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[Richard230]

After experiencing what appeared to be the battery pack degrading on my 2014 Zero S with PT, I have been wondering about Zero's amazing claims regarding battery life.  On my 2014 S, they said that the battery pack should last (80% capacity) for about 350,000 miles.

Zero's estimated battery life (city  ) as stated in their 2017 paper brochure, is 455,000 miles for the ZF13.0 S with PT.  To me that seems (no kidding!) kind of optimistic, based upon my experience with my 2014 S, which only had 10K miles before the battery voltage when fully charged dropped from 17 volts to 15 volts and the charger started to turn off at 92%, although it would continue to charge as high as 98% if you kept the charger connected for about 5 days - whatever that indicates about battery life.

So I don't think that bike is going to accumulate really big mileage before the fully charged pack is showing 80%. However, it did spend most of its time fully charged (being ridden several times a week) and batter charging cycles were up around 400 times due to being ridden on mostly short trips and that may have had an effect on the battery pack.

So the purpose of this thread is to post about your battery life experiences and other thoughts regarding the subject.

[skoleskibe]

Thats probably not battery degradation, but your charge system open circuit Voltage thats drifting.
If you charge your battery to 117v it’ll stay at 177v for a very long time, showing 100%, BUT if your charger max’s out at say 115.3v the bms/mbb will report charge level somewhere in the high nineti’s % leaving Users to believe that the battery has lost capacity.


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[NEW2elec]

My 13 still has 11 bars so um, yeah.
I also believe your SOC reading is a non battery issue.  At most probably the PT as I've seen people has quite a few issues with them.

[KrazyEd]

From what I have seen in articles that I have read, batteries of most EVs ( Other than the Nissan Leaf ) seem to drop pretty quickly to around 90%~95% and then pretty much stay there.
I got my 2013 FX at about a year old and it would charge to 100% but quickly dropped to around 95% once unplugged. Several years later, it still charges to 100% but now drops to around 92%.
Still Much better battery life than my phones or other smaller devices get. If you look at battery projections from Zero over the years, the life even in the same year depends upon the size of the pack

[Doug S]

So far, in my 38,000 miles of experience on my 2014 SR, I trust the battery 99% or better. I really do believe it has yet to suffer any significant degradation whatsoever.

My trust in the app to indicate the SoC, however, is more around the 5% mark. I don't believe that thing at ALL, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

[JasonS]

My 2015 SR (with PT) has about 30,000 25,000 miles on it. If I remember to, I'll update with the exact figure when I get it back from the dealer. (This did say 30,000 - I was mis-remembering.  It was actually closer to 25,000 - it was 25,315 when I got it back from the dealer, which would have included at least two substantial test rides, and hopefully a few more after installing new packs)

For about a year, since I had a charger failure (replaced under warranty), my pack has been flaky, sometimes preventing me from reaching the kind of speeds you expect (i.e., under various conditions being limited by available power to speeds under 80mph, sometimes dramatically lower, like 60 or even, in extreme cases, 30-40 or below. On a couple of scary occasions, it could barely hit 20.).  It also reduces my useful range quite a bit.
I don't have a dealer close by, so I haven't been willing to just haul it off to the dealer everytime something bad happened, so I've lived with it for the last year until it got so bad I could no longer make my round trip to work reliably without limping it home (50 miles).
It's been at the nearest dealer for a few weeks now, and they've finally been able to reproduce the problem, and Zero is replacing the monolith under warranty.  On the test ride the dealer performed, they only got 50 miles out of a full charge (drained all the way to 0 allegedly, though I'm not sure how they did it), and they couldn't get it over 70mph on that ride.

I think there's a certain amount of statistical luck involved in the health of these packs.  My personal suspicion (founded on nothing but my own ideas) is that a single cell in the pack is probably bad, and the bms is restricting output in order to try and protect that cell from further discharge/damage.

I'm happy Zero is replacing it, but frustrated it took a year of back and forth to get them to see I wasn't BSing them.

[Richard230]

That is also my off-the-wall feeling too, Jason.  I think one cell is not feeling well and the charger is not willing to take a chance overcharging the pack because of a single cell reaching max voltage before the rest. Still, my daughter, after starting out with 92% showing on the display, put 80 miles on the 2014 S the other day and arrived home with 35% still showing.  Anyway, she is happy with the bike's performance.

I might add that her 2012 S still shows 11 bars when fully charged and is good for about 80 miles at expressway speeds.

[MostlyBonkers]

I've done 17,000 miles on my 2014DS. I bought it two years ago and it would almost certainly have spent the first two years of its life plugged in and doing nothing.  It has spent the last two years plugged in when not being ridden, so most of that time at 100% SoC.  I was organised enough to drop the SoC to around 50% before going on holiday for a couple of weeks, but that's it.

As far as I can tell, the capacity hasn't dropped at all. Even during winter I can still get 65 miles out of it.  The only difference is that power management kicks in a lot earlier during the cold weather. I think range is affected a bit during winter but it isn't as noticeable as with my Kia Soul EV. The range I get from the car drips from 90 miles during warm weather to 70 miles under 5C.

At the moment, I have no reason to question Zero's claims for battery life. However, the battery is still a baby compared to the 200,000 miles or so it is meant to do before dropping to 80% health.  Even then, I'll still have a bike that can do my 50 mile round trip to work.  I very much doubt I'll keep it that long and if I do, I'll be able to put a battery in it that doubles its range.

[JasonS]

Sounds like you're both having fairly good luck with your packs.  Well, the 92% bit would make me a bit crazy, but if she can still get 80 miles in and have 35% left, that's better than I've ever gotten! (Though maybe that's due to rider weight, riding style, etc.)

Bonkers, sounds like yours is a poster child! I imagine that's the kind of behavior Zero designed for.  I assume the variations from that can be chalked up to deficiencies in the cell quality control process. Probably the science of testing/manufacturing the cells isn't quite as mature as we (and Zero) would like to believe.

I'd like to someday learn that there's a process for identifying and replacing bad cells in otherwise good packs so that a case such as mine (and possibly Richard's) doesn't turn into a $6000 repair.

[Skidz]

On my 2016 DSR, the battery gauge shows 100%. However, I remember looking at the app the first time and seeing 12.096kWh at 100% SOC. Now the app has changed a little in the mean time showing only 3 digit charge values, and it shows 11.6kWh at 100% SOC.. I have charged the bike around 430 times by now.
If the app is showing capacity right, then i'm at 11600/12096*100=96% capacity, meaning I lost 4%. This does not reflect in range btw, can still do about the same miles per charge...

[Richard230]

Well, I don't know what the real story is regarding Zero's battery life during normal field (not laboratory) usage, but it is certainly true that my laptop and cell phone batteries seem to degrade noticeably every year that I own those devices. 

[togo]

Next time you look into this, try to get the actual voltages, not just the SoC, they are a useful sanity check. You can hook up a physical device, pull the logs with the app, or use the Zero Voltage app from Bitshape ($5 in the Android Google Play app store).

[Richard230]

Next time you look into this, try to get the actual voltages, not just the SoC, they are a useful sanity check. You can hook up a physical device, pull the logs with the app, or use the Zero Voltage app from Bitshape ($5 in the Android Google Play app store).

The voltage of my 2014 bike was 117 volts when new.  Now it is 113 volts when it first stops charging and then creeps up to 115 volts if left plugged in for more than 5 days.

My 2018 S shows 116 volts when fully charged and I note that its regen does not "pulsate" any more (like the 2014 bike did) for the first mile of riding when activated.

[MrDude_1]

Well, I don't know what the real story is regarding Zero's battery life during normal field (not laboratory) usage, but it is certainly true that my laptop and cell phone batteries seem to degrade noticeably every year that I own those devices. 

I could go into an elaborate reason for why this is and how to stop it, but in a nutshell, its because they overcharge and over discharge them in an effort to have max "when new" life. with no regard for long term..

pull up a battery app on your phone and look at the batt voltage. some of them go as high as 4.35v...  its not dangerous, but it also means you need to be at 75 or 80 percent (under 4.2v) before your battery isnt slowly destroying itself by just sitting there. The same for discharging... it just goes too low.

add in that most people leave the phone plugged in for hours every night and will often top it off throughout the day and you have the best way to ruin your battery with time.

Some laptops can be adjusted, but the charge settings on cellphones is a constant annoyance to me. Ideally I want it to stop at 4.15v unless I tell it otherwise and to stop discharging around 3.5 or so.  If this means my phone only lasts 10h instead of the 38h it lasts right now.. fine.. I'll tell it to max out when I need it to.  but with the way it kills itself sitting charged in 3 years it wont last 10h. Do it correctly and it will still last so close to the same as new that you can never tell.

[MrDude_1]

Next time you look into this, try to get the actual voltages, not just the SoC, they are a useful sanity check. You can hook up a physical device, pull the logs with the app, or use the Zero Voltage app from Bitshape ($5 in the Android Google Play app store).

The voltage of my 2014 bike was 117 volts when new.  Now it is 113 volts when it first stops charging and then creeps up to 115 volts if left plugged in for more than 5 days.

My 2018 S shows 116 volts when fully charged and I note that its regen does not "pulsate" any more (like the 2014 bike did) for the first mile of riding when activated.

Then you have a charger problem. The voltage of the bike on the charger and at full charge is not dependent upon the battery, but is set by the charger.