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[NEW2elec]

As my screen name suggests I don't have a background in electronics.  Since joining and getting more involved with Zero and EV's in general I've been amazed by all the different charging recommendations from different companies and independent EEs.
Of course since the battery is the most important and most expensive part of the vehicle people want to make sure it lasts and preforms optimally.  Companies use different battery types and charging and cooling methods so blanket statements covering everything and every EV would be unlikely.
It's the amendments from companies post sale that is most unnerving.  People want to do what is best for their beloved electric bliss machines but keep getting told " oh never mind that old way do it like this instead" with the underlining message being "that old way is killing your battery life".

This video talks about a Tesla 3 which is new tech and batteries so a different way of charging can be expected I guess. But from her end as a big money dropping early adopter doing what she thought was best and seeing scary (all be it false) information about degradation.
Is it just a lack of REAL world testing that leads to these changes and will owners be given a pass
(and a new free battery) if it turns out to be wrong?
Go to 1:20 to avoid the give me money pitch.

   

[Doug S]

It's really not that difficult of a concept to grasp. Batteries have no golden "100% charged" level, nor any true "0% charged" level, regardless of how people like to think about them that way. They ain't gas tanks, with actual fixed, quantifiable capacities. If you charge them to a higher voltage (all other things being equal), they'll give you more energy per cycle, but won't last as long. Same thing if you discharge them to a lower level. If you overcharge or over-discharge them by a huge amount, you've killed them in a single cycle. If you're very gentle with them (as the Toyota Prius is with its battery pack), you can get 100s of thousands, maybe millions, of cycles out of them. You just have to decide where you want to be on the curve -- charge them higher and discharge them lower, your apparent "battery capacity" will be higher, but you'll have a shorter lifetime. Charge them less and discharge them less, you'll have less apparent "battery capacity", but longer life.

Originally, it seems that Zero decided their goal would be 2500 charge cycles for its battery pack lifetime, and they designed accordingly. But it's clear that the goalposts have moved several times. (Any engineer will recognize the "shooting at a moving target" phenomenon.)

What disappoints me is that as owners, we seem to have no say in any of this. My bike used to charge to 100%, which it would maintain as long as it was connected to power. Now, if I don't ride it on the weekend, it's at 97% when I get on it on Monday morning, even though it's been plugged in the whole time. Clearly the latest firmware doesn't trickle-charge the battery while it's plugged in, so I leave for work without a full charge. A while back we had rain for several days, and it was at 94% when I got on the morning after. I don't like that. I realize the change was made to extend battery life, but I'm happy with the original 2500-cycle spec, and would prefer to always have 100% charge maintained while the bike is plugged in.

[Fran K]

I do not understand your choice of title for this thead here.  Go to minute 3 it shows the common cylindrical cells.  The newer cells, the ones made in the giga factory are the ones on the right.  It is my understanding the Zero uses pouch cells.  The numbering of the cells does not guarantee the chemistry really specifically.  I would think most people would want to plug it in until it stops charging.  BMS is battery management system.  Stuff some of the build your own bicycle videos probably have stuff that does not really apply to a Zero that has BMS.  If you are concerned I would find out exactly what cells are in your battery.  Probably would be better to talk in actual voltage not % of charge.

My Ktm freeride manual says to run it until it will go no farther I forget every 20 times (I think) that means having a place to ride it uphill of the charging location in my situation.  I have not seen that elsewhere in advice.  If it says not to charge it when cold I missed that and picked up that tip elsewhere.

Once you start watching these type of things on youtube lots of similar choices pop up in the menu to the right.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

This thread's title and premise are dead wrong, because it absolutely matters what kind of cell you're talking about, and once you separate out battery advice by cell chemistry and construction, it becomes very consistent.

I agree with both comments above, and it's true that Farasis and Zero have consistently withheld helpful details on this matter, and it seems that they've both learned and updated their own understandings of how these cells operate best in the field, and shield this information from us to avoid panics.

[Curt]

My bike used to charge to 100%, which it would maintain as long as it was connected to power. Now, if I don't ride it on the weekend, it's at 97% when I get on it on Monday morning, even though it's been plugged in the whole time.

As I understand it (and probably you too), the charger will charge to 100% and then stop. The charge naturally fades ~1%/day. When it reaches 90%, the charger will turn on again.

Even for lead and AGM batteries, I won't leave them on a trickle charger longer than overnight, which I'll do once a month or so. A constant, useless flow of current feels abusive for any type of cell.

One option is to plug it in twice; Friday night to Saturday morning, and Sunday night to Monday morning.

But maybe it's best not to mess with it and let the firmware do it's thing so as not to overcharge. The firmware can obviously take better care if it has uninterrupted control of the charging history.

My readout fluctuates +/-3% when it's near full, indicating it's not an exact science to begin with. E.g., I might go on an errand from 100% to 97%, and for my return trip it has magically returned to 100%, but corrects itself to 94% by the time I'm back.

Personally, most days I don't go more than 10-20 miles, so I usually plug in whenever it's below 50%, for a long term average of 70%.

[NEW2elec]

Well the title did it's job.  The statement is an exaggerated conclusion from conflicting information being given.

I'm not asking what to do.  I charge to 100% and ride at least once a week.  If that hurts it then to hell with it.  The factory should limit any normal user operation to levels that won't damage the product.   Also mine keeps 100% (shown) all week for what it's worth.
  I'm pointing out that for regular people, you know the ones who will have to buy these things if you don't want them to go belly up, there is conflicting recommendations even from the same company.

Let me be clear as to the connections I've made from looking at different companies charging recommendations.
First was Zero's "keep it plugged in all the time" then a 180 degree " unplug it when it's at 100%.  Not a huge deal but it at least looks like long term testing was a surprise to them.

When I saw a Leaf review showing a button to limit the charge to 80% that was the first time I had heard anything about 100%  SOC being anything but great.

That brings me to the video.  The woman's car is telling her she has lost 50 miles of range at 100% SOC after 11000 miles of total use.  She had been charging to 70% as Elon and Jim Dahn recommended (for the model S) for the long term best health of her battery.
She isn't happy with the results and finds out she shouldn't do that because her charging habits were causing a problem.  The car will "forget" it's true range and the car is programed to shut down at it's new "learned" range limit over time.

And that my friends is a problem, even if it's just Tesla's.  They got it fixed but such a simple thing could have very negative consequences in a customers daily life and for the companies reputation.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

I have argued with a condescending battery engineer from Zero about exactly this usability issue.

I don’t care to convince you of anything and I doubt Zero will respond to me with anything but condescension. They do not understand what it’s like to use their products outside of their support network and outside of the confidentiality agreements.

Zero’s presentation of information to customers is inadequate at every level, and they do not understand how this undermines their marketing and success.

[ultrarnr]

I have no electronics background at all and have decided to trust the smart folks who design the battery management systems and trust they know what they are doing.

[Richard230]

Right or wrong for ultimate battery life, I charge my battery to 100% every night after riding my Zero, and then disconnect the charger once it stops balancing the cells as recommended by Zero (the last time I heard).  If I didn't do this, I wouldn't be getting the most value from the expensive Power Tank option that I purchased. 

I wouldn't be all that surprised if the charge percentage display of my 1-year old S starts dropping one percent a year from now on.  That is what happened with my 2014 S, with PT, which is now showing 92% when it stops charging.  However, that is apparently perfectly acceptable to my daughter, who currently owns the bike, and she has never needed more battery capacity during her rides.  Plus, if she was planning to go for a long ride, she could always keep the charger plugged in for a week and eventually the display would show 98% or better - although that additional 6% drops pretty fast once she starts her ride.  So my guess is that either age or the charging regimen has reduced the capacity of some of the cells of that 2014 S over time. 

In any case, I suspect that the battery capacity and useful range of my S will either outlast my riding years - or more likely, my ownership of the bike if Zero ever comes out with a major revision to their platform that ups their game enough to capture my imagination and wallet.   

[Doug S]

+1 for what Brian said, and the way he said it.

BUT we do have to keep in mind that the great majority of riders are more like ultrarnr -- they don't have the background to make decisions about this stuff. That's Zero's real target audience, so I guess I'd have to admit that Zero's actions are pretty defensible from that perspective.

Maybe I'm asking for an "advanced options" menu on the app somewhere? Where I could choose between maximizing battery life (which would be the default) and maximizing energy storage, with a warning notice that I may be reducing battery life somewhat at that end of the slider. I wouldn't make really aggressive settings available, probably the top end of the scale would be the original 2500 cycle settings, with the gentler options available and set as the default.

[Richard230]

+1 for what Brian said, and the way he said it.

BUT we do have to keep in mind that the great majority of riders are more like ultrarnr -- they don't have the background to make decisions about this stuff. That's Zero's real target audience, so I guess I'd have to admit that Zero's actions are pretty defensible from that perspective.

Maybe I'm asking for an "advanced options" menu on the app somewhere? Where I could choose between maximizing battery life (which would be the default) and maximizing energy storage, with a warning notice that I may be reducing battery life somewhat at that end of the slider. I wouldn't make really aggressive settings available, probably the top end of the scale would be the original 2500 cycle settings, with the gentler options available and set as the default.

Well, I am still looking forward to Zero's claim in their brochure of 455,000 (city) miles for my Zero S with PT, before the pack can only retain 80% of its rated electrical capacity.   

[NEW2elec]

When I told people I was going to get an electric motorcycle I got a lot of negative feed back.
Like "that thing's battery will die in a year" and "no one will be able to work on them".
After I got it and loved the way it rode something happened about a year into my owning it.  The battery needed to be replaced.
As I've always said Zero replaced it and it cost me nothing and I thank them for stepping up and fixing it.

Had it not went so smoothly I wouldn't have gotten another Zero and really would have been against EVs and figured I should have listened to everyone's advice on them to begin with.

We non EEs who go bravely into the wild fast moving world of EVs carry this same worry, that we're getting into something that could bite us in the butt. 
There has to be better customer communication to prevent something like what happened to the woman in the video.
I have always thought that EVs should be so good that people will flock to them with open arms as the better choice over ICE and not forced on people through laws and regulations and I feel that will be the case in the future.
The first step has to be calming those fears with clear consistent instructions on what the owner needs to do, or be ready to make it right if the well intended instructions lead to issues.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

Agreed. Zero’s customer communications are poor, and the strategy of paying to swap whole subsystems does not scale nor does it help them arrive at a scaleable strategy.

Locking owners out of understanding what’s going on with a vehicle that fails in novel ways is a losing bet. Zero doesn’t mean to do this, but they’re the only manufacturer having reached an electric motorcycle scale where the failure rate compared to the company’s servicing bandwidth is noticeable.

Lower scale manufacturers don’t have to deal with this PR problem, and incumbents like BMW have scale and budget to throw at these problems.

Electric motorcycles can have more thorny failure modes:
- due to inadvertent failure of safety interlocks while riding, it is possible to lose power instantaneously without indication or recourse.
- without sufficient safeguards, power can come on instantaneously when an interlock is intermittent.
- unlike electric cars, motorcycles have far fewer environmental safeguards, so cold, wet, and dirty conditions can result in complex system degradation that requires diagnosis.

Zero is fielding these bikes worldwide and only training dealership service technicians, who are removed from the initial circumstances and the word of mouth frontline marketing that Zero has leaned on. Owners need better information to improve Zero’s ability to keep these vehicles on the road, and to ensure that owners can reliably talk about their vehicles to potential buyers.

Right now, we’re guessing. The entire Unofficial Manual is based on unprivileged interviews and fact checking, and exists despite Zero essentially antagonizing us as an owner community.

Zero’s employees treat us condescendingly but lack any understanding of what it’s like to try to grapple with these vehicles from a position of ignorance and powerlessness, when it is they who have fostered this situation.

Skepticism from potential buyers of electric motorcycles is valid simply because of this asymmetric information environment and the power dynamic it subjects the owner to.

[JaimeC]

My local dealer is "this close" to dropping the brand entirely because they're fed up with the lack of response to customer problems and tardiness of product delivery.  They let me know this BEFORE they'd talk to me about selling me another bike.  I decided to go for it anyway because I really did LOVE my 2016 model and the 2018 is noticeably better in a lot of areas.  If they should go, then that means traveling into Manhattan if I need repair work.  I'm hoping it doesn't come to that...

[kcfoxie]

Zero’s customer communications are poor, and the strategy of paying to swap whole subsystems does not scale nor does it help them arrive at a scaleable strategy.

Understatement of the year, IMO. I don't care if Zero adds active thermal management and CCS, I'd never consider another one due to the extremely horrible customer service. Energica has been the exact opposite in ownership experience -- the product works (PM me about my two SR's...), and the company gets back to my dealer rep within a day with answers. We've seen so many Zero dealers drop out in my state because they take forever to pay for warranty work.