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[mrwilsn]

Ouch! I hope you're not too banged up.

Thanks for the info, this is great!

Are Farasis cells available direct to consumers or only to business?

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

Farasis is still a tiny company, 35-40 in our US R&D / dist facility, and 400 in our chinese assembly plant (most are robot techs and warehousing workers)

If we follow Dow Kokams approach and sell directly to consumers, and have someone burn down an apartment complex and sue us. We could easily get sued out of existance. So at this point, we like to keep close control of  our  battery cells, and that means that no cunsumer sales for the time being.

After I posted I found this site that appears to sell Farasis batteries... is it bogus?

http://www.cdiweb.com//PortalManufacturerCategory.aspx?ManfNo=1536&pid=-1#.VmspQqlOnqB

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

To be conpletely honest, I do not know what CTC battery co. Is exactly, I know Farasis owns them, and that we have some CTC batteries in our lab for test and eval right now. Most of those use our 18650 cells (which are nothing special TBH) our power 18650 cells arent that great, and our energy 18650s suck. We do have a high cycle life (>2K) 2.0ah 18650 that goes in a ton of china EVs.

Cool...thanks for the honest information!

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[buutvrij for life]

Great info Jackson!
My '15 DS is usually resting with Soc between 20% - 30% at 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (wintertime)
Got that info mainly from battery university.com. So happy to read now i'm doing the 'right' thing.

Any idea why Zero tells us to plug the bike in when not using it, especially when nog using it for longer times and when it's (very) cold?

Hope you are not banged up to bad...

[Doctorbass]

Awsome info and summary Farfle!

Thanks for taking tim eto do that and so help community to better understand lithium cells!

I did not know that you work for Farasis.  that's great!

btw i Wonder how Zero will deal with cell form factor and  redesign of frame over the years. Sometime new battery mean different shape and so require different battery case.. then different frame .. all that have a cost.

Fortunatly Zero can get the 29Ah new cells that match the 25Ah dimensions.

I'm sure that i few years Zero will get so important in the market that they will be able to ask for custom cells form factor..

Doc

[NEW2elec]

Thank you very much for the info Farfle.  I hope you heal fast and well I hate to hear anybody being in a crash.  I was going to ask some of these very questions about the cells and you wonderfully explained the do's and dont's from the very source.  Thank you again for taking the time to write the post.

[Killroy]

Can someone post a picture of what the battery looks like with the case off and what the cells look like. 

There were some articles recently of a Zero battery engineer criticizing Tesla's cylindrical cell batteries and the writer was fanning the flames with a catchy headline 'Tesla can learn a thing or two about battery design from Zero.'  Interesting. 

[oobflyer]

Store the bike in a cool place with a stable temperature at low SOC.

Any idea why Zero tells us to plug the bike in when not using it, especially when not using it for longer times and when it's (very) cold?

This is an interesting contradiction - I wonder if someone from Zero can explain. Or someone close to Zero (Terry?!)

I thought that the cell-balancing portion of the charge cycle occurs at the very end, when the voltage is at the maximum. This would explain Zero's recommendation to just leave the bike plugged in, but I'm curious about this new information. Wouldn't the cells become unbalanced if the bike is stored at a low SOC?

I ride year-round, so my bike ('15 SR) won't be "in storage", but I'm still curious.

[Cortezdtv]

Store the bike in a cool place with a stable temperature at low SOC.

Any idea why Zero tells us to plug the bike in when not using it, especially when not using it for longer times and when it's (very) cold?

This is an interesting contradiction - I wonder if someone from Zero can explain. Or someone close to Zero (Terry?!)

I thought that the cell-balancing portion of the charge cycle occurs at the very end, when the voltage is at the maximum. This would explain Zero's recommendation to just leave the bike plugged in, but I'm curious about this new information. Wouldn't the cells become unbalanced if the bike is stored at a low SOC?

I ride year-round, so my bike ('15 SR) won't be "in storage", but I'm still curious.

I believe you first quote is form terry? going off that let me explain why he and many others do it that way. I do too...


The first part about leaving the bike at a 50% state of charge the bike battery is then under much less stress to stay at that lower voltage. If you charge to 100% which is necessary at some time to balance batteries etc it only has to be done once in a while. When you are storing the bike for long periods a few months, it would be wise to store the bike at 50-65 SOC. This way when your battery sags after a few months or however long, you will only loose some juice/power (volts/amps) from SOC rather than loosing a tiny amount of total capacity at full charge. When you charge to 100% and leave it there when the batter looses lets just say 1% off the top after you left it for a year, once you drain and use the bike again you will most likely only be able to charge to 99% and you might loose that extra little bit. Will you really notice? hard to say, from one bike to the next I cant tell..... when you are rallying hard you wont notice, if you were to put a improperly stored battery and a properly stored battery against each other in a long range test you might be able to see a light difference but again, its basically negligible.

Another example of how the difference is, on a 2013 fx if I ride at 35 mph the first battery bar will be gone in less than 1-3 miles, more so on batteries that have been raced in go karts   


as far as the second part when i finish posting this ill post a picture of a 2010 zero battery here:


(space saved for pic)





The 2013 cells and up are a pouch style battery instead of a cylinder so there is no room in between the cells like in the picture above, and similarly the Tesla battery cells are similar size. A huge advantage to the Tesla cell box while being less dense per area; they have the ability to cool the batteries with cooling running in between them, something zeros do not.



Pouch cell pics coming:


You can see the pouch cell right above the cylindrical cells

[MostlyBonkers]

Thanks Farfle, I found your notes very interesting indeed. If you have the time, would you mind reading this topic I started some time ago please? Any comments on it would be greatly appreciated.

Lithium Ion (Li-ion) Batteries used in Zero Motorcyles - all you need to know
http://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=4280

[oobflyer]

it would be wise to store the bike at 50-65 SOC

Understood - again - just curious why Zero is recommending the opposite - to leave the bike plugged-in (which I've been doing).

My Nissan Leaf owner's manual recommended to charge the batteries to 80% (instead of 100%) for battery health/longetivity - which I did for daily charging. Ironically, despite following their recommendations our Leaf battery capacity decreased by 25% in just three years (22K miles).

My LiFePo pack in my Vectrix is 5 yrs old and doesn't seem to have lost any capacity regardless of how I charge the thing.

I know the Li-ion chemistries are different - seems that it's difficult to pin down the best charging strategy.

[Cortezdtv]

80% is probably still fine


Zero advises to leave them on the charger because like I said even if you loose that tiny bit of capacitance you probably won't notice and the battery will balance occasionally, which is safer than letting it potentially letting it sit until it goes bad

[MostlyBonkers]

I can think of a couple of reasons Zero's advice is to leave the bike plugged in:

It's the simplest advice to give.

It gets people into the habit of plugging in, thus reducing the chance of them finishing a ride at a low state of charge and then not using it for months.

They've calculated that the battery pack will still have well over 80% health after 5 years even if left plugged in all the time.

Leaving the bike plugged in is the most convenient thing to do. People like convenience and Zero wants happy customers. If they suggested standing the bikes at 40-50% SoC, inevitably people forget and get on a bike with half a tank. It might not be enough juice to get them to their destination, or it might shorten the trip out they planned. Either way they'll be pissed off and frustrated.

It's unlikely that many people will own their zero for more than a couple of years and they might only suffer a 5% drop in battery health in that time. They either won't notice it or it won't make much of a difference to them.

For long term owners, improvements in battery technology will result in nominal capacity increasing 50-60% during five years. The price is likely to drop too. Range is unlikely to be an issue for those owners, but they might consider a new battery pack rather than a whole new bike.

Five years is a long time for Zero to develop new technologies, integrate new features and improve the product. The original bike might be kept as a runaround or given to a family member whilst a new model is bought for main use.

[kensiko]

Hey Farfle I enjoyed reading your post. I don't have much free time because of my 2yo boy is taking most of it, so I only managed to drive 3000 km since November 2013. So my S is spending most of its time in a cool garage plugged in. Should I try to unplug it ?

[Kocho]

Did you "fast-charge" the Leaf or drive/store it in a hot climate? I've read stories like yours mainly in hot sunny places and usually combined with some form of fast charging. Add running it to near 0 at each charge, and that is even worse...

As for the Zero advice to keep it plugged-in, as MostlyBonkers mentioned, that's probably because most people would not follow a more complicated procedure or won't buy in the first place if they thought they'd be harming the batteries if kept topped-up.  Plus, it's a convenience thing - have the bike ready any time.

On my Vectrix with Nissan Leaf cells I tend to follow the advice here - charge it to "full", ride it, keep it at less than 50% for the winter. I just check the voltage occasionally - it barely changes over the course of several months. If the Zeros are indeed draining the batteries faster when not in use, but if they are not significantly disbalancing themselves in the process, I'd just say one should partially charge from time to time but still keep around half-charged or a bit less. If, however, the BMS in the Zero is poorly designed to disbalance the bike when not in use, then topping-up to full and equalizing in the process might be needed. One should be able to tell through the Zero app, no?

it would be wise to store the bike at 50-65 SOC

Understood - again - just curious why Zero is recommending the opposite - to leave the bike plugged-in (which I've been doing).

My Nissan Leaf owner's manual recommended to charge the batteries to 80% (instead of 100%) for battery health/longetivity - which I did for daily charging. Ironically, despite following their recommendations our Leaf battery capacity decreased by 25% in just three years (22K miles).

My LiFePo pack in my Vectrix is 5 yrs old and doesn't seem to have lost any capacity regardless of how I charge the thing.

I know the Li-ion chemistries are different - seems that it's difficult to pin down the best charging strategy.

[Doug S]

It's unlikely that many people will own their zero for more than a couple of years and they might only suffer a 5% drop in battery health in that time.

I'm coming up on two years now (end of January), and 22,000 miles so far, and I've had an increase in capacity. My commute is identical every day, and I know exactly how many percent it requires to get to several milestones both coming and going, and the battery capacity has clearly increased by at least a couple of percent. The seasonal variation (cold weather vs hot weather) is very clear, but so is the small increase in capacity. Even on the weekend, my bike is plugged in every night, all night.

I know Terry's had pretty much the same experience, and I believe Ben will tell a very similar story.

I understand that what farfle is saying comes right from the horse's mouth, and far from denying what he's saying, I just want to add some real-world perspective. I'm sure he's right that there's some deterioration at highest cell voltage, but it's not worth talking about. These are rugged cells and capacity loss may be measurable in a laboratory, but it's utterly imperceptible in the real world. The other considerations MostlyBonkers did a good job of enumerating far outweigh a possible microscopic capacity loss caused by leaving the cells topped off all the time.

[MostlyBonkers]

Well if Doug's experience doesn't put a few minds at rest, I don't know what will!

For those of us that can't live with ourselves unless we're doing our absolute best to optimise everything, I recommend therapy.

Therapy is expensive though, so perhaps one of those timers? Especially when doing a regular commute. You'd soon know how much time to charge to 40% when you get home and you'd program an extra charge to top off your battery early in the morning. That way you'd leave it plugged in all the time but also ensure it spends most of it's standing time at 40-50% SoC. A seven day programmable timer would cover you for the weekend, until you wake up one Sunday morning and fancy an unscheduled ride, only to find you've got no juice. You'd also have to remember to keep an eye on cell balance via the app and leave the bike with power for a long weekend every few months to allow the BMS to do its job.

On reflection, I think Zero's advice has one very important aim that I've only just had a light bulb moment about:

The elimination of charging anxiety!

They've done their best to eliminate range anxiety by selling a bike that doesn't pretend to be anything more than a short hop/commuter bike. When fast charging has matured I'm sure they'll work on a tourer.

To Zero's credit, they have the wisdom to realise that anxiety kills fun and the pleasure of ownership. When reading Zero's claims that the battery is good for 300,000km+ until it gets down to 80% health I did originally think that it was sorted. Why worry when Zero can make claims like that and at the same time advise to leave the bike plugged in?

Having read Doug's last post, I can't help wondering if I've spent far too much time pondering this whole subject.

If anyone can come forward and tell us a story of how they've lost significant capacity over a few years, like oobflyer and his leaf, then please do. Otherwise, on the strength of real world experience, advice from the manufacturer and in the best interests of your mental health, I think we can all put this one to bed:

Set it, forget it, have fun. 

Rinse and repeat so many times your hair will fall out before your battery dies.

Life's too short to waste time thinking and worrying about it. It won't make a material difference. Trying to extend the life of your battery will only shorten your own. On this one, be dumb and be happy. [emoji4]