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[peterwarm]

I've  done a couple of 165mile motorway journeys and back now on my Premium SR/F in the UK and am beginning to suspect that the fastest way to do the journey is to slow down.

Obvious really but nothing like nearly running out to concentrate the mind. Of course this is true for ICE bikes too, but with a full tank who cares?

 I'm starting out at 100% from a night charge and topping up on a 3 phase 240V 23kW rapid chargers (UK)

I played around with some numbers from zero and my experience, and came up with the attached chart for the total travel time at different speeds.  The orange ( bottom) line is the actual driving time, the blue line is the charge stops added in with a premium SR/F 5.8kW chargers.
[img][img]

I then reran it with an 11.7 kW charger, ie the charge tank option on a premium. ( 2nd attachment, brown line)

What is obvious now is that the charge tank is absolutely worth buying for longer journeys, even at the 10% extra purchase price of the bike.  It does two things:
  cuts the journey time down
  makes the fastest time faster, ie I can cruise at 70 rather than 60 and this keeps me out of the UK lorry traffic which is limited to 60 mph on motorways.

Time to save up for the chargtank....

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

Yes, this has been computed before.

Among other articles, there's a Travel article on the unofficial manual which addresses issues faced over the last 3 years by S/DS/etc owners:
https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Travel

There are a few Google Sheets documents that have this worked out for a 2014 SR, and a 2016 DSR (latter is mine).

One quick way to put this is that there's a speed at which, given a certain charging rate one will get when arriving, going any faster will add to the charging time more than arriving sooner takes away.

So, upgrading your charger pushes that number forward from 43mph for a stock S/DS bike, to 55-65mph for a bike with DigiNow chargers, say.

The SR/F should perform better, and it does look like your sweet spot is 60-65mph for a stock 6kW charging setup, and 65-70mph with a Charge Tank upgrade to 11-12kW.

Reducing your drag at high speeds will push that forward a bit more, but mostly reduce your energy consumption by 10% or so (15% with enough tuning and the right windscreen for your body size), which in turn saves charging time.

[JaimeC]

Interesting reading, Brian.  Thanks.  I plan on doing an "Around Long Island" trip next summer utilizing my new 6kW Charge Tank and the numerous Level2 ChargePoint stations that have started popping up like mushrooms after a storm around here.  I figure that would be ROUGHLY a 200 mile day.  Stations by shopping malls (where most of them SEEM to be) would be the best option as it would give me something to do while waiting.  The easternmost point is at a police station, so that one MIGHT pose a challenge.  I'll know more next summer!

[peterwarm]

Thanks too for the reference, Brian, I'm glad to see i wasn't dreaming this stuff.

In the UK the easiest way to do long distances is the motorways and at the moment most "service stations" seem to have rapid chargers.  The only issue with them is that 2 hours at one of these is very likely to do your head in with boredom, as they are in the middle of nowhere. Shopping Mall sounds quite attractive.

So the charge tank makes sense.  My only issue with it ( apart from the price), is that most of these UK rapid chargers can do 43kW, where as the charge tank and premium combo only makes 12kW.  If I buy one of these charge tanks, how long before they bring out an upgraded version?

Come to that, does anyone know of a third party charge tank solution?  I looked at the diginow site but couldn't see anything suitable.

Thanks for input.

[Auriga]

There are currently no other third party options for SR/F charging. There was a post on Facebook about someone trying to make a ChaDEMO charger, but I'm not sure those are very common in Europe, and I have no idea when they'll do it. 12kW is pretty close to the 1C limit on the SR/F battery, it is unlikely they will get too much higher, as the theoretical limit is probably around 13kW for their batteries.

The only thing I'd be hesitant about is whether they are going to release a DC fast charger for current bikes. It seems likely, but as far as I know there has been no news about it.

[MVetter]

In addition to the challenge Zeros face charging at 1C, because the batteries are fully potted they don't cool down very easily once heated up through a combination of riding and charging near 1C. This absolutely doesn't mean you can't do trips with them, but you do need to factor in the thermal considerations.