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[Kill3rT0fu]

My bike and pack are fine. But I'm planning for the future, it's what I do to keep sane. 10-15 years from now, will the bike range be 10 miles? Will it take 20 years?

Basically my question is when that happens, what do we do then? How do we dispose of the bikes? Can they even be rebuilt with 3rd party batteries? It would be great if technology improved in 10-15 years and we were able to rebuild the packs with more power.

But what do we do? Can't just haul them to the junk yard.

[princec]

Theoretically in 10-15 years the battery will still have about 80% capacity if it's treated and stored well. It'll still be good for riding most likely. If not it'll find life as a recycled home energy storage system or somesuch.

Cas

[TheRan]

I haven't exactly been crunching the numbers but it would seem to me like most batteries are going bad from age (or just being faulty) rather than high use (mileage). Even though I'm only doing like 2500 miles a year I don't really expect my battery to be of much use in another 10 years (15 total) even though it should in theory be good for 50 with how much I use it.

In theory replacing the battery with something new and different shouldn't be that hard, the controller only cares about getting the right voltage in and the BMS and charger go with the battery (the charger could be kept depending on the replacement battery chemistry). These bikes aren't like some electric cars where the whole thing is tightly integrated.

[Specter]

Typically what happens is the batteries will physically grow tenticles inside them, (dendrites) which tend to short things out, the individual packets / pouches, will be a short on the system and fail to take a charge anymore.  Now one or two of these going bad may not be too big of a problem but it typically happens pretty fast, ie the progression of this is like falling off a cliff.  Not to mention it IS a short circuit and while it may for lack of a better word 'burn the fault clear' pretty quick, it may also lead to overheating,excessive swelling, causing others to go bad.

The battery at this point becomes a brick.  For the LiPo's, I honestly do not know why they are lying so fucking bad about recycling them.  They ARE plenty recyclable!,  there is a LOT of Copper, Cobalt, and YES Lithium in them too which they claim is the child labor, population killing metal, bla bla.

If the cells are, still usable, they will use them in lower demand applications, as stated, building storage, or offer them on a secondary market.  For the Lith's pretty much nobody wants reconditioned cells, because of the dangers of dendrites, so they generally will end up garbage, but in the hands of someone with a bit of skill, have a ton of practical uses.

I have over 250 kw of power storage at my home from reconditioned batteries, I won't get into the details but a fire, they are compartmentalized, so go ahead, it'll pop a fusable link, isolating itself then it can burn itself out in the steel container that holds it..  Eventually i plan on just putting this all in a shed or a trailer once I find one that is pretty cheap.

sorry I got long winded, this subject is one that facinates me but.  They ARE reusable, but most of the time just end in the garbage.

They CAN be recycled, but nobody wants to, I feel there are a LOT of politics in that.  Freeze the fuckers, the chemistry stops, now chop them up, separate them, and then do what you have to do, how damned hard is that?

Aaron

[Richard230]

The batteries in my daughter's Zero S (with Power Pack) are now 10.5 years old and the bike still seems to have about the same performance and range as it did when it was new (and I owned it). I might add that about half of that time it was continuously plugged in to my 120V wall outlet as was recommended by Zero in 2014. Once they revised their recommendation (around the time that I gave her the Zero), I stopped doing that. My daughter now tries to keep the battery pack at around 80% SOC until the day before she plans to go for a ride at which time she charges it up to 100%.

Regarding recycling the battery packs, I certainly agree that Zero, Energica, LiveWire, etc. (and all of the car EV brands) need to implement a program to recycle or repackage old or dead batteries for use as electrical storage and not leave it to their customers to try to accomplish that task. If their customers start trying to remove the batteries so as to  reuse them for some purpose, it would only be a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed and then Zero, etc. would be in the soup. In my area, general recycling companies don't even want to think about dealing with lithium batteries of any type or size as they are scared to death that they might catch on fire while in the trash and burn down their facilities. Some sort of recycling plan for lithium batteries really needs to be implemented across the country, even if it has to be financially supported by the government until the process can start to make a profit.

[Curt]

Count me in as another person who has no idea what to do with the dead motorcycle other than transfer the problem to someone else (by selling, or more likely, paying).

Most of the millions of EVs sold have not yet reached EOL. The magnitude of the problem has been massively underestimated for when these start expiring en masse, and the cost of resolving it has not been accounted for in the already high cost of EVs.

For the LiPo's, I honestly do not know why they are lying so fucking bad about recycling them.  They ARE plenty recyclable!,  there is a LOT of Copper, Cobalt, and YES Lithium in them too which they claim is the child labor, population killing metal, bla bla.

Cobalt is the one that presents the moral problems of mining in Africa. Lithium is the one that is 7x cheaper to derive from mining than battery recycling (reference the lithium recycling wiki page).

If the cells are, still usable, they will use them in lower demand applications, as stated, building storage, or offer them on a secondary market.  For the Lith's pretty much nobody wants reconditioned cells, because of the dangers of dendrites, so they generally will end up garbage, but in the hands of someone with a bit of skill, have a ton of practical uses.

I don't buy it because if they were really usable, they'd still be propelling a vehicle. Is it worth it to build a storage system that starts out bad and gets worse, guaranteed to be short lived, unreliable and dangerous? And ultimately not help with the recycling problem at all? How many people are are like you -- technical and progressive enough to absorb an inferno in a steel case on their property?

Freeze the fuckers, the chemistry stops, now chop them up, separate them, and then do what you have to do, how damned hard is that?

As I understand it, the only practical option at this time is to fully discharge them into the grid, put them in a big shredder, then try to chemically extract some of the more expensive metals (not lithium). The majority of it will be landfilled.

[Kill3rT0fu]

Count me in as another person who has no idea what to do with the dead motorcycle other than transfer the problem to someone else (by selling, or more likely, paying).

And this is what I'm trying to avoid. If it can be repaired, great! I just don't want zero to be one of those companies (like Chevy) that after 10-15 years stops even offering a batter for the S models and we're left to junk the bikes or find some aftermarket repair shop.

[princec]

https://www.fortum.com/services/battery-recycling/lithium-ion-battery-recycling-technology

Cas

[Specter]

Car batteries / fork truck batteries, etc are repurposed all the time for jobs that are less demanding on them, and do just fine in those lesser demanding jobs, and can often last years more. 

A quick google search can show you plenty of examples.

Aaron

[2020_SRS_Commuter]

This doesn't answer your question but its an anecdote that might put your mind at ease a bit.
I've put 55000 miles on the original pack on my 2020 SRS and the capacity hasn't changed enough for me to notice a difference.
Where it did change is that is much less resistant to high output, the thermal limits come up much much more quickly than they used to.
That only going above 90mph though. If I'm not doing that it never even hits the yellow.

[princec]

Luckily I never do over 90 for more than about 1 second these days

Cas

[T.S. Zarathustra]

My SR is six year old now. The capacity is still very good. Last month I went over 200 kilometers on slower backroads and still had 13% left.
It seems to me that if you take good care of the battery it will last for a long time.

But I have the same worries so I've looked around. I  found new pouches (same width and height, slightly thicker) from Ali at about 2-3000 for the same capacity as the battery. If the battery fails I might search further and try to replace the cells, reuse the BMS.

[Specter]

If one is not afraid of spot welding, or a bit of soldering you can easily replace the cells yourself.  The biggest bitch will be getting the nickel strapping off the batteries and back onto the new ones.  Id strongly recommend just buying new nickel bus / tracing and doing it all brand new.

When I rebuild batteries that is how I do it, it's just so much easier than trying to lay that plate down, getting everything smooth again, all the little tear humps down from where you lifted the spot welds off the old batteries etc etc.   You will need a spot welder that has a little ass to it as well, welding multiple laminations you gonna need some amperes here and there.

Aaron

[MVetter]

If one is not afraid of spot welding, or a bit of soldering you can easily replace the cells yourself.  The biggest bitch will be getting the nickel strapping off the batteries and back onto the new ones.  Id strongly recommend just buying new nickel bus / tracing and doing it all brand new.

When I rebuild batteries that is how I do it, it's just so much easier than trying to lay that plate down, getting everything smooth again, all the little tear humps down from where you lifted the spot welds off the old batteries etc etc.   You will need a spot welder that has a little ass to it as well, welding multiple laminations you gonna need some amperes here and there.

Aaron

It should be noted that all batteries made by Zero are thermally potted in epoxy to eliminate oxidization. Unearthing a cell from epoxy to then attempt to de-solder, replace, and spot weld a new one firmly goes in the, "this is definitely not worth it" project pile.

[Specter]

was not aware of that morgan, thank you for that info.  The  poster above you was stating about rebuilding a pack.  This could be done IF they can get the BMS out and reinstalled on a new manufactured battery.  But yes, reusing anything from the old one, not worth it.  Recycling then becomes an even bigger issue,  suck the cells dry, huge honking shredder, precip out the minerals it seems is the best way.  Chopping thru a potted block though, ugh that's a rough one.

I am going to take a leap and say the BMS is probably not changeable either, like other brands we are familiar with, all the pieces and parts' are registered with each other and swapping an old for a new, just don't work.  Still have the issues with the spot welding and all.  By the time they got all the equipment together to do one properly, it might be better off just trying to find a 3rd market battery.

I would also advise against using anything less robust than an OEM container for the battery as well, as crashing and caving that in could be a real bad day for you,  especially if there is a 500 lb bike laying on top of you and you are pinned under it and can't get out and it goes woof.

Aaron