So, this summer I decided to take a long roadtrip with my 2020 SR/F Premium here in Norway, roughly 1300km in total. I am still in the middle of this trip, but thought maybe my experience so far will be of interest to someone else. So, sharing it here. Hope you will find it useful
First, some background:
My first though when planning was to rent a gas powered MC, to avoid the whole range anxiety, but then I thought, this is not about getting from A to B most efficiently, but to take the tine along the route and stop to enjoy the beautiful scenery, enjoy some nice food and take it easy. Meaning frequent charging stops is not a problem, but a chance to slow down, relax and take in everything. So, I expected I would always be able to keep my charge within good safety margins and still have plenty of time to ride between stops. I also brought a tent, to truly make it convenient to camp along the route and never worry about the total travel time. I set aside two weeks for the trip, so no rush or hurry.
I am now on day three of my trip, and this is what I have learned so far.
Before this trip I have only been driving in the city, at relatively low speeds. I could easily drive for what felt like hours between chargings, never had a charging problem ever, and I did assume that the roughly 125km range I was quoted on some sites would stay true also outside the city.
Sadly, this is definitively not true in non-city-scenarios, and the effect was quite dramatic when changing parameters like average speed and elevation from what I am used to.
On the freeway where speeds would generally be more like in the 80-100km/h and there would be some sleek uphill slopes. I am consistently getting less than 80km range now, in ECO mode, which is quite a drop from the expected 125km range, completely messing with the whole plan. However, I am not sure how much I can trust the battery charge status. Last time I got a chance to charge, I was at 6% charge when finally finding a working charging station. However, when stopping and restarting the bike, it magically jumped to 21% charge. So, what is it, 6% about to get a heart attack from worrying about charging, or a 21% safe and cozy range?
I find not being able to trust this battery indicator to be quite battery anxiety inducing. It is very hard to plan the route without knowing accurate safety margins.
So, the result is I generally can only drive max one hour at a time, before starting to feel like it is getting a bit dangerous. And then came the second most frustrating part of the experience: Charging.
There are basically three frustrating parts about charging ZR/F in Norway:
1. Charging speed. I typically had to spend about 1-1.5 hours to charge each time on the typical Type 2 chargers here. Some are fast, some are slow here, pretty random luck what you will get. Minimum seems to be about less than an hour going from 30% to 100%. So, basically, I drive an hour, charge one hour. It is highly inefficient.
2. Payment solutions. Phew, what a mess. In the city area I am usually traveling, no problem, I just need one app as there is only one major charging provider to deal with. On a long road trip, there are so many different ones, they all have their own apps, weird instructions and payment solutions. I would typically spend at least ten minutes to set it all up every time I met a new one.
3. Type 2 or no? This is a real headache here. A lot of the charging stations does not offer Type 2 compatible chargers, CHAdeMO and CCS is the safe bet here (or Tesla, but they have their own system AFAIK). So, you plan your trip based on charging stations just to find, sorry bud, they cannot actually charge you up here. Then random luck will decide if you can find another one nearby, before you run out of juice. Some times the alternative charging station was in the wrong direction, wasting time and burning more juice for getting back on track after charging. Some sort of adapter to Type 2 is badly needed, but unfortunately I know of no such thing, and it is nevertheless too late to track that down now.
I was also quite surprised to see how much bad information is out there on Google Maps. Do not assume this is up to date. A lot of times I homed in on a charging station that was supposed to support Type 2, only to find it no longer did.
Another observation is it was quite random if the charging station had a cable or not. Most did, but some did not. And I am so happy I brought one type 2 charging cable and also one schucko charging cable. The Schucko one definitively saved my ass more than once so far. Without both, I would definitively have been stuck. I also found they charging station owners were not good at maintenance, many times the charging cables were all damaged. But magically worked somehow anyway.
So, main lesson, always have a fail safe charging plan option, if the first choice does not work out.
However, the problem is planning a charging route is hard enough even if you can charge properly, having to plan an alternative charging in addition really adds a lot of additional stress. Especially as the total range is so short. So, say I want to charge at roughly 30%, I have to find two charging stations within that range. Sometimes it is just impossible, and you really do need to pray for luck.
So, taking all of this into consideration, basically the only responsible way of driving is to pull in to a charging station EVERY TIME one presents itself, check for a type 2 and charge if possible, no matter how much charge is left. Because, 80km range is just so short that it gives you almost no safety margin. This of course if quite tedious, and waste a lot of time that should have been spent enjoying the scenery and relaxing cruising around. I have no problems stopping frequently, but charging stations are not the most awe inspiring nature experience along the route.
Tomorrow I will go on the most scary part of the ride. Then I need to go over a mountain. Two problems with this. First, it is uphill, I am not sure how much extra power it will take, so all the things I learned so far is pretty useless. Secondly, almost nothing exist on the mountain top, especially not charging stations. It SHOULD be fine within the range of the motorcycle, but at this point, I have lost my faith in it.
Having said all this, the SR/F is an absolute dream to ride. I like it a lot, it would have been perfect but the not-at-all-125km-range issue has sadly been a dissapointment so far, I wish I knew earlier it is so far off my expectations.
Some suggestions to Zero. How about adding pedals so it can be used as a bicycle? Some friends I visited on the route also suggested I could get a diesel power generator and tow it behind the motorbike. Zero, are you listening? Something to consider for your accessories shop?
But kidding aside, Zero, where is that 10% faster charging Cypher Store unlock that you have advertised will come "soon" for nearly a year now??
Anyways, I will update the story as I keep pressing on...
