Print

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

[protomech]

it seems that the manufacturers are now massaging the figures themselves to try and give a lead over the competition on paper...

Brammo lists a City / Combined / Highway range. Zero lists a City / "Highway Commuting" range, which is equivalent to Brammo's City / Combined range.

Zero does explain the definition for "Highway Commuting" in the footnotes (50% city miles / 50% highway miles), but a number of journalists who should know better and potential customers who should expect better have tripped up over the meaning of Zero's "highway commuting" range.

[flar]

it seems that the manufacturers are now massaging the figures themselves to try and give a lead over the competition on paper...

Brammo lists a City / Combined / Highway range. Zero lists a City / "Highway Commuting" range, which is equivalent to Brammo's City / Combined range.

Zero does explain the definition for "Highway Commuting" in the footnotes (50% city miles / 50% highway miles), but a number of journalists who should know better and potential customers who should expect better have tripped up over the meaning of Zero's "highway commuting" range.

And Zero does list the pure highway range in its Owner's manual. [edit - retracted, read followups]

Being relatively new to EV bikes I read all of these specs and immediately understood their significance and the footnotes were not really hard to get at.  I'm surprised that a journalist would have needed to "learn" this.  At best, I would have used "Keep in mind that..." and directed the readers how to compare apples to apples figures.

About the only fault I'd see is that Zero lists the name of the spec as "Highway (commuting, 70mph) [?]", but you can easily click on the ? for more information.  They should have the word "combined" in there somewhere without having to click on a help popup link.

[Lipo423]

Sales, Marketing & PM guys we are all like this 

[zap mc]

And Zero does list the pure highway range in its Owner's manual.

[/quote]

in order to get an owners manual you would have to buy a bike at which time it would be too late.

The whole thing is just too political for the average punter and electric bike companies do themselves and the industry a profound disservice by trying to get one over the competition and not being harmonious and transparent in their dealings with the public. You have no idea how indignant a customer will be when they get a whiff of this sort of shenanigans before they have even slung a leg over a bike. -NO SALE-

[protomech]

And Zero does list the pure highway range in its Owner's manual.

Here's the snip from the Jan 14th version of the 2012 Zero S/DS manual:

RANGE
City EPA UDDS* Range
• ZF6 122 km (76 miles)
• ZF9 183 km (114 miles)
Highway at 113 km/h (70 mph)
• ZF6 69 km (43 miles)
• ZF9 101 km (63 miles)

Note that this is the same as Zero's Highway commuting range on their website. The pure 70 mph range is never listed explicitly.

Being relatively new to EV bikes I read all of these specs and immediately understood their significance and the footnotes were not really hard to get at.  I'm surprised that a journalist would have needed to "learn" this.  At best, I would have used "Keep in mind that..." and directed the readers how to compare apples to apples figures.

About the only fault I'd see is that Zero lists the name of the spec as "Highway (commuting, 70mph) [?]", but you can easily click on the ? for more information.  They should have the word "combined" in there somewhere without having to click on a help popup link.

Yes. Highway commuting, to me, means commuting activity that takes place largely on the highway. It's a sufficiently vague CYA definition that covers both Zero's usage case of 50% city miles / 50% highway miles and the case that many people will assume, which is nearly 100% 70 mph commuting. And those two ranges are dramatically different.

Highway range = 1/(2/combined - 1/city) = 43.5 miles vs 63 miles combined riding.

[Lipo423]

I cannot agree more -Unfortunately- 

By the way. I thought I had a reasonable English level since a few hours ago..."shenanigans" never heard that word since today...good learning...we have exactly the same word -and meaning- in Spanish!!!

[kingcharles]

A famous saying goes:
There's lies, damn lies and marketing!

[cirrus pete]

It's all about tucking...the wind makes our fun shorter 

Put a windshield on my 2011 S and added 10% to my range. Zero ought to ship all their street bikes with windshields.

What windshield did you use? the one available from Zero? Is it easy to take on and off?

[Lipo423]

I do not use any windshield...just the trucks ahead of me sometimes 

[ZeroSinMA]

It's all about tucking...the wind makes our fun shorter 

Put a windshield on my 2011 S and added 10% to my range. Zero ought to ship all their street bikes with windshields.

What windshield did you use? the one available from Zero? Is it easy to take on and off?

Used this one: http://www.amazon.com/Slipstreamer-SS10-Viper-Windshield-SS-10-C-1/dp/B000GV8KSW

Cost: $76.85

Took me 30 minutes to intall.

Looks like this:

[CliC]

Nice! Looks like it was made for the bike.

Still debating whether to get one for my DS (though today's trip home in the rain makes me lean toward getting one), but I can;t help but wonder if a windshield would just look wrong on a DS 

[ZeroSinMA]

Nice! Looks like it was made for the bike.

Still debating whether to get one for my DS (though today's trip home in the rain makes me lean toward getting one), but I can;t help but wonder if a windshield would just look wrong on a DS 

The Zero S looks better with the windshield and sure gets better range. As you can see, it's quite aerodynamic. I used to ride slowly with gradual acceleration into town and back and get two flashing bars as I pulled into the driveway. Now I ride aggressively in and out of town and arrive home with four bars.

[manlytom]

hi

this sounds impressive to gain so much by better aerodynamics ! Have you done just one ride like that or is this repeatable ? I have a frequent taken same ride and with that I could compare. Just not sure if the get the bold on screen or replace the front lamp cover altogether with a sportier windshield. guess we need to try out some options.

[flar]

Here's the snip from the Jan 14th version of the 2012 Zero S/DS manual:

RANGE
City EPA UDDS* Range
• ZF6 122 km (76 miles)
• ZF9 183 km (114 miles)
Highway at 113 km/h (70 mph)
• ZF6 69 km (43 miles)
• ZF9 101 km (63 miles)

Note that this is the same as Zero's Highway commuting range on their website. The pure 70 mph range is never listed explicitly.

Ouch!  You're right.  I was duped by knowing that the ZF9 highway range was 43 (as I reverse engineered from the figures on the web site long before I read the manual) and so when I saw that figure I thought it was them coming clean on the highway range.

So, without doing those calculations you wouldn't know the true highway range.  I wish they'd just list all 3...

[rotoiti]

So today I took my Zero DS ZF9 on a ride from San Bruno to Pacifica then hwy 1, hwy 84, hwy 35, Page Mill Rd to Mountain View. I was making 55-60 mph on highway 1 for about 25 miles and then I went over the mountains via highway 84, 35 and then down via Page Mill Road. 70.1 miles total, 9 bars used. I figure by the time I got home the bike still had about 20 miles of slow travel (30 mph or so) to go before dying.