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« on: March 27, 2022, 12:59:46 PM »
I bought a 2020 SR/F Premium in August of 2019. I've now got about 5,500 miles on my bike, and while I like it in some ways, it bugs me in others. Here's my list of gripes:
1. The software (firmware?) has seemed buggy from the get-go. Every new version has new, weird bugs. Sometimes old bugs get fixed, sometimes they don't.
2. The clock on my bike shows the right time about half the time.
3. The cruise control sucks. Seriously sucks. My 2003 BMW K1200RS has MUCH better cruise control. My SR/F just won't hold a set speed on anything but downhill terrain and drops below the set speed by 3 or sometimes 4 MPH on uphills. This seems ridiculous to me. It's an electric motor, for f!ck's sake. And the on/off switch is just dumb - no resume? No speed +/-? Just on/off? BMW did a far better job 20 years ago.
4. The lack of a parking brake is also ridiculous. Has nobody at Zero ever parked a bike on a hill? I've "solved" that with a piece of velcro wrap I run around the front brake when I'm parked, but that seems dumb on a $20k motorcycle.
5. The ride is stiff as hell, even with the shocks set full soft.
6. The bike eats tires. That's probably my fault.
7. The rear brake on my bike is so weak it's damn near useless. That one could be my bike needing an adjustment.
8. The UI on the screen is awful, even in "dark" mode. It's like they let a graphic designer who has never designed a vehicle gauge put their idea of what would look neat on the screen. The things I want to see, like regen or torque, are rendered in such tiny lines that they're hard to see, the customization is quirky and weird, and it's just not as legible as it could be.
9. The odometer has no tenths readout. Neither does the trip odometer. The bike is a goddamn rolling computer - don't tell me it can't show me I've traveled one tenth of a mile.
10. The trip odometer resets itself now, which annoys me greatly.
11. The high beam headlight doesn't do much. The low beam seems pretty good, but the high just adds a little fill. This might be me, as I live in a very dark place (literally and figuratively).
12. I'm on my third belt already. Maybe I should complain to Gates.
13. The bike seems to have weird harmonic vibrations/resonances with the motor or drive belt that seem like NVH that shouldn't be there on a $20k moto.
14. Seemingly every other firmware upgrade takes multiple tries to install, with the bike dropping connection or failing the update for no apparent reason.
15. I've never been able to get the app to download the motor/battery log. It makes me stand next to the bike for 15 minutes while the scroll bar moves to 100%, then fails. Every dang time.
16. The app is not very good for a $20k moto. Like the bike's screen, the UI is poorly laid out and not intuitive.
17. I'm currently dealing with a bug on the bike where the range estimate and SOC readout is WILDLY pessimistic. Like 50 miles of range out of a 100% charge, riding on level ground at 40mph. I run it all the way down to 0% charge and 0% SOC, shut it off for 10 minutes, and when I turn it back on, my range magically pops up to 45 miles and 60% SOC. This seems to have started happening with a recent firmware.
It's a frustrating machine. I love zipping around on a quiet, incredibly torquey machine, but so much of this thing feels half-baked. Like Zero hasn't been making motorcycles for 20 years. And it hasn't hardly improved in the two years I've had it. In some ways, it has gotten worse.
Is it just me?
steve
2005 BMW R1200GS
2018 Yamaha WR250R
2003 BMW K1200RS
