ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => Electric Motorcycle Events => Topic started by: togo on March 07, 2018, 11:20:17 PM
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POSTPONED TILL
APRIL 7
*mod Shadow edit* Looks like we've confirmed April 28.
Meet at 14421 Big Basin Way, Saratoga, CA 95070 by 10 AM for the ride, and then the factory tour, and then we'll look for lunch.
ChargePoint station at that location: https://www.plugshare.com/location/12100
Big Basin Cafe nearby opens at 6:30 AM, and there's another ChargePoint the next driveway up from it so if you come from a distance, come early and you will have literally hours to charge if you need it. https://www.plugshare.com/location/12099
I should be there by 8, and I'll bring my 4-bike J-plug splitter rig.
Other stations nearby:
Saratoga Library https://www.plugshare.com/location/9420
Los Gatos downtown (at least 7 stations, in pairs, so Dub-J charging works if you can activate two ChargePoint)
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I'd like to attend on my FX, but to make the whole loop I'd need some 120V wall outlet time. Would it be possible to plug in for a couple hours at Zero?
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I'd like to attend on my FX, but to make the whole loop I'd need some 120V wall outlet time. Would it be possible to plug in for a couple hours at Zero?
Yes, plenty of charging at the factory.
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Meet at 14421 Big Basin Way, Saratoga, CA 95070, USA by 10 AM for the ride, and then the factory tour, and then we'll look for lunch.
Great! it's on my calendar -- weather dependant -- and assuming I can get a flat rear tire fixed or replaced. Saratoga is ~40 miles from Livermore. BTW, If you don't know Mt. Hummunum is now open to the summit (as of late 2017). Very much worth a visit.
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WEATHER
Saturday forecast for Scotts Valley: Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. High 53F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Is the trip on rain or shine?
Last year, I rode back roads in rain and wind from Mtn View up Black Rd to examine the Hwy 17 landslide. It didn't bother me or the e-bike. When geared up properly, I find it cathartic, and if the weather is really carrying on, epic ("true grit")!
RANGE
On that cold, wet mountain ride my bike was depleted in 59mi. The route from home to factory is 41mi, and the route home would be closer to 31mi (I plan on Glenwood/Mtn Charlie/35/Bear Creek/17/9).
I'll need ~3 hours charging at the factory for margin. My e-challenged friend wants to join and will bring a tow rope in case. :)
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The trip is still on, to my knowledge.
I’m sure we can accelerate your charging with some extra chargers as needed.
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Postponing till April.
April 14 is not ideal for Aaron.
April 21 is the day before Earth Day, and my widow mother is getting married, so I'll be out of town.
April 7, and 28 are good, as far as I know.
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April 7!
Updated the first post to wit.
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Are ICE bikes welcome? I mentioned the factory tour to my electrically-challenged friend and he wants to come along for the tour. But then he mentioned it to three more friends who are all interested!
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Yes, Curt, e-motorcyclists and the e-curious are both welcome!
Yes, we had a big ol' harley tag along last time.
(From the questions he asked at the factory, I think he was ready to buy if only it was bigger.)
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Pineapple Express coming, however: https://weather.com/forecast/regional/news/2018-04-03-atmospheric-river-heavy-rain-flooding-california
Honestly, I'm prepared for Armageddon, riding-wise, but I can't ask that of others.
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Hmmm. Hour by hour they are predicting 93% chance of rain overnight dropping to 69% in the morning, 13% by noon and 2% at 6pm. Maybe push is back a little?
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I would be more likely to attend if pushing this out to a later date. I'm on slow charging at the moment, and ski season overtime work is steady through 15th April. Try to plan for nice weather?
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I would be more likely to attend if pushing this out to a later date. I'm on slow charging at the moment, and ski season overtime work is steady through 15th April. Try to plan for nice weather?
Next opportunity would be April 28.
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Hmmm. Hour by hour they are predicting 93% chance of rain overnight dropping to 69% in the morning, 13% by noon and 2% at 6pm. Maybe push is back a little?
Did the ride happen? Who/how many showed up? I opted out due to not wanting to ride wet highways from Livermore to Saratoga. But afternoon weather was great, so I road my MTB bike for a few miles instead. Alternate date of April 28 was mentioned; what's the status?
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Hmmm. Hour by hour they are predicting 93% chance of rain overnight dropping to 69% in the morning, 13% by noon and 2% at 6pm. Maybe push is back a little?
Did the ride happen? Who/how many showed up? I opted out due to not wanting to ride wet highways from Livermore to Saratoga. But afternoon weather was great, so I road my MTB bike for a few miles instead. Alternate date of April 28 was mentioned; what's the status?
I posted date change here and to the f-book group.
Maybe I should have been clearer.
It'll be April 28 now.
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I've got 6kW charging operational, will do my very best to attend on-time.
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I cannot attend until later that day, due to a software development research group meetup that I am a critical part of. I'll try to meet onsite at Zero when I can, but will likely miss the tour or something.
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> Yes, plenty of charging at the factory.
"Aaron Cheatham > ‎Hwy 9 ride, Zero factory tour, lunch
"Looks like we will have decent weather this time. Looking forward to the ride. Please be sure to mark that you are going to I can confirm we have plenty of charging ready at the factory."
Post here if you are coming but not on f-book and I'll pass along the count.
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I cannot attend until later that day, due to a software development research group meetup that I am a critical part of. I'll try to meet onsite at Zero when I can, but will likely miss the tour or something.
I'm glad you'll try to come for part of it and will let you know where we go for lunch after
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At Santa Clara Water District 100%. What a mess it was trying to get my bike's charging systems to behave on the ride up from Reno. Looking forward to this group ride! Heading over to Big Basin Cafe in a few minutes see y'all there.
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Post here if you are coming but not on f-book and I'll pass along the count.
I plan to attend, riding in from Livermore. Not worried about charging at Zero HQ, as I have two elcon chargers.
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That was a nice ride and tour. Zero's operations are extremely professional. Thanks to all, especially Aaron, Justin, Jeff and Sam for taking such good care of us on a Saturday and juicing up our bikes. It was impressive what some of us have accomplished in terms of charge & capacity mods.
Steve (on the Honda) and I had a Mexican lunch then headed back to Mountain View via Mountain Charlie and Bear Creek. By that route (32mi) I'd be able to make it there and back.
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The Q&A session did bolster my confidence in the brand and direction Sam/Zero (CEO) is taking with the company. I was glad to ride with all of us attending!
It was said very clearly to the group by Aaron/Zero that modding your bike with a third party charging system (specifically digiNow as a directed example), is NOT and cannot be looked at as widely invalidating the "bike" warranty, but that repairing damages from a modification would not be covered by the "bike" nor "battery" warranty. Simple Magnusson law stuff for USA people, but it is Aaron saying this is the way it is for Zero Motorcycles (not specifying any single market) and anyone who says otherwise should talk directly to him and get updated to the correct policy. The counterpoint to this as an example is that there are some firmware improvements which add protection of the Powertank for example and it disconnects if any charging power to the whole system goes over a certain limit. This is why Powertank plus QuiQ is not a supported configuration. It is totally insane to me as a technician-minded person that there's no ChangeLog mentioning this very basic and clear explanation; however as both Sam and Aaron have mentioned the Zero Motorcycle customer is a weird blend of Consumer Tech Gadget and "Motorcyclist or Motorcycle Rider" and it's always going to be the case we as a customer base will find a way to misinterpret official statements in the worst possible way.
There is also a Zero Motorcycles concept of Vehicle Off Road (i.e non operational sitting at a dealership for service) and Aaron stated the high importance of tracking these instances. I do get the feeling personally that he's still trying to scale his workflow / get assistance from other Zero employees, to grow with the demands and actionable items won't get overlooked or forgotten about; he clearly cares and is aware that an issue may have been buried by higher level and so company operations level items (the 2012 battery recall) when I interact with him.
I've seen bike logs where a contactor welded shut from this exact scenario, and a firmware update would add these protections that prevent damage to the contactor by "dumb" bulk fast charging; side-effect is that attempting to fast charge above a certain rate will lead in effect to Powertank and Monolith at different voltages, so a bike that won't run, and/or possibly no way to get it to charge without takong the bike apart... That particular bike sits with no resolution on the dealership service queue and the dealership is too short staffed to address even the main Polaris / Indian bread-and-butter service jobs. It's my local dealership too and I've experienced this gap in service with months of VOR. I'm glad to hear Sam talk on the focus to develop out the existing service model to support customers when dealerships fall flat (while firstly supporting and respecting dealerships with training). Aaron clearly shouldn't have to interact with me when he's juggling a recall so I was interacting with Nicholas, and actually I shouldn't have to do this either it is my dealership that fell into a gap, the whole thing is sort of confusing as a customer wanting some support but I do find all persons involved to be well-meaning.
I'm omitting some points but those are the big ones to me... and yes I tend to harp/ too long on this I'm excited to hear sensible things from Sam and Aaron that should (given some time) be positive for Zero Motorcycles and owners of their products.
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some firmware improvements which add protection of the Powertank for example and it disconnects if any charging power to the whole system goes over a certain limit.
That just dashed the hopes of people installing diginow chargers in place of the stock charger and making room for a power tank add-on latter. It would be good to know the "certain limit" mentioned. I wonder if it would be a setting inside the MBB or Controller on bikes with powertanks?
there's no ChangeLog mentioning this very basic and clear explanation
As someone who knows more about these bikes then most dealers in my area this is also very frustrating.
That said ... it seems odd that zero didn't program in a CAN directive to limit charging to a certain Amp rating when a powertank is installed so the charger connecting to the bike would know what the bike wants vs simply disconnecting it :/ I am sure I am missing something here but ...
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Post here if you are coming but not on f-book and I'll pass along the count.
I plan to attend, riding in from Livermore. Not worried about charging at Zero HQ, as I have two elcon chargers.
I got to Saratoga -- then another rider asked if I knew my rear tire (which has < 400 miles on it) was nearly flat. S--t! Bikes parked in Saratoga, my brother drove out from Livermore to pick me up. Hopefully I can get San Jose BMW to pick up the bike on Tuesday.
Sorry I missed the ride and tour!
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I got to Saratoga -- then another rider asked if I knew my rear tire (which has < 400 miles on it) was nearly flat. S--t! ............
Glad things turned out as well as they did for you.
There are many reasonably priced tire pressure monitoring systems available now.
I'm using this one,
https://www.amazon.com/FOBO-FB1574-Bike-Black/dp/B00YCAVGMK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525049477&sr=8-1&keywords=fobo+bike+tpms
After almost 1 year of ownership, I can report that I'm very satisfied with it with the exception of the battery life not as long as stated.
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When you visited the mother ship, did you ask them why it takes 2-3 months to get parts and accessories to their dealers?
Another poster used the term "professional", but that's not what I'm seeing away from their home base. Embarrassing would be a better term.
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Post here if you are coming but not on f-book and I'll pass along the count.
I plan to attend, riding in from Livermore. Not worried about charging at Zero HQ, as I have two elcon chargers.
I got to Saratoga -- then another rider asked if I knew my rear tire (which has < 400 miles on it) was nearly flat. S--t! Bikes parked in Saratoga, my brother drove out from Livermore to pick me up. Hopefully I can get San Jose BMW to pick up the bike on Tuesday.
Sorry I missed the ride and tour!
Oh, man! Sorry I missed you, didn't notice you were there!
There was a gas station right there. If it was a slow leak, you could maybe have made it, it wasn't such a long ride.
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When you visited the mother ship, did you ask them why it takes 2-3 months to get parts and accessories to their dealers?
Another poster used the term "professional", but that's not what I'm seeing away from their home base. Embarrassing would be a better term.
Well, we didn't ask them that specifically, but we did meet with the CEO, and there was some bluntness about frustration of the experience with dealers when it comes to service and parts. It sounded like they are working out how to have regional factory service centers to deal with things that the dealers get over their heads with, handling turnover at dealers and the training problems that results in, and basically have to
(a) work out how to do a factory service center in a way that's fair totheir dealers and (b) set one up as an experiment. It sounds like their investors are supportive of the concept, but just want to see it verified as effective before they commit to a major expansion like that.
Anyway, that's how I interpreted what I heard.
*Mod edit corrected for SMF formatting issue*
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some firmware improvements which add protection of the Powertank for example and it disconnects if any charging power to the whole system goes over a certain limit.
That just dashed the hopes of people installing diginow chargers in place of the stock charger and making room for a power tank add-on latter. It would be good to know the "certain limit" mentioned. I wonder if it would be a setting inside the MBB or Controller on bikes with powertanks?
Yep. It could be done safely but having heard the reasons you would have to coordinate more tightly than what you get signaling the +5Vdc AUX connector charging line. Such an interface exists for the stock S/DS pan charger via CANBus wiring. In a system where two mismatched Ah batteries are receiving current from a single source, one battery will have a lower internal resistance than the other and take more power. If that battery module BMS sees a total system input greater than four QuiQ and one Calex (?) you're firmly entered into unknown territory in so far as Zero Motorcycles has qualified. You don't get to pick and choose the internal resistance. That's my understanding of things.
Since the bike firmware alone doesn't allow throttle run when Powertank is at a higher voltage than the Monolith, and doesn't charge the Monolith when the Powertank is at a lower voltage than the Monolith, and none of the aftermarket fast chargers have CANbus communication or really any kind of smarts that might be user friendly (or just plain figure it out without the user to cut back power when Powertank is only battery allowed by firmware to charge), it's a bloody mess trying to go anywhere without a much higher level of sophistication.
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Once there's a voltage imbalance, the flow to the lower voltage battery increases. Differeing internal resistance is only a temporary issue, I think.
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One takeaway from the Q&A we had (which was great!):
Anyone who is spreading FUD about aftermarket charging voiding your warranty is to talk to Aaron Cheatham.
The way I understood what was said: Zero will not cover *damage done* by aftermarket charging but they will not use aftermarket charging per se as an excuse to get out of warranty coverage.
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There is a lot of great info in this thread, but also... Sadly there is a LOT of misinformation as well
I need to clarify about the power tank stuff. DIGINOW CHARGERS WORK GREAT WITH POWER TANKS.
The issues being described by Shattow are not related to cell mismatch either. There is an issue with stock Zeros and power tanks when the bikes are at a low SOC. If you turn the bike off without charging the power tank will come on first and not let the bike go. I explainerd this quite clearly to Shattow when he got his power tank. I explained it EXTRA CLEARLY because he has the latest firmware which I think exacerbates the issue due to amp hour miscalculation. But I am not sure on that yet.
I just tested Shattows bike which has a 2.8kw powertank and 9.9kw of charging and followed the basic best practices of having a power tank and everything worked great. 130 miles of testing and super charging.
The basic rules of having a power tank no matter WHAT type of charger you have is to not turn the bike off at a low SOC without charging or without being near a charger, and this is unrelated to if your power tank matches your battery or your charger type.
Now all that said, what Shattow did not mention was that he has a force charge algorithem in his control board which does not give the power tank time to initialize if it gets into some wonky state. So... he is down here to get a production board on his bike.
So please don't let this misinformation prevent you from getting the best possible setup for a Zero, 3 in the pan and a power tank. This is my new personal setup as well. I just rode from LA to Monterey in 8 hours with this setup with a mismatched battery and power tank 2014 PT and 2017 battery, and it worked great. I also have the old firmware.
If anyone has questions please ask me, it's what I'm here for. I know my product, I know Zero Motorcycles and I have a VERY strong interest in making the best products for them.
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Brandon you should write things down more.
Document what you do.
Otherwise what happens is people put their best recollections of what they think they remember that you might have said and sometimes you omit details when you talk to one person because you told somebody else and it's hard to keep track of what you told to who and then you have to complain about misinformation in the forums.
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Brandon is sort of running on fumes right now because doesn't get to sleep anymore with the volume of orders we're facing. Currently the most helpful thing any of us can do is to let him crimp cables in peace and encourage him to get some sleep.
I'll buy that!
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Oh, MVetter, did you announce that you are joining his team?
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As the person on point for the V1 documentation, V2 needs something at least as rich (especially since I had to be very sensitive about V1's lack of robust protections). Whatever you document will pay off within weeks, just to reduce the overhead of pre-order discussions, but obviously to cut back on post-sales inquiries and support.
Also, none of us know what to write or claim to others on the forums.
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Also we're looking into the idea of making a much, much simpler installation for people who opt for 3 chargers in the pan, but it involves a customer lending us their bike with the knowledge we might blow part of it up in testing may need to order replacement parts if our numbers are wrong. But we're pretty sure our numbers are right. ;D
I really like this idea. I want to be able to point people to you and say you have a product that can just replace the slow charger with a much faster one.
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Those of you who didn't make it to the factory tour might enjoy the How It's Made episode...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBmn60rE03o