2014 models were pretty decent bikes, other than the usual on-board charger issues.