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[MostlyBonkers]

Believe it or not, I've had battery overheating issues with my 2014DS recently here in the UK. I have a 30 mile commute with the first 20 miles on fast roads followed by 10 miles of mixed but mostly slow riding in London.  I arrive at work with the battery cooking nicely around 40-45C and plug it in to charge. After 8 hours I come back and the temp has only dropped to about 35C.  By the time I get home it's up to around 47C and then drops to about 26C overnight. 

One evening I plugged it in to charge and it wouldn't. Fortunately it was fully charged for my ride to work in the morning.  I'm noticing a significant power drop when the battery approaches 40C.  I've had the bike two and a half years, covered 25,000 miles and this is the first time I've had issues with the battery overheating.  In fact the power reduction is so severe that the motor stops overheating and the amber light stops flashing.  My speed gets limited to 70mph and sometimes below.

If anyone at Zero is reading this, you need to implement active battery cooling as a priority. There's no point in people spending thousands of pounds on (still slow but faster) charging solutions only to find they can't ride fast for long distances and charge without having the power hobbled.  My supposed 50+ horsepower bike turns into the equivalent of a 125cc learner bike at best after only a few miles on the motorway!

 

I wonder if the temperature sensor is failing?  That sort of change, when there were no problems in the past, doesn't seem right. 

My bike has just been given a firmware update as a first step in the troubleshooting process. I'll have to see if it helps.

Part of me is wondering if I've just got so used to the bike now that I'm riding it harder than ever before. 

I've used this latest experience to justify buying a petrol bike. On the grounds of safety, of course...  ;-) My Zero is being put out to pasture while I run in the new bike. 

[Scotchman]

I'll throw in my experiences with my 2018 ZF7.2.  I only use the onboard charger, but this summer when I've ridden it down to 0%, when charging it gets to 60-62% and then overheats and stops charging.  I need to wait a few hours before charging again.

The most recent time, I got a small USB-powered fan (intended for computer use) and found it fit neatly on the fairing, pointed away from the battery to draw away heat.  After a few minutes of this, the battery got noticeably cooler to the touch and I was able to resume charging much sooner.

I powered the fan off of a USB power bank that I keep around for my phone on long rides.  It all fits nicely into the tank storage area.

If I had regular issues with fast charging like described, I would think two USB fans, one pushing and one pulling, powered by a USB battery in the tank area, would be a really cheap and easy fix.  Don't have to mount them (could, though), just sit them on the fairing while you're charging.

This is the fan I use, which fits nicely on the fairing: https://smile.amazon.com/Thermaltake-External-One-touch-Retractable-AF0007/dp/B002OJN250/

[Curt]

What is the ambient temperature when it overheats and stops charging? My 2016 6.5 has never stopped charging even if the garage was 100 degrees (to my knowledge, that is, since I generally plug it in overnight).

[dennis-NL]

About the riding fast on highway.
In my experience it's not battery temp but the motor temp wich is cause of power cutt-off.

At 100°C warning, at 117°C power reduction.

[MostlyBonkers]

About the riding fast on highway.
In my experience it's not battery temp but the motor temp wich is cause of power cutt-off.

At 100°C warning, at 117°C power reduction.

That was my experience until recently.

[Shadow]

At 100°C warning, at 117°C power reduction.

Confusing Fahrenheit for Celsius?

[Lenny]

About the riding fast on highway.
In my experience it's not battery temp but the motor temp wich is cause of power cutt-off.

At 100°C warning, at 117°C power reduction.

The motor power reduction is because the motor becomes too hot (which would fry the magnets), this is the result of the fact that an electric motor has a continuous and a peak power. Only continuous power can be sustained without the motor starting to overheat. So the Zero reduces the motor current in order to not destroy the motor.

The battery temperature is something entirely different. For maximum power, you want it to be as hot as possible and for maximum lifetime you want it somewhere around 20°C. With powerful riding or charging with a lot of power the battery starts to heat up because of the internal resistance of the cells. At 50°C the BMS will open the contactor in case of charging, at 60°C it will also open to prevent you from driving.

Low SOCs do also cause a power reduction in order to prevent the pack voltage from sagging too low.

[Scotchman]

What is the ambient temperature when it overheats and stops charging? My 2016 6.5 has never stopped charging even if the garage was 100 degrees (to my knowledge, that is, since I generally plug it in overnight).

I understood it to be 122F.  The last/only time this happened when I checked the battery temp, it was at 124F. 

[GBEV]

Soooooooooooooo. Supposing we forget Mostlybonkers's other well documented problematic issues with his once new 2014 Zero DSP bike and overheating motors, Zero's claimed battery longevity in miles then and now nevertheless looks amazing based on their own stat's even for the DSP 2014 owned the O.P.

However we now have at least one data point suggesting that if you try to attain the stated battery milage in a "New" DSP sold with zero miles driven and AFAIK rarely ever ridden with the additional weight of an extra pillion passenger, the big battery Zero DSP nevertheless suffers from unexpected and premature battery over heating (caused by battery internal resistance build up) such that  by 2018 that it is problematic for the original intended commuter purpose. Hmmm!!!

And that is after being used as recommended for the purpose as a commuter bike and in a relatively cold climate after only a fraction of the stated Zero attainable battery mileage has been acheived and by a guy that is mostly sensible IMHO  .

So who, if anyone, is on target to make the Zero claimed battery milage and how many miles have you acheived so far on your post 2013 Zero bike please?

[Richard230]

I still have a long way to go before I reach Zero's estimated battery life of 455,000 miles for my model Zero.  If only I could live that long. 

[MostlyBonkers]

The firmware update has been done and I've got my bike back. I really need to ride it, which I haven't had a proper opportunity to do yet, and report back.  Aside from trying to determine whether or not the battery is heating quicker than before, I'm also curious to see what the range is like now.

[MostlyBonkers]

After the firmware update I'm getting some very odd behaviour with the SoC.  It drops very quickly, even going down to 0% this morning on the motorway.  It recovered after I left the motorway and I arrived at work with 29% SoC.  Can't rely on it now at all.  I was going steady and my speed was limited to 60mph at one point when the SoC was at 0%.  All very odd and I've got a support ticket open with Zero.

My best guess is that there is a severe voltage sag under load.  Probably a bad cell that's not holding charge and causing issues with the other cells it is in series with.  If the BMS is clever enough to detect an issue with a series of cells and take it them out of commission, that would put more load on the rest of the cells in the battery and could explain the extra heat being generated.  Otherwise, perhaps all the cells are suffering from age and pack resistance as a whole has gone up.  All pure speculation and just throwing ideas out there really.

One good thing about the firmware update is that I can now extract the battery logs using the app, which I couldn't do before.

[Shadow]

After the firmware update I'm getting some very odd behaviour with the SoC.  It drops very quickly, even going down to 0% this morning on the motorway.  It recovered after I left the motorway and I arrived at work with 29% SoC.  Can't rely on it now at all.  I was going steady and my speed was limited to 60mph at one point when the SoC was at 0%.  All very odd and I've got a support ticket open with Zero....

Sounds familiar with the behavior of SoC on my '16 DSR since a few recent firmware revisions. Previously I could update the firmware and SoC would be predictable. What I've noticed about the new behavior is that after a reset (firmware upgrade / commissioning / poke BMS buttons) the SoC is invalid on any ride at the point where the battery is being discharged more than it previously has since the reset. On a longer ride when this happens if there is no load for a few moments the SoC climbs rapidly in its invalid state. At that condition the SoC can only go up, not down, while riding. Turning the bike off and letting it rest a moment, I turn the bike on and the SoC at its incorrectly large value will drop 1-2% per second on the display as the seconds on a clock and within a matter of minutes to the "correct" value. After a full charging cycle it may behave again so long as I am going on a ride using less and not more of the capacity of the battery than it has been ridden previously, and I do not partially charge the bike along the route.

[BamBam]

As many have advised on this forum, if you're happy with the way your bike is performing then don't do any firmware updates, which is the advice I've followed thus far with my 2017 DSR.

[Richard230]

My daughter is riding my old 2014 S with PT. The last time its firmware was updated was when it was delivered in January 2014. The motor has never been "commissioned". It still runs great and the SOC display seems to work accurately.  It just takes about a week to get past 92% to 100% on the original charger.