Print

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

[Thumpalong]

Hi guys
I awoke Wed morning to an extremely bad smoke filled garage, it was so bad I could not see my hand in front of my face. The Zero batt had started smoldering but luckily didnt ignite. Got all the vehicles outside and fire dept arrived after neighbours thought my house was on fire. Im now sitting with a useless bike with probably good parts on it but no batt. I know Zero did a recall on 2012 models for fire issues so do I have recourse with them? Im sitting in South Africa with no dealer support so bit clueless wat to do with it. I must say last 3 weeks its only been charging to 10 bars not 11 which i thought was normal battery degredation. Bike has done 40000km.

[Thumpalong]

Im surprised no one has any comments on this..pretty lame I think. Guess no one knows what to say..am I the only one to experience this??? U shud all realise u have potential time bombs in ur garages. Park them outside under a fire blanket or get smoke detectors if u dont want to lose ur house. This bike was never abused off road or fast charged or anything that cud cause an issue..wasnt plugged in at the time. Bike was just standing there in the middle of the night.  Who knows wat gases I breathed in getting the damn thing out the garage.

[Fran K]

Hard to know what to say,  I went to the Zero dealership a few times best I could tell they were doing a test to see how many extra fees they could add until the customer went away.  Then the salesman calls on the phone later that day and has a better deal to offer.  I asked what sprockets were available and was expected to stand in front of the parts counter while the guy broused the zero website.  Kind of like Kubota has treated me, I never got one of those either.  My home insurance went up in the 30 to 40 percent range last cycle, I tried to ask if it was related to ev fires.  I don't have any pouch cell lithium ion battery stuff unless it is real tiny and I only know it has a battery in it.  The Honda shop won't take in repairs more than 8 years old.  It was a while ago now but one guy did drop off his bike or motor or something and felt lucky just to get it back without storage charges as they would not do what he expected at the time of drop off.

[Richard230]

Zero recalled all of their 2012 S and DS model production in 2018 because the batteries could catch on fire when being charged. By that time I had given my 2012 Zero S to my daughter. She contacted the SF Zero dealer about the recall. They sent a truck to her home, picked up the bike and gave her a check for $6,500.

[Curt]

Im surprised no one has any comments on this..pretty lame I think. Guess no one knows what to say..am I the only one to experience this??? U shud all realise u have potential time bombs in ur garages. Park them outside under a fire blanket or get smoke detectors if u dont want to lose ur house. This bike was never abused off road or fast charged or anything that cud cause an issue..wasnt plugged in at the time. Bike was just standing there in the middle of the night.  Who knows wat gases I breathed in getting the damn thing out the garage.

I'm quite sympathetic but yes, I don't really know what to say. Most of us are willingly carrying a little risk of catastrophic failure. I have a 2016 FX and a 2019 Bolt EV in the garage, fire insurance, and a mesh-type wireless smoke detector that signals on all of the detectors throughout the house. The Bolt EV battery was already replaced after the notorious recalls, and lately the 2016 FX battery is rapidly going downhill. There are some phones and an ancient Samsung tablet in the house too.

[Thumpalong]

I still find it hard to believe no one else here has had a similar failure. Unless they left this grp after a failure as they would never own a Zero again. Sad thing is I really miss the bike..if only someone in SA could repair it. No surprise Im not getting any help from Zero.

[T.S. Zarathustra]

It looks like no-one else has had similar issue.
Your bike is 12 years old. The charger in your bike was failing to fully charge. You did not have a dealer look at the charger (or look at it yourself, or get electrical engineer to look at it). Maybe it was an electrical connection going bad after years of use. Something that a dealer could have noticed if he looked at the charger. The bike is simply too old to make reliable guess of the actual cause of smoke from the available description. Without finding out exactly what caused the bike to start smoking we cannot do anything to prevent it from happening somewhere else. The bike should not have started smoking, but EV are generally quite safe to store inside. Saying all EV should be stored under a fire suppressing blanket is overreaction. Jay Leno has hundred year old electric car that was always stored inside and never set anything on fire. You seem to be the single unlucky one so far, or it's at least a rare occasion.

[Specter]

Should probably just get a peddle bike,  That way you won't have to worry about electrical fires, gas explosions or fumes from the tailpipe.

Without any pictures of the damage or any kind of follow up with info on what you found investigating it, not much to go on ::shrug::

Aaron