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Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: dkw12002 on June 09, 2013, 05:48:59 AM
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Somewhere I read about how many full charges you should get until the battery is depleted to 80% of charging capacity rather than stating it in terms of the 232,000 miles for the 8.5 battery. Anyone know what miles per full charge Zero is basing that 232,000 mi. figure on?
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Zero states 3000 100% cycles based upon laboratory tests, to 80% capacity. In theory the degradation is linear, so at 1500 cycles you would expect to have 90% original capacity. Note that 1500 100% cycles are basically the same as 3000 50% cycles.
Zero bases their numbers upon the EPA city range metric. You can easily substitute your own range metrics, ie I see about 70 miles per cycle average, so 3000 cycles @ 90% average (100% @ 0 cycles, 80% @ 3000 cycles) = 190k miles.
I'm seeing some battery degradation already, at least I think that's what it is. But that's another post.
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Thanks, so if I use the 70 mi. per charge range figure and ride 10,000 mi. a year, that's 143 charges per year and it would take 3000/143=21 years to get to 80% charge at which time your range would be 56 miles. if it's linear, then in the first 1.3125 years your range would decrease from 70 miles to .9875x70=69.125 mi. Not sure I would notice that, but in 5.25 years when the charge is down 5% to a range of 66.5 miles, I would probably notice.
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...but in 5.25 years when the charge is down 5% to a range of 66.5 miles, I would probably notice.
I'll bet that in 5 years those batteries will be technologically obsolete and you would
have already upgraded to smaller, more powerful, and cheaper batteries.
Anyway, for now it's informative to do the calculations.
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Some owners of Tesla Roadsters are now over 200k miles on the original batteries and are reporting less than half the degradation that Tesla specified. It seems that batteries actually fair better in real world use than in the lab. There are so many variables it would be impossible to predict it with any real accuracy anyway.
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I agree the battery will be obsolete in 5 years, possibly along with other things on the bike perhaps even the motor. I suppose it is too much to hope that there will be a cheaper, better battery replacement by then. Zero says to not anticipate huge changes going forward, but to some degree they are along for the ride, same as the buyers. If some new technology comes along, they will have to jump on it too. In any case, I will likely have a lot of miles on my Zero in 5 years if I still have it. I put 700 miles on it in a week and may use it in place of the Gixxer 1000 which I have put 9000 miles on in 5 months. 10,000 mi. on a Zero per year will be easy for me. Riding is what I do.
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The main factor that varies from the cycle tests to the real world is the temperature. A speaker at the American Chemical Society mentioned that LI-ion batteries that are predicted to degrade to 80% after 10 years are more likely to last 15-20 years since the tests are done at 120F, and you run your bike at lower temps.
http://liteplusbattery.com/can-lithium-ion-batteries-last-20-years/ (http://liteplusbattery.com/can-lithium-ion-batteries-last-20-years/)
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Nissan lists the following as factors that could degrade battery life.
ï€ Frequent use of quick charging
ï€ Frequent charging when battery state of charge is already high
ï€ Too much electric consumption while driving
ï€ Long term parking with high state of charge
It appears from Plug In America’s LEAF Battery Survey that a high average temperature could also be a factor. I believe some one mentioned this here before. Here is the survey PDF link. www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/Leaf-Battery-Survey.pdf (http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/Leaf-Battery-Survey.pdf)
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After reading the info about charging a nearly full battery may not be good for it, I began only charging my bike over night. I know Zero says to just keep it plugged in, but I do a lot of 2 mile rides...at least 3 per day, so that's a lot of recharges on a nearly full battery. I now have 3700 miles on the 2013 Zero S, so it has turned into my main bike...although I have 10,500 mi. on the Gixxer now. I'm getting a Grom any day now, so my mileage per bike may drop a bit.....or not. I never tried night riding.
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Wow, looked up that Grom and did a double-take. It looks strikingly similar to a 2012 DS.
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I guess it does. I am interested because of the 225 lbs wet, very simple to work on, cheap to maintain, or at least it should be. Has just one inlet and one exhaust valve easy to access. Fuel injected, but I think that will be reliable. The drain plug, air filter, spark plug, valve covers are looking right at you. Takes less than 1 quart of oil. Gets 100 mpg or so. Well, probably not the way I will ride it. Since I already have two better commuting/city bikes, I will use it as a day trip bike to wander outside the range of my Zero.
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I'd like to say that I don't agree with the fact that "in five year our batteries will be obselete". I'm an RC fan and I'm using LiPo for more than 5 years. There have been some improvement mainly other the discharge current (the C number) with the so-called nanotech technology but nothing revolutionary. And nothing seems to be coming out new. I may be wrong but I don't think so, am I ?
I must say I also don't know the technological fact why Zero says to keep the bike plugged most of the time. Alain in the RC tech it's well known that a 4.2Volts LiPo cell should be store at 3.8V for maximum life expectancy. Maybe that's why Nissan say "Long term parking with high state of charge & Frequent charging when battery state of charge is already high" is bad, that makes sense. Any point of view on that to enlight my knowledge ?
Have a good week end !!!
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I always assumed that impact of keeping it topped up was low, you arent going to do more than knock a couple of percentage points off the max SOC each year but leaving it unplugged could lead to a bricked battery, which is obviously a much bigger deal.
The nice thing about the Zero's is how easy they are to live with, imagine if the manual had 13 pages on how the level of charge you should maintain for maximum life.
I agree that our batteries will almost certainly be obsolete in 5 years. Look at lithium-sulfur batteries in Trikesters thread. Who wants to be plodding round on our LiNiMnCo dinosaurs when you could be doing 4 times the distance between charges or riding a bike half the weight.
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Didn't know about this one, thanks for the tip. I've done some googling on the Li sulfur and you're right it seems really promissing. Some manufacturers want to start production in 2014 !!! It's tomorrow !!! Li-air are for the 2020's
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Who wants to be plodding round on our LiNiMnCo dinosaurs
Ah, but some of us are still riding around on 1923 dinosaurs!
(My Harley flat twin).
Trikester
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Getting back to Zero battery life for a moment, I keep having an issue with the recommendation for storing Li batteries at around 70% of their capacity and not keeping the bike plugged in all the time with regards to a daily rider. I keep my bike plugged in all the time as Zero recommends. If I didn't do that it would not have the range that I might need during a ride.
I can see storing a pile of loose batteries partially discharged, but when installed in a vehicle there is probably some parasitic drain from the BMS that would eventually brick the batteries if the charger was not connected regularly (that is what happened to my GPR-S when it was stored for 2 months without being recharged).
So I can't see any disadvantage to following Zero's recommendation of keeping the charger plugged in 24/7, especially if you ride the bike almost every day as I do.
Maybe if you are storing the bike during the winter you might want to hook up a timer that would turn on the charger once a week, but I am not sure that would be much different than keeping it connected all the time as, when turned on, the charger would recharge the batteries to full capacity again. So it still seems to me that leaving the bike's charger hooked up all the time is the only practical way of making sure that the batteries remain in good condition, even during long term storage - short of disconnecting the entire pack from the bike's electronic monitoring system.
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The only time I unplug my Zero bikes is during a thunderstorm when I'm concerned that a strike on the line near the house would blow the electronics. I have surge arrestors on AC outlets but I don't count on those for a powerful strike near the house. At my desert cabin a strike on a power pole on my property wiped out about $600 worth of equipment. That strike shattered the cross-arm and burned a "crater" in the top of the pole. Anything connected to the AC line, and grounded, in my buildings got creamed. Even one of the GFI outlets was destroyed! Any and every path to ground was taken by the current from that strike. >:(
Otherwise my bikes stay plugged in as Zero says.
Trikester
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I ride my Zero every day it isn't raining too, year around. The first issue I ran across with keeping the bike plugged in all the time was the warning I got when I plugged in the bike just after a ride. I think the battery was too hot, but that's just a guess. Once I cooled off the battery with the fan, it took the charge, so there's that issue this time of year. Then the idea of charging a nearly full battery which may not be good for it, and thirdly, I also got a warning light...possibly warm battery again, but not sure, when I plugged in the Zero after a pretty long ride with both motor and battery pretty hot, then interrupted the charge cause I needed the bike again. This resulted in a system light warning that stayed on for quite a while until I think the battery cooled down some more, so what I have been doing after long rides is cool everything down before plugging in the battery. I do this for an hour or more. I tell you this Texas heat is brutal on equipment, ice bikes included. So at 5 am, I head over to the gym and return at 6...2 miles. I don't plug it in. Then at 9, I rode over to exchange a modem...4 miles. Then I went to lunch at Subway 2 miles. The bike has used 1 bar and is not plugged in yet. I will usually go out again 2 more times....one about 3:30 for 2 miles, then an evening ride of 10 miles. Then I cool the bike down with fans for an hour and plug it back in at 8 pm, until 5 am....Usually I've used 2, maybe 3 bars. I may go back to plugging the bike in after each ride once the temp drops a few degrees.
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I recall talking about the "cooling down" before charging in another thread. Good thing to do...keep it that way (if you want to maintain your batteries in good health)
In 5 years our batteries obsolete? I believe this is a very strong statement (unless obsolete meaning is related with SOC drop because of age). I would not expect HUGE changes in Lithium battery technology in the next 5 years (leaving aside laboratory or prototype-level new chemistries -some of the guys already mentioned a couple of them-), I would expect some improvements in Kw/h-Kg and C charging rate -eventually-
Long-term storaging for Lithium is actually recommended at around 30%, not 70%
I would definitely avoid leaving the bike plugged for long time (whatever Zero says in the owners manual, as they just try to avoid the charger not able to "recover" a low-voltage, or dramatically de-charged pack)
I would bet the horizon is probably 10-15 years (for smaller, fast-charging, and more powerful batteries)
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I agree with Lipo423 regarding future battery tech. Even if a good practical high-performance battery technology comes along it will take a while for the Chinese to create the infrastructure and factories necessary to start producing the batteries in volume for the consumer market and the first ones on the market are likely to be very expensive and their performance and durability in the field will take a while to be sorted out.
Regarding the battery/motor heating issue, I have yet to have any problem charging the batteries of my 20012 S immediately after a ride and I have never seen any warning lights, other than the side stand-down warning, since buying the bike over 18 months and 6,000 miles ago. But then I don't live in Texas. ;)
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Thanks Richard. You are spot on on the new battery-technology "path"
Concerning the high temperature, I would say there are a number of different factors that could influence that (road-shape, riding stile, weather, etc...), in any case all of our battery packs should get either a little warm, hot, or very hot because the current demand is pretty high (in the first scenario is not a big deal although I still would recommend cooling -you actually get some energy back to the pack due to fact that they get warm ;)), in the second and third ones, cooling should be mandatory for the battery pack long-term life.
(do not wait for the bike high-temp. protection system)
This is of course my experience...
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I found it interesting that, although Brammo water-cooled the motor of the Empulse, they did not also water cool their battery pack (since they already had a cooling system on the bike). I assume they did not do so because it was both expensive, complicated and tough to do without also making the battery pack larger and more difficult to build and service. On the other hand, I can't recall anyone on the Brammo forum complaining about battery overheating issues. Perhaps the way their batteries are built and mounted makes them easier to cool with the ambient air. (I seem to recall some discussion that during the winter the batteries can get too cold and that can present problems when charging.)
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Yep, both "extremes of the line" are bad.
So far, Li-Mn is probably the best overall available chemistry in the market (including working temperature bandwidth). By chance, the one in our 2012 bikes ;)
Tesla Roadster was one of the first electric cars in adopting a very complex battery pack water cooled system (as far as I know the engineering team had some "interesting" experiences frying quite a few 18650 cells). I rode one a few times (including having a technical issues with the batteries :(). Current consumption goes up to 700A :o
I remember switching the car off and having the radiator fans on for quite a while.
Temperature management is one of the biggest challenges for designers when building long life battery packs for high-current applications.
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I found it interesting that, although Brammo water-cooled the motor of the Empulse, they did not also water cool their battery pack (since they already had a cooling system on the bike). I assume they did not do so because it was both expensive, complicated and tough to do without also making the battery pack larger and more difficult to build and service.
The Empulse battery pack is passively cooled - each module has cooling fins that do a pretty decent job of cooling the cells. In fact, they work too well (http://freepz.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/horse-blanket/) in the winter.
The Empulse RR battery pack is subjected to MUCH higher loads (for shorter periods); they force air through the battery pack, but even then it apparently doesn't need liquid cooling. (Or perhaps durability simply isn't a concern, since the battery packs are torn down and rebuilt every year or two)
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That is fairly serious issue on the Brammo. 43F is 6C, I rode for about 2 months every day on the Zero with temperatures at or below 6C and it never skipped a beat.
I think the Ski jacket is a bit excessive too!