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[FlipOW]

Fellow Zero riders, my DS has strange behavior of which I am curious about your opinion.

Since a few weeks I notice that the SoC is acting weird. Although the consumption on dislay (wh/km) is normal (avg ~50wh/km when driving smoothly on inner roads) the SoC runs down harder than before. For example, today I drove 107km and on my return only 18% SoC left. But when I key it back on after half an hour, the SoC is back to 31%. When I then connect the OBC, the SoC jumps to 45% within another 20/30 minutes. I'm used to an occasional percent or what increase, but not 27% in an hour of which only 20/30 minutes charging. 2 weeks back the exact same thing happened (with different weather conditions btw)

In addition, the charging process (in the app) also shows crazy things. Via the onboard charger (OBC) it charges with between 8A and 13A. That fluctuation doesn't seem normal to me. If I connect the QuiQ charger, it does charge constantly.

My conclusion is that the BMS is a bit confused by the fluctuating (and probably dying OBC, as is the case with many Zeros) and the battery is no longer 100% topped off. Cell balance at 100% SoC is 2mV, so that seems to be decent.

So from now on I'll just charge with the QuiQ chargers, but am curious about the opinions here....

[MVetter]

It would be helpful, I think, if you started documenting both voltage and cell balance as listed in the app at various SoC values. You may have a weak cell which is manifesting as the pack gets deeper.

[FlipOW]

That might be a possibility, yes.

Another thing that I will do anyway is to drown the battery to 0% (drive it until limb mode) and then charge it to 100% while measuring the kWh's charged with a kill-a-watt meter.

[DonTom]

Fellow Zero riders, my DS has strange behavior of which I am curious about your opinion.

Since a few weeks I notice that the SoC is acting weird. Although the consumption on dislay (wh/km) is normal (avg ~50wh/km when driving smoothly on inner roads) the SoC runs down harder than before. For example, today I drove 107km and on my return only 18% SoC left. But when I key it back on after half an hour, the SoC is back to 31%. When I then connect the OBC, the SoC jumps to 45% within another 20/30 minutes. I'm used to an occasional percent or what increase, but not 27% in an hour of which only 20/30 minutes charging. 2 weeks back the exact same thing happened (with different weather conditions btw)

In addition, the charging process (in the app) also shows crazy things. Via the onboard charger (OBC) it charges with between 8A and 13A. That fluctuation doesn't seem normal to me. If I connect the QuiQ charger, it does charge constantly.

My conclusion is that the BMS is a bit confused by the fluctuating (and probably dying OBC, as is the case with many Zeros) and the battery is no longer 100% topped off. Cell balance at 100% SoC is 2mV, so that seems to be decent.

So from now on I'll just charge with the QuiQ chargers, but am curious about the opinions here....

My 2017 Zero DS acted like that when the battery crapped out. I got  new battery under warranty.


-Don-  Tucson, AZ

[DonTom]

Other things you will notice is faster charge times to full, and what looks like better regen on the bike.  It charges faster to full as the KWH of the battery decreases. It will get worse soon. At least that is what happened to my Zero DS when the battery started to go south.


-Don- Tucson, AZ

[FlipOW]

Other things you will notice is faster charge times to full, and what looks like better regen on the bike.  It charges faster to full as the KWH of the battery decreases. It will get worse soon. At least that is what happened to my Zero DS when the battery started to go south.


-Don- Tucson, AZ

Obviously not the thing I wanted to read, but I somehow took it already in account that this might be the problem. The dealer is now working on this issue. My bike is 5,5 years old, so just out of warranty for the battery..

[DonTom]

Obviously not the thing I wanted to read, but I somehow took it already in account that this might be the problem. The dealer is now working on this issue. My bike is 5,5 years old, so just out of warranty for the battery..

Bummer. I have heard of some companies that will honor a warranty a short while after the warranty expires, because if really pisses people off when that happens. I wonder if there is any chance of Zero doing that.


My battery crapping out was good news to me. They replaced my 6.5KWH battery with the 7.2KWH. That is the bike I take on these RV trips, I have my 2017 Zero DS with me right now. Perfect bike for these trips. I wouldn't take the larger battery for free, as the smaller battery has too many advantages for my RV trips. Lighter bike can be carried on the hitch, more storage space. And still has more range than I ever needed on these trips.


For longer trips from home, I have my 2017 Zero SR with Pwr tank. Very handy in the Reno area because it is flooded with free J-1772's for miles in every direction except north. I can charge it at up to 8KW when on the road.


-Don-  Tucson, AZ

[domingo3]

I've experienced similar to you.  You can click my name and look at some of the threads I started for more info.

My battery is definitely impacted by cold weather. It's finally getting warm out and the bike ran like a champ today. I expect it to continue to do well until it gets cold again. My bike has 40k miles on it, including about 10k since the SOC wonkiness has showed up significantly last fall. Assuming you're in the northern hemisphere, did you store you bike over winter and just start riding or was it doing fine in colder times?

I hadn't looked at the charging until you mentioned it. I checked my logs and my charger cycles between 9 and 13 amps. I don't have a DeltaQ charger to compare. I'm curious, does using it resolve your issues the the SOC? 

Fellow Zero riders, my DS has strange behavior of which I am curious about your opinion.

Since a few weeks I notice that the SoC is acting weird. Although the consumption on dislay (wh/km) is normal (avg ~50wh/km when driving smoothly on inner roads) the SoC runs down harder than before. For example, today I drove 107km and on my return only 18% SoC left. But when I key it back on after half an hour, the SoC is back to 31%. When I then connect the OBC, the SoC jumps to 45% within another 20/30 minutes. I'm used to an occasional percent or what increase, but not 27% in an hour of which only 20/30 minutes charging. 2 weeks back the exact same thing happened (with different weather conditions btw)

In addition, the charging process (in the app) also shows crazy things. Via the onboard charger (OBC) it charges with between 8A and 13A. That fluctuation doesn't seem normal to me. If I connect the QuiQ charger, it does charge constantly.

My conclusion is that the BMS is a bit confused by the fluctuating (and probably dying OBC, as is the case with many Zeros) and the battery is no longer 100% topped off. Cell balance at 100% SoC is 2mV, so that seems to be decent.

So from now on I'll just charge with the QuiQ chargers, but am curious about the opinions here....

[FlipOW]

Thanks. I went through the ‘voltage sag’ thread and it seems exactly the same issue that I am experiencing these days. The bike has been ridden all winter long (we didn’t had a cold winter..) and my last drives were all around 8 / 10 degrees celsius.

First thing i will do anyway is to drive the bike until limp mode and charge it up to 100% (and leaving it for 24h). Let see what the kill a watt meter will say then..

I've experienced similar to you.  You can click my name and look at some of the threads I started for more info.

My battery is definitely impacted by cold weather. It's finally getting warm out and the bike ran like a champ today. I expect it to continue to do well until it gets cold again. My bike has 40k miles on it, including about 10k since the SOC wonkiness has showed up significantly last fall. Assuming you're in the northern hemisphere, did you store you bike over winter and just start riding or was it doing fine in colder times?

I hadn't looked at the charging until you mentioned it. I checked my logs and my charger cycles between 9 and 13 amps. I don't have a DeltaQ charger to compare. I'm curious, does using it resolve your issues the the SOC? 

Fellow Zero riders, my DS has strange behavior of which I am curious about your opinion.

Since a few weeks I notice that the SoC is acting weird. Although the consumption on dislay (wh/km) is normal (avg ~50wh/km when driving smoothly on inner roads) the SoC runs down harder than before. For example, today I drove 107km and on my return only 18% SoC left. But when I key it back on after half an hour, the SoC is back to 31%. When I then connect the OBC, the SoC jumps to 45% within another 20/30 minutes. I'm used to an occasional percent or what increase, but not 27% in an hour of which only 20/30 minutes charging. 2 weeks back the exact same thing happened (with different weather conditions btw)

In addition, the charging process (in the app) also shows crazy things. Via the onboard charger (OBC) it charges with between 8A and 13A. That fluctuation doesn't seem normal to me. If I connect the QuiQ charger, it does charge constantly.

My conclusion is that the BMS is a bit confused by the fluctuating (and probably dying OBC, as is the case with many Zeros) and the battery is no longer 100% topped off. Cell balance at 100% SoC is 2mV, so that seems to be decent.

So from now on I'll just charge with the QuiQ chargers, but am curious about the opinions here....

[FlipOW]

Another thing that I will do anyway is to drown the battery to 0% (drive it until limb mode) and then charge it to 100% while measuring the kWh's charged with a kill-a-watt meter.

Anticipating the feedback from the dealer / Zero, I charged the DS all the way to 100% yesterday and then drove to 0% SoC (turned out to be 2% in the end, after it stood for 5 minutes in the garage). In the end I drove 145km, part of which was freeway and many 80+ km/h stretches. And then charged it with a kilowatt-hour meter in between, to see how many kWh really went into the DS. I was pleasantly surprised.

When I went to charge the bike, the app indicated 97v and 2% SoC. So there was still some left in the battery. I then used 2 Delta Qs to charge the bike to 100%. Finally 11.18 kWh (after ~ 6 hours) was measured by the kill-a-watt meter, then the app indicated 116v / 100% SoC and switched to cell balancing. Since the Delta Q charges have an efficiency of ~90% (which is fairly normal with AC-DC conversion, 5-10% loss) and I actually measured 11% deviation between what the kill-a-watt meter indicated and what the Zero app indicated, I can say with near certainty that 11.18 * 0.89 = 9.95 kWh was charged in the DS battery. As the DS battery has a nominal capacity of 11.4 kWh, that means the SoH of the DS battery is at least still 87% right now. I think that's very decent, after 5.5 years. However, when I started charging there was still some in the battery. So realistically, the SoH of the DS would be around 90%. =

Next thing is to get the firmware updates to see if that solves the SoC issue. But the more I am reading threads here (and other Zero related social media), the more I suspect that there might be some kind of bug in the recent firmware. At least on my bike.

As soon as I will have any updated, I will post them asap.

[albenex]

at first also I thought that it was strange behavior..
it's just normal on such models (i have 2021 S which is basically same bike) and it's called "magic battery".
it was slightly improved on latest updates but it still happens.

in my case it happens when i start a ride in warm condition then ends in much colder environment. SoC drops hard.
Then when I get home and attach to outlet, SoC instantly raises by about 10% in 10 minutes which is no sense (i have no charge tank).

this let me think that battery returns to "normal" temperature then display actual SoC.

from a engineer point of view I suppose that this is due to temperature which lowers voltage to cells. Even if BMS is aware of battery temp, engine temp and electronics temp, continue calculating SoC based on Voltage only and not considering temperature drifting so from their point of view available capacity is much lower than before.

This also explains why you still see a good consumption (50 Wh/km): you're consuming same but your battery instantly got smaller.

[Stivikivi]

at first also I thought that it was strange behavior..
it's just normal on such models (i have 2021 S which is basically same bike) and it's called "magic battery".
it was slightly improved on latest updates but it still happens.

in my case it happens when i start a ride in warm condition then ends in much colder environment. SoC drops hard.
Then when I get home and attach to outlet, SoC instantly raises by about 10% in 10 minutes which is no sense (i have no charge tank).

this let me think that battery returns to "normal" temperature then display actual SoC.

from a engineer point of view I suppose that this is due to temperature which lowers voltage to cells. Even if BMS is aware of battery temp, engine temp and electronics temp, continue calculating SoC based on Voltage only and not considering temperature drifting so from their point of view available capacity is much lower than before.

This also explains why you still see a good consumption (50 Wh/km): you're consuming same but your battery instantly got smaller.

The magic battery is a failure from Cypher III.

My 2021 S had it once and other problems with range. I guess there is a problem due to my BMS. I have also opened a topic for my problem too.