Print

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

[enaef]

Yesterday I received a battery pack replacement under warranty of my SR/F 2020 premium with rapid charger.

Real capacity
My dealer told me that despite de label with 14.4 kWh of the new battery this would be a 15.6 kWh battery. He assumes, that the whole 15.6 kWh are for usage. Well – 15.6 kWh is certainly gross, as 14.4 was. While 12.6 on the old battery was net / usable (87.5% of 14.4), I guess ~13.65 are really usable in the new battery (net).

However:
Daniel Monero claims in his very interesting video, that his SR/S received the 17.3 kWh battery (attachment). Can this be?
He claims, that software limits the use of this 17.3 kWh to 14.4 kWh.
As mentioned above, my dealer assumes, that the whole capacity (15.6 gross / 13.65 net) can be used. What is correct?
My range has definitively improved after the replacement. However, I’m not yet sure if this is only due to the new and fully functional battery or due to more capacity.

If the capacity is limited to 14.4 kWh gross, would that mean, that there is more ‘safety range’ at the ‘bottom’ and the ‘ceiling’ of the battery, meaning, that I can allow me then and there to load to 100% even if I know that I will use it only the next morning?


Efficiency of the cells
Daniel Monero also speaks of 110% efficiency of the cells at position 23:08, which he translates into 10% more capacity and that again he translates into 10% more range (position 23:39).
I’m no technician but I don’t know how that can add up.
What does efficiency in battery cells really mean? More kWh by weight, or by volume? Or may be in securely charge faster?

Firmware update
Right after changing the battery I received a Firmware Update over the air. I’m at MBB V.38 and BMS V. 16 now.

Loading curve
I documented my loading curve yesterday and today.
Yesterday I started at SoC 10 up to 90% at 25 degrees Celsius (optimal). I stopped at 90% as I wasn’t sure if I could use the bike this morning. Late at night at 18 degrees Celsius I went to the bike because I had to reconnect the app with the bike after the battery change. The SoC had dropped to 86%.
This morning I filled the battery up at 16 degrees Celsius until 100% until the charging stopped (balancing finished).
The charging from 10 to 90 took exactly 59 minutes. The charging from 86 to 100 took 23 minutes.

Attached is the chart (please note: I changed the scale after 85 SoC) which has improved since the video of Daniel Monero (pos. 29:18)

[2020_SRS_Commuter]

I cant speak to your question, because I have the old original battery in the same year bike.
But I WOULD suggest since you are a metrics person, and looking closely at this, is buy a meter or Kill-A-Watt or whatever to keep track of how much charging your battery is accepting. It seems more accurate to me than the displayed SOC.

[MVetter]

You're overthinking this. It's simple:

Zero monoliths (main battery in all gen 3 bikes) currently uses 1 battery configuration for their bikes. Period. The 14.4+ is the same as the 15.6+ is the same as the 17.3. The 14.4+ and 15.6+ are software capped.

[Specter]

Besides for what Morgan just said,  yes, having a bigger battery and pulling less of it's total capacity off it, your efficiency improves on it.  Batteries perform better and you can suck more out of them the slower you suck it out of them.

As an example.

If you have a 100 amp hour battery.
If you pull 100 amps off it, it probably will NOT last an hour,  some you'd be lucky to get 60 percent of that.
If you pull 5 amps off it for 20 hours, you'll get your 100 amp hours out of it.
If you pull 1 amp  off it, you'll get your 100 hours, in fact,  you'll probably get 105 or 110 amp hours out of it.

That's just the way they generally work.

Aaron

[Fred]

Is it a standard thing that Zero will replace the battery on early SR/Fs? Mines a 2021 and whilst the range has never been great it's not really bothered me as I has a second bike for longer trips. Now that's gone it might be an issue.

My 2021 1.4 SR/F bike claims an estimated 68 mines on a full charge. (I never go past 95%, but that what it would be if adjusted to 100%.) I'm in the UK and have not contacted a dealer about it yet, but wanted to collect some info before I do.

[princec]

If you actually stick to speed limits the old 14.4 battery should manage a bit over 100 miles on the SR/F. In winter, on a dual carriageway, that'd drop to about 70 ish. It's not winter, and I'm guessing you don't thrash it, so that range seems rather poor. Get it checked out.

Cas

[T.S. Zarathustra]

Besides for what Morgan just said,  yes, having a bigger battery and pulling less of it's total capacity off it, your efficiency improves on it.  Batteries perform better and you can suck more out of them the slower you suck it out of them.

As an example.

If you have a 100 amp hour battery.
If you pull 100 amps off it, it probably will NOT last an hour,  some you'd be lucky to get 60 percent of that.
If you pull 5 amps off it for 20 hours, you'll get your 100 amp hours out of it.
If you pull 1 amp  off it, you'll get your 100 hours, in fact,  you'll probably get 105 or 110 amp hours out of it.

That's just the way they generally work.

Aaron

This is the reason capacity of many batteries is measured at ridiculously low amper-draw. As low as 0,05 Amps (especially for small batteries). 
What is happening is that as amper-draw increases, voltage drops. The actual work in the motor is in watts (which is voltage multiplied by amperage (simplified formula)) so if voltage drops you get less actual power for each Amper (amperhour) from the battery.

[enaef]

Zero monoliths (main battery in all gen 3 bikes) currently uses 1 battery configuration for their bikes. Period.

Ok, biig surprise ....!! I believe you. I think  . Since you are a crack, an OG ... 

Can I find information about that which I can use to inform my dealer? He certainly is not in the ElectricMotorcycleForum and does not know who you are ... 

Can you give a statement to a question I asked in my first post?:
If the capacity is limited to 14.4 kWh gross, would that mean that there is more 'safety area' at the 'bottom' and the 'top' of the battery, i.e. that I can allow myself to charge to 100% occasionally, even if I know I won't use it until the next morning?

Thanks!

[enaef]

Besides for what Morgan just said,  yes, having a bigger battery and pulling less of it's total capacity off it, your efficiency improves on it.  Batteries perform better and you can suck more out of them the slower you suck it out of them.

.......

That's just the way they generally work.

Aaron

Thanks for the interesting information!
As said, I have no technical professional background.

[TheRan]

Zero monoliths (main battery in all gen 3 bikes) currently uses 1 battery configuration for their bikes. Period.

Ok, biig surprise ....!! I believe you. I think  . Since you are a crack, an OG ... 

Can I find information about that which I can use to inform my dealer? He certainly is not in the ElectricMotorcycleForum and does not know who you are ... 

Can you give a statement to a question I asked in my first post?:
If the capacity is limited to 14.4 kWh gross, would that mean that there is more 'safety area' at the 'bottom' and the 'top' of the battery, i.e. that I can allow myself to charge to 100% occasionally, even if I know I won't use it until the next morning?

Thanks!

The older batteries were 116.4v at 100% and 95.2v at 0%, the new ones go to 117.5v and little bit lower at 93.8v, but the 14.4 is capped at around 115v.

[MVetter]

Can you give a statement to a question I asked in my first post?:
If the capacity is limited to 14.4 kWh gross, would that mean that there is more 'safety area' at the 'bottom' and the 'top' of the battery, i.e. that I can allow myself to charge to 100% occasionally, even if I know I won't use it until the next morning?

I legitimately do not know how they've implemented the 'padding' we'll call it. One would assume they would leave extra on the top and the bottom, but I cannot confirm that's what they did. I think the only way I'd be able to really tell would be to run a voltage tap into the inputs of the DC-DC converter hooked up to a small display that showed the battery's current voltage. I would take notes on what displayed when the pack registered full, 50%, and empty. The previous generation packs were full at 116.4vdc, 50% at 102.2vdc, and empty at 95vdc.

I would see if this new 14.4 was registering the same or calling 100% charged a lower value than 116.4, or empty a higher value than 95. And, if it does, what are the new values? I would divide those by 28 because each module has 28 cells and that would give me per-cell voltage values. The previous cells operated between 3.39 - 4.157vdc with a nominal voltage of 3.65vdc. So yeah I'd just be data harvesting.

[electrictwowheeler]

I think I answered most of these questions in my post " Observations on my new battery " plus pics of the BMS info. Check it out.

[enaef]

I legitimately do not know how they've implemented the 'padding' we'll call it. One would assume they would leave extra on the top and the bottom, but I cannot confirm that's what they did. I think the only way I'd be able to really tell would be to run a voltage tap into the inputs of the DC-DC converter hooked up to a small display that showed the battery's current voltage. I would take notes on what displayed when the pack registered full, 50%, and empty. The previous generation packs were full at 116.4vdc, 50% at 102.2vdc, and empty at 95vdc.

I would see if this new 14.4 was registering the same or calling 100% charged a lower value than 116.4, or empty a higher value than 95. And, if it does, what are the new values? I would divide those by 28 because each module has 28 cells and that would give me per-cell voltage values. The previous cells operated between 3.39 - 4.157vdc with a nominal voltage of 3.65vdc. So yeah I'd just be data harvesting.

As a non-technician I don't have the knowledge nor the tools to do what you suggested.
Nonetheless I tried to harvest some data by doing the following:

1) Empty the battery to 0% SoC (drove 2km after showing 0% the first time)
2) Charged the bike full up to 100% and shutting down itself

I (quite) constantly took pictures of the dashboard and the information on the charging station. Quite constantly meaning that I first documented at least every 10% of SoC as long as the kW/Ampere readings of the dashboard stayed the same. After that more or less after each change in the kW-reading of the dashboard. I first took the picture of the dashboard and after that (usually some 6-7 seconds later) of the charging station.

It's a premium with a rapid charger at a 22kW charging station. The charging station gives information about the output in kW and the cumulative output in kW.

The charging was at 17° C. I emptied the battery also at ~17°C and gave as much throttle as was allowed and safe on a mountain pass and highway for the last 40km. However, the last km were downhill and on the city-near highway only 100km/h where allowed.

I put in all the information in a spreadsheet and did some charts as you can see.

I did calculate the kWh-input by multiplying the amount of time with the kW. The smallest amount of time (the time between two changes of the kW-reading) was 24 seconds, the longest (the time between SoC 30 to 40% without change of the kW-reading) was 408 seconds.

Summed up the result was 12.86 kWh
The cumulative output of the charging station was 13.59 kWh.
I know, the calculated result of 12.86 is not absolutely exact but I guess it's not far away from the reality.
The difference to the output of the charging station probably is due to charging losses?

For me this looks like the software is really cutting the amount quite similar to an earlier 14.4-Battery.

The charging curves of the new battery are disappointing compared to the old one (see chart).
The displayed range however is much better with the new battery.

I'm nearly at 64k km and I am doing tours of several days, up to 500km a day and 12 hours on route (including charging time).
That I need to wait much longer to get 95% SoC is really disappointing and I just hope that Zero can and will improve the charging curve further.

I hope they really did implement the padding with some extra on bottom and the top.
The fact, that I did not notice 'leap-mode' even when reaching <2% SoC and that others reported that there is full recuperation even with 100% SoC lets me assume that this is what they have done.
But of course: Voltage measurement as suggested by you would give definitive confirmation.

[MVetter]

Again, the bigger problem is you don't know where 0% is. I cannot stress enough that Zero has a very rocky history with their battery % indicator and algorithm. There have been times when the bikes indicated 0% and completely restricted power output only to later recalculate as much as 30%. I have witnessed and documented this firsthand, and talked to countless others who have as well.

I applaud your willingness to harvest data, but without actual voltage numbers what you've posted here doesn't really shed any light on anything. But again, good on you for the effort.

[enaef]

You can be sure that I know the problem of the 'magic charging'. I've seen your video days after it was out.
I have experienced magic charging myself, though not as severe as you did.
However, I actually experienced another sort of magic charging: SoC going up while I was driving. Not much - about 5%, but several times.

Besides that, the range estimation displayed was showing less and less km.

However - As much as I understand from my dealer, this behaviour was due to a problem in battery production leading to miscalculation of SoC (by reading false Voltage?, not quite sure).
And that's the reason why I did get a new battery under warranty. So did so many others. My dealer said, he expects every battery from that batch catching that problem earlier or later.

So - I assume(d) that the new battery has lost that problem. And that 0% SoC is not anymore a faulty calculated / displayed measure but just what Zero is willing to give me - as I payed for a bike with a 14.4 kW battery. Despite what the new battery behind the scences actually would be able to give me, if Zero would allow it.

Again: I would prefer to measure the things the way you suggested and you could do on your own. I can't - so I do what I can do. Knowing, that there is quite some uncertainty.
Perhaps other cracs can do the necessary measurement.

But if not, I also would appreciate if others would report their experience so one can compare.