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[inhibernation]

Hey, if you want, shoot me an email at brandon@diginow.it

I can run a test on your bike to give you spome real info. I doubt that your battery is really degraded that much, but we have actual tests for this now and if needed can get it taken care of for you.

The only sad part is that we will either have to send you the parts for the test ~$120 shipping if on the east coast, then if anything needs fixing you would have to take it to the dealer. Or shippping the bike to us, i think around $300-500 shipping and then we can test and if needed fix anything here.

Like I said though, I doubt you have a 2016 which truely has an 83% battery so we could get it fixed up for you quickly if I am correct. If you did have a bad battery, it may take a couple months to fix, but we can do it.

I really appreciate that offer, Brandon.  I've been keeping an eye on your pursuits here while saving up for further bike investments.

I'm up in Seattle, but the new monolith has arrived at the dealer and I agreed to drop the bike off this Friday.  While I'm aware Zero's customer service is far from transparent, my initial instinct is to trust that they wouldn't send out, under warranty, what I assume is the most expensive component of the DSR unless they have a solid rationale.  Or, they're just grasping at straws.

Since they're offering it under warranty, I'm willing to give them a shot at fixing their bike; will make other transportation arrangements if the surgery takes longer than expected. 

However, I assume the risk here is that adding a good battery to a bad charger is dangerous in the same way that a bad alternator in my truck will destroy any new battery I keep throwing into it.  ??

[Auriga]

The trouble with electric vehicles is that different issues can look similar. And we're working with incomplete information. It sounds to me like either the charger is unable to get to sufficient voltage to bring the battery to 100%, or the battery cannot get to 100%.

The voltage charging stops at should be pretty visible in the logs. When they reviewed them, they probably have something that tells them why the charger stopped charging. It'd be pretty clear if the charger wasn't working.

If there's a battery issue in which the impedance of certain cells increases over time, then the battery imbalance will increase and stop charging. Maybe the charger cannot charge once one cell hits its max voltage, even if other battery cells are not keeping up. There's usually a limited ability to transfer power between cells, but it's hard to do it with large currents or impedance. My RC plane's lipo batteries did the same thing when one of them started to fail.

At my work, battery capacity is based on the lowest cell's voltage. I don't know if Zero does the same, but you can see in those logs that they're adjusting the capacity of the battery based on that low cell voltage.

In short, I think they have the right idea. And they should have sufficient safety systems to prevent a bad charger from damaging the battery anyway.

Let us know how it goes.

[Electric Cowboy]

Reguardless what the issue is or is not, Zero sent you a new monolith which is AWESOME! Congrats dude, Aaron sent you a rocking upgrade! Happy holidays buddy!!

Sick customer service there!

[inhibernation]

Aaaand she's back!



Big, big thanks to Zero for sending a new monolith and to Triumph of Seattle for their excellent service dept and brand support.  (They're not even the dealer I bought it from.)  I'd planned on this fix being one helluva slog, maybe even getting some pushback from OEM or dealer, but instead the process was as smooth as could be. 

It seems neither could pin down whether there was a physical battery corruption causing the degradation or the firmware and charging damaging it, but that lump is gone now. 

Newest firmware.  New 14.4 battery with a fresh warranty in this 2016 13.0 bike and I'm seeing a 100% SOC for the first time since 2017!

And thanks to the community here!  I hope no one in the future needs to find this thread helpful.

[MVetter]

Unrelated, but I was just perusing this thread and I must say that's a really nice photograph. Carry on.

[Ndm]

I really like the headlight and windshield combo

[Richard230]

Back on the subject of battery degradation: I read an article in my newspaper this weekend regarding Prius battery longevity. One owner said that his Prius battery finally died after driving 355,000 miles, another Prius owner reported driving 250,000 miles before replacing his car due to the catalytic converter going bad, which had a $3,000 replacement cost. Someone else owned a Lexus RX400h and it is still going strong after 202,000 miles. Another person reported that his Prius has 344,500 miles on the original batteries.

Of course, none of these reports come close to the 455,000 miles that Zero says is the life of my Zero S with PT's batteries.     Eat your hearts out Prius owners.   

[BenderEmf]

another Leaf owner reported driving 250,000 miles before replacing his car due to the catalytic converter going bad, which had a $3,000 replacement cost.

Catalytic converter on a Leaf?

[Richard230]

another Leaf owner reported driving 250,000 miles before replacing his car due to the catalytic converter going bad, which had a $3,000 replacement cost.

Catalytic converter on a Leaf?

Oops, I meant to say that article was about Prius batteries.    Thanks for catching that embarrassing mistake. I must have been thinking about wishing the leaves would finally fall off of my fruit trees.    I had better go back and modify my post a bit.  Still, you get the idea.