ElectricMotorcycleForum.com

I have seen a lot of indication on this site that readers believe hub motors have no place on performance vehicles.

Some people sent me information that might be of interest to all here about the in wheel hub motors.
1)   It seems that Mercedes is working on large hub motor cars that they call “high performance”  http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/news/a3146/brabus-electric-4wd-mercedes-e-class-at-2011-frankfurt-auto-show-26277/      
2)   Another man sent me a link to a video in China of a 13 inch wheel scooter fitted with a hub motor smoking off a V8 Mercedes and an Audi R8. 
Video address: 全顺电机绿源电车VS超级跑车—在线播放—优酷网，视频高清在线观看

Since an Audi R8 has a 0-60 time of  3.2 sec (magazine testing dependent results) this little HR183 design scooter with 72 volts and the hot rod motor is clearly beating that. 

Spoonman
I recommend that before going off on a tangent, you look at the bike you just presented and its specs. 
The page you sent us to shows this Chinese bike to be:
1) Powered by little 35 ah lead battery, not 100 ah cells like the ZEV, so only 2.52 kwh which you should then realize or indicate to you that the frame is not the same.  So only 1/3rd the battery capacity indicating that this bike must be much smaller than the ZEV.
2) The wheel sizes are not 18 like the ZEV, but 17 front, and 16 inch rear.  So the frame geometery, if the same frame, would be all wrong.
3) Max power 3,000 watts, not 13,000
4) The motor is not the same at all such that besides the wrong size wheel, the right hand view of the motor shows it is made differently.
5) Swingarm is different
6) Bottom of the cowl has openings and you can see daylight clear through the bike.  So different bodywork on the cowl, even if it appears they must be buying the same light.
7) Brakes do not match
No controller visible
9) The cowling side has see through V panel, not the blue translucent panel on the ZEV. 
10) The view of the right side does not seem to show a foot brake which is required on motorcycles in Western country.
11) Max speed claimed of 60 mph.
12) Further indicating that the bike is a much smaller bike, is the weight at only 142 kg. 
11) The price of the bike is $1380.  That alone should have given you pause.  What do you think that you get for $1380.

If you or anyone else think this is a ZEV, you certainly should order one or hundreds.  The price is $1380.  Save yourself $11,110 compared to a ZEV.  Such a deal

What this does point out is one of the issues in developing products.  We use plastic mold houses in China to produce the parts.  You get 2 year maximum agreement to not sell anything you design to anyone else.  Development times on bikes run longer than that.  So sometimes at the tho year mark you can see versions of your design pop up with modifications so they can say they do not sell exactly what you designed.  At the 4 year mark they just sell your original.  We have seen this on some of the scooters. 

Burton

The range at 70 we advertise at 70 miles.  The battery company increased the battery capacity a bit, and customers report 80 and even 90 miles ( 90 is with a 140 lb rider)  One fellow in Atlanta is running 80 miles on the Interstate commuting.  But that will not get you the 140 miles at 70 that Vetter runs.

There was a Tesla Canada to Mexico rally schedule about 2 years ago that one of the customers was going to run in pulling a little trailer about 19 inches to the trailer top that had 2 LRC battery packs in it so he could run 280 miles at Interstate speeds.  (Rally was cancelled)

We have done some more streamlining.  Basically we need to close up the holes in the cowl for no through body air flow.  That was the trick on this new motorcycle.  The handlebars are pretty wide on the LRC and could be moved inboard so the hands were behind the fairing.  We switched front fenders to a new more streamlined shape and partially hid some of the brake.  See attached bike being assembled.  The seat can be lowered easily and the windshield height reduced for some quick reductions. 

As I said Ted, the motor is 9.4 kg, the wheel is 7.8.  17.2 kg total including the axle and nuts and hardware.

Tires weigh all sorts of different weights so lets stick to the hard parts.

The race ready ZX10R Galespeed front wheel is 10.45 lbs. and rear 18 lbs even for forged aluminum for the bike.  Most bikes are not as light as the ZX10.  These are naked wheel weights, no disks, etc., no sprockets., fasteners.

Now add the axle and nuts for the ZX wheel and the ZEV wheel in full, motor and wheel is 8.62 kg heavier than the ZX10R

Thanks for the best wishes on the sales.  The bike was first launched outside of the USA.  It is doing quite well, better than expected or planned.

Let me see if I can address these in turn.

Mr. Dillard
Since you stated "be serious" in the reference to lead loading of axles.    Please search articles on MotoGP.  You can start with Cycle World's November 2015 issue, "Feeling the Edge", page 67.  "The usual fixes(like lead-filled axles---worked for Honda but not for Yamaha."    I would admit that it is probably hard for you to find information such at that as most race bike tuners and engineers like myself do not publish their trade.

See also the forum that a quick search turns up on page 1, http://www.psychobike.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-37028.html

 
RICHARD 230
The Vectrix motor is not a hub motor.  Its a small high rpm motor mounted in the side of the swingarm, not in the wheel.  The motor shaft sticks through the swingarm and into a planetary gearbox.  You are correct, that motor, sealed up and under a cover with air flow does get quite hot.

At the 13-20 kw level, there is no need for cooling by any pumped flow means.  The oil cooling is passive.  On a 15 kw motor --After running sustained 80 mph on local mountain roads for 13 miles, then up an 8% grade, 5 miles long, at full throttle, with two 80 lb sandbags and a 168 lb rider, on a 92 F degree day, the motor reached 132 degrees F on the hottest point inside the motor.  It showed 123 F on the motor side plates.   The advantage is that the motor is turning in the breeze, and not relying on passing air entirely.  It gets both.  We are also using the entire wheel and spokes and the rim as a heat shedding surface.  That is a lot of surface area spinning at over 1200 rpm and finned.  The surface area without the fins on the ZERO motor is about 30% less than the surface of the ZEV motor without counting the total area including the wheel and rim being used to dump the heat.  That spinning and resulting high velocity air scrubs off the heat over the large surface area. 

That is a lot more effective than a motor such as the ZERO, which while heavily finned, sets passively buried in the chassis with no cooling air ducts to it, and the fins turned sideways to the forward motion.  Further, fins on a motor are not very effective if the heat does not get to the finned area.  The ZEV motor is finned on the inside also for that reason.

GENERAL
Within the confines of street bike spirited riding, even at high lean angles, but without dragging the slider pucks on the knees of my leathers, the hub motor weight is of no consequence.  People worry to much about the weight.  If it was all about ounces, then no bike would add a second iron disk and caliper on the front for more braking.  They would ponder the weight shift of the change to inverted front forks.  They would run smaller tires to cut tire weight. 

The motor in the rear wheel weighs 9.4 kg.  You need to deduct the weight of the chain drive sprocket or belt sprocket and the chain/belt on a non hub to have a comparison.  Both types have an axle.  That weight would be in common.  We can assume that the weight of the wheels themselves without the motor would be similar.

Glad to read that you like the storage tank. 
The controller on the side is how we have made all of the ZEV except the smallest.  It frees up space in the bike for battery and puts the controller in the best position for cooling.  Its not that heavy and you cannot feel its weight.
The charger is radically larger in power output than a Zeros charger.  2100 watts draw.  So this is under 4 hour charge.  The issue with built in chargers revolves around the fact that they 1) must be smaller than non built in for getting it in the bike 2) chargers are the number one failure point in a well made electric bike 3) Not building them in lets customers swap out instead of taking a bike to a dealer.   
As the designer, I prefer to have more battery space and nuts to charging.  The goal is to stuff every ounce of battery in the bike and have it run so long you do not need to charge. I can put another battery pack in a bike for the cost of an onboard charger, and then the customer wants a faster off board unit for home anyhow.  With the big tank storage, the bike will swallow the charger and leave room to spare. 

The details on the first of the new ZEV Electric line of motorcycles is now on their web site at    http://www.zelectricvehicle.com/30.html 


In response to moto rider, ZEV does have dealers, and sells in 25 countries.  We just do not have many dealers in the USA where motorcycles outsell scooters.  Outside the USA, scooters outsell motorcycles by a radical margin.  As we have in the past mostly made scooters, our sales are mostly outside the USA, and mostly in those areas where either gas bike use is limited or banned or where electric is pushed or subsidized.  We shall see if the USA dealers show an interest in the the electric motorcycles.  In the short run, we follow a path similar to Tesla as most USA dealers seem to reject the idea of selling electric.  We do not believe in giving free motorcycles to dealers for a year to get them to carry the bikes as others have done, and prefer to fly the rider to us to test drive.http://

With respect to reliability, we are going into our 10th year.  All of the repair parts ever sent out in that time would fit in a 4 ft sq box.  No motor has ever failed.  No battery failure since 2011.  One BMS failure.   The reliability is how we get away with limited dealers and yet have sales in 25 countries.

PROTOMECH,
Thanks for the input.  You are onto one range factor when you mention fairings.  In regard to your comparison to the ZERO range and comment on a fairing, we just finished a years testing with meters on several bikes measuring power consumption.  To our surprise, we found that the ZEV T8500 and a new prototype motorcycle in testing, both naked motorcycle style like the ZERO, returned a consistent 17% higher watt hour consumption per mile in the 55 and 70 mph tests compared to the faired scooter bodies of the S Series and LRC.  This is one of the reasons that ZERO recently stated they intend to work on a fairing for the ZERO.  We found that the LRC does better than the S Series slightly which we believe is due to the length of the LRC and a sort of “tail” that aids streamlining.  Flat out on a flat road, when ran with the same motors, controllers, etc. , the LRC ekes out a bit of speed advantage on two bikes running side by side weighted to the same weight.

You are correct that the ZERO rider sets much higher and makes a bigger air dam for even more drag vs the ZEV T8500.  Not sure how much exactly, but I would figure another 2-3% giving about a 20% advantage to the ZEV in aero.

In addition to the fairings, there are a few other big differences in the designs that eat into range. 
--First is the belt drive on the ZERO.  Belts and chains do not transmit power without losses.  Estimates of power losses run as high as 12% at max load.  In constant speed power transmission 4% is considered the minimum losses.  The ZERO runs a very high reduction ratio.  Look at it from the side and you can see that the ratio between the front and rear sprocket is much higher that the ratio typically seen on a gas bike.  High ratios incur additional losses, but it would be pure speculation to guess what the effect might be.  The 4% is not just during power on, it is a loss in glide distance also.  Since ZEV runs a hub motor, we do not suffer those losses thus gaining in range. 
--Second- motor internal design.    ZEV runs 1200 rpm down the road at 80 mph, a ZERO is about 4300 rpm.  When you turn a motor at high rpm, you suffer internal windage losses.  The rotor in the ZERO is zinging in an enclosed space and creates pumping losses.  The ZEV uses big vent windows internally through the stator to minimize that effect.  This can be worth 4-5% depending on the motor.  Opening the  motor up with vents yielded 3.7% on a drag race motor we ran that was a non hub motor.  Works on piston engines the same.  My race car jumped 17 hp from porting vent holes between the cylinders in the main bearing support webs.  Newer car engines now generally do this.
--Torque lag occurs when the throttle response is not instantaneous and you are basically pouring the amps to the motor and waiting for it to rev up.  That “excess” amps used to reach a given speed where the amp draw will decline at constant load is a range killer.   Motor torque on a ZERO S is listed at 92 Nm.  Its 161 Nm on a T8500 or 220 Nmon the top ZEV motor.  But it’s not just that we have more than double the torque, it’s that we make that torque on only 150 amps.  So when you roll on the throttle on the ZERO, it takes time to gain rpm, and your using higher amps than to accelerate at the same rate.  Time X amps is lost watt hours and lost range.
--Efficiency curves are not the same for all electric motors.  How you wind them puts the torque and or the efficiency at a given rpm A ZERO S is listed as having a top speed of 95 mph, and a sustained speed of 80 mph.  We just set the torque by the motor windings to put the efficiency in the 55-70 mph band.  No reason to lose range to gain the ability to make a short run to 95 mph.  80/95 would indicate the torque band for testing for range at 70 mph is off by 15.7%. as a rough figure, and it would be more as the aero drag goes up exponentially with speed.  Rather like running your car in 4th instead of overdrive. 
--Motors are not the same flat efficiency throughout the rpm band.  While someone may state their motor is 87-90% efficient, that is at only one spot on the rpm and load band.  At top speed, motors are generally under 10% efficient.  So being 15.7% off on the matching of the motor efficiency point to the range measurement points of 55 and 70 mph will cost you dearly.  Moving the rpm band on a motor by 15% could cost you as much as 45% efficiency.  This is where I think the ZERO loses much of its at 55 mph range.  You just cannot make a highly efficient 55 mph machine that runs 95.
--Heat is the next factor.  As shown in some video on YouTube of the ZERO SR, two acceleration runs to 60 mph from a dead stop made the system register overheat and pull back the power when made in the max power mode.  Torque lag causes motor temperatures to soar.  So does running out of the efficiency band as for some 55 mph test.  Heat in a motor costs you power and efficiency.  Loses just soar.  The hub motor is spinning making its own fan.  It has more surface area to get rid of the heat.  It uses the wheel rim as a “cooling fin”.

Now take all of the factors above into account and you can see why the ZEV wins the range wars.  The 10 kw ZEV out distances the 12.5 kw ZERO consistently.

Now let’s take F3s results. 
First, he states he got 187 km range from the bike.  115 miles.  And he calculates that he could reach 124 miles.  So there is your proof period that his 115 miles or his 124 miles beats the  94 miles of the ZERO, or any of the other mileages that they list at any speed or combination of speed despite the fact that the ZERO has a 25% larger battery.  All of those efficiency factors just kill them.

So how did he get less than 140 miles?  First and foremost, he was not running in controlled circumstances as we or ZERO did.  He had varying speeds, roads, etc.
A major factor is he has snow tires on his bike according to his emails from me because he drives year round through Moscow Russia winters.  An article published on Tire Review discusses the cost saving benefits of fuel efficient tires. “Studies show that 20% to 30% of a vehicle’s fuel consumption and 24% of road vehicle CO2 emissions are tire-related.”  Mileage is significantly decreased with snow tires.”   So just putting on snow tires kills the range.  Anyone want to dispute that?  Know of any ZERO with snow tires on them?

I love the mileage F3 Dimitry got.  I think we will post it on the web site.  It just proves we kill everyone else in range (even with the snow tires).  So when you say "take the (ZEV) Dare to Compare with a grain of salt", remember this case. 31% better range than the ZERO on 25% less battery –while driving on snow tires (by Dimitry’s tests).   ZEV never makes a claim we cannot prove.  Too much low hanging fruit like this to point to without trying to create any truths or requiring a grain of salt.