ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => Pics and Vids => Topic started by: mistasam on April 01, 2020, 06:53:03 AM
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https://youtu.be/Gygcu29tlUg
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Thanks, sam!
-Crissa
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Nice video. Even if you did lose range, it's likely easy to compensate for it and more by putting on a windscreen. ;)
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Thanks! And yep.. I see understand your desire for a dustbin fairing more everyday.
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As usual, I enjoy your vidz !
Two thing catch my attention in this video :
- The first one are the the nice orangy touches in your new suit !
- The second is that in 4 years you only have ~20700 km
Mine has not yet 1 year and already14200 km, I guess I should make a video in 3 years to show how well/bad the battery gets with a more intensive usage of the bike ;)
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Had to do a conversion since we still use the archaic "Imperial" system... but it looks like in four years you've accumulated 12,862 miles. Checking my stats: my 2018 S, acquired in October of 2018, has 11,963 miles. So far I haven't noticed ANY reduction in range. Zero warranties the battery for five years and basically if it isn't holding at least 80% of capacity then I should be eligible for a replacement under that warranty.
80% is actually still quite a bit of capacity for my needs. We'll see. Oh, and your video claims the batteries aren't recyclable? That's NOT what Zero says...
PS: I am insanely jealous of the roads you have at your disposal...
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Typical propaganda! The camera just happens to stop just when we all know the bike's battery died and you had to go by a New Zealand Zalmart and get a new one and have it replaced while you waited for 4 hours and then they dumped all the old battery sludge into the town's water supply. I'm on to your southern hemisphere tricks. ;D
I might have given you a shout out in the Damon section. Embrace the awesome!
I saw this was recorded pre lock down, yall stay safe down there.
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There's a video somewhere where a Zero employee says the electrolyte (and possibly other components) in the battery is totally non-toxic and you could basically eat it with a spoon. Also, I think since Cobalt prices skyrocketed we may see recycling li-chemistry batteries become much bigger (or rapidly getting away from NMC chemistry altogether). Our NMC batteries are ~15% by weight if memory serves.. so with Cobalt at $15/lb and assuming a ZF14.4 weighs 180lbs there's $2700 there in that one metal. Granted it sounds hard to pull out in decent purity..
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Typical propaganda! The camera just happens to stop just when we all know the bike's battery died and you had to go by a New Zealand Zalmart and get a new one and have it replaced while you waited for 4 hours and then they dumped all the old battery sludge into the town's water supply. I'm on to your southern hemisphere tricks.
HAHAHAHAHA that was amazing ;D
And yeah, you guys are right. I really need to ride more hahaha. My wife's commute is really short (20km a day?) and my weekend rides aren't very long since our twisty roads are all so close. I also walk to work, so motorcycles are just toys for me. But! That means I enjoy them 100% of the time I'm riding :)
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Had to do a conversion since we still use the archaic "Imperial" system... but it looks like in four years you've accumulated 12,862 miles. Checking my stats: my 2018 S, acquired in October of 2018, has 11,963 miles. So far I haven't noticed ANY reduction in range. Zero warranties the battery for five years and basically if it isn't holding at least 80% of capacity then I should be eligible for a replacement under that warranty.
80% is actually still quite a bit of capacity for my needs. We'll see. Oh, and your video claims the batteries aren't recyclable? That's NOT what Zero says...
PS: I am insanely jealous of the roads you have at your disposal...
Sam, I can save you the wait for your next evaluation.
My 2016 DSR has 44,340 US miles on the clock & I’ve put all but about 3k of those on in the past 3 years come next month so approx 14.2k mls/yr.
I think there has been a slight reduction in range but nowhere near 20%.
I'll be looking into determining exactly how much degradation has occurred in about a years time as I close in on the end of the five year warranty.
I picked up the bike to serve as my commute vehicle & still have a bit less then 5 years to go to retirement.
If all goes to plan, I will be putting over 100k miles on the bike hopefully with the original battery.
By then I’m sure the MUCH anticipated solid state battery will be available.
Maybe even someone will offer a drop in replacement so you can go farther &/or weigh less :)
When you mentioned the mountain road that’s closed so you have both sides to yourself, it reminded me of Tuna Cyn rd in the Santa Monica's!!!
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:)
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I have to point out the misconception at 8:27 because it's presented as fact. There's no way to rationalize that you're getting 110% out of the battery because of regen. Regardless of the number and size of hills and valleys going from point A and point B, it will always take more energy than if the route were flat, for any moving object with any power source.
Regen only makes it very slightly less bad. The primary benefit to regen is conservation of brake pads and rotors. By far the largest determinant of range is speed profile. Fun video notwithstanding, an analysis of range degradation without repeating the same test in the same conditions is not objective. I think the most we can say here is that buying used doesn't suck at all.
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I have to point out the misconception at 8:27 because it's presented as fact. There's no way to rationalize that you're getting 110% out of the battery because of regen. Regardless of the number and size of hills and valleys going from point A and point B, it will always take more energy than if the route were flat, for any moving object with any power source.
Regen only makes it very slightly less bad. The primary benefit to regen is conservation of brake pads and rotors. By far the largest determinant of range is speed profile. Fun video notwithstanding, an analysis of range degradation without repeating the same test in the same conditions is not objective. I think the most we can say here is that buying used doesn't suck at all.
I don't think it's a misconception or wrong, you can travel a further distance with regen than without it. It's essentially recharging the battery while on the move so you can use more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery.
Sam wasn't saying that if you travel in a hilly area that you'd get 110% of the range as if you weren't on hills, just 110% of the range of if you didn't have regen. Also you don't just need to ride up and down hills to benefit from regen, as Sam said you've got to slow down at some point. The more often you have to slow down and from higher speeds the more you benefit.
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It’s my understanding that regen is only 10% effective.
IE if it takes 1,000 watts to get to the top of a rise & you turn around & regen down you will only recover 100 watts.
True?
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It's not 100% efficient, some energy is lost as heat, and there's also a cap on how much regen Zero will let you have (something like 10% of what the controller is capable of) so chances are you'll need to use the brakes as well which of course won't recover any energy. That said I imagine it's more effective than 10%, if you had a hill gentle enough that you could use regen alone.
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I have found few hills steep enough to generate much regen.
That said, there's one on my standard exercise route that gives me back 5% if I take it at speed. That's 5% I would have burned off in braking, and if it were flt, had to expend energy to traverse. Going up the hill the other way takes alot less than 50%. I can get back not 100% but closer to 50% on the right hill.
Sure, it may be limited, but within those limits there's alot of space.
-Crissa
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Saying "110% of the battery" is confusing at best, because it means to say "110% further than an ICE vehicle that has the equivalent range in the flats," but instead implies EVs have more range in the hills. And an ICE doesn't have a battery to be more than 100% of.
The reason I say power from regen is insignificant other than to save the brakes is that if I regen 2000ft down Page Mill Rd, I get less than 1% back vs the 20-25% to go up.
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Mostly, as they said above, because the battery simply can't take charge in that fast. I hear there have been some promising developments using supercapacitors to store braking energy in and then bleed it back into the battery at a more reasonable rate.
Cas :)
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Back on the original topic: Sam, I'm curious as to how you maintained the battery in those four years? I know when I bought my 2016 Zero, the recommendation was that if you weren't riding it, leave it plugged in. A year later, after more research was done, Zero radically changed that recommendation to this:
https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/owner-resources/Cold-and-Hot-Weather-Operation.pdf
So I'm wondering if the range might've also been impacted by the earlier practice before anyone knew any better and if people now practiced the newer guide lines their batteries may last longer?
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Back on the original topic: Sam, I'm curious as to how you maintained the battery in those four years? I know when I bought my 2016 Zero, the recommendation was that if your weren't riding it, leave it plugged in. A year later, after more research was done, Zero radically changed that recommendation to this:
https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/owner-resources/Cold-and-Hot-Weather-Operation.pdf
So I'm wondering if the range might've also been impacted by the earlier practice before anyone knew any better and if people now practiced the newer guide lines their batteries may last longer?
Before I gave my 2014 S with PT to my daughter, I kept it plugged-in all the time for almost four years. If doing that affected the battery's capacity, she hasn't be able to notice it and neither did I while I owned the bike. ???
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Back on the original topic: Sam, I'm curious as to how you maintained the battery in those four years? I know when I bought my 2016 Zero, the recommendation was that if your weren't riding it, leave it plugged in. A year later, after more research was done, Zero radically changed that recommendation to this:
https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/owner-resources/Cold-and-Hot-Weather-Operation.pdf
So I'm wondering if the range might've also been impacted by the earlier practice before anyone knew any better and if people now practiced the newer guide lines their batteries may last longer?
Before I gave my 2014 S with PT to my daughter, I kept it plugged-in all the time for almost four years. If doing that affected the battery's capacity, she hasn't be able to notice it and neither did I while I owned the bike. ???
Honestly, when the recommendation was to leave it plugged in, Zero warrantied the original battery for five years, or 100,000 miles (whichever came first). Once they changed their recommendation, they changed the warranty to five years, UNLIMITED miles.
Seriously, 100,000 miles in five years is 20,000 miles a year. Even when I had just one ICE bike I rode every day and traveled extensively I was hard pressed to put that many miles on it in one year. For all intents and purposes for me, the warranty terms are IDENTICAL.
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Saying "110% of the battery" is confusing at best, because it means to say "110% further than an ICE vehicle that has the equivalent range in the flats," but instead implies EVs have more range in the hills. And an ICE doesn't have a battery to be more than 100% of.
It's not confusing and it's not saying that, all it's saying is that with regen you can utilise more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery. If you're making the assumption that that means greater than 100% of the range on flat then that fault is with you, like wise if you thought that an electric bike would get the same range in a hilly environment as it would on flat ground. We all know, or should know, that climbing hills uses more energy. Likewise range is reduced when it's cold out, at higher speeds, or when you don't tuck for better aero. These things apply even to ICE bikes so riders of those should know these basic facts of efficiency, if they don't then all of this is going to confuse them so there's no need to cherry pick one thing that Sam said.
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I still would point out that I've never hit the limit on the regen capacity except in hard stops, and I already avoid those. It takes a really steep hill to go over regen, like 10% or above. Few roads do that.
-Crissa
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It's not confusing and it's not saying that, all it's saying is that with regen you can utilise more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery.
There we go again with the non-conservation of energy! If you believe that, I can tell you about a recently black hole observation where the particles shoot out "faster than the speed of light."
And my on-topic comment was that the video failed to compare original range to current range.
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It's not confusing and it's not saying that, all it's saying is that with regen you can utilise more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery.
There we go again with the non-conservation of energy! If you believe that, I can tell you about a recently black hole observation where the particles shoot out "faster than the speed of light."
I'm not saying the battery can hold more than 100% of its capacity, which is obviously impossible, but rather that including the energy regained from regen allows someone to travel using more energy than the 100% capacity of the battery.
To make it simpler let's use an actual battery capacity instead of 100%. Say we have a 25 MJ battery (roughly what a 7.2kW/h Zero is), without regen you can only ever use 25 MJ of energy to move the bike on a single charge. With regen you might regain a megajoule or two which can also be used to move the bike, so the total energy you have available to you is greater than 25 MJ or 100% of the battery capacity.
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Err....
Cas :)
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It has been my observation with my 2014 and 2018 Zeros that I have never seen the SOC increase more than 1% when activating the regen function, not even while braking lightly down a miles-long hill. And of course, when the battery is topped off, the regen is not available until the voltage drops a bit after riding about a mile or so.
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For it to show via SOC you need: A long, steep hill; weight on the bike; and a regen setting that doesn't create more rolling resistance than your weight and the acceleration granted by the hill can overcome.
There's a hill that I (and many other drivers) coast down so that we can coast up the other side. This hill isn't steep enough for me to regen at all.
Every time I do get to use regen, even just coming to a stop, I get more range than I otherwise would have. So yes, with regen I get to use more energy than my battery's initial capacity. If you only count energy spent and remember that potential energy is a thing.
-Crissa
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It doesn't matter how little energy you get from regen, it's still energy regained. You're also only thinking about it at a single point, one single hill, and just because the SoC doesn't go up by 1% doesn't mean there's no energy going back into the battery. Likewise if you went up a hill but didn't see the SoC drop you wouldn't think that it didn't use any energy to get up that hill.
I've never seen my SoC go up from regen, I don't go down any particularly long hills, but I certainly do gain some energy back from using it and that delays the rate at which my SoC goes down.
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If you change your regen settings, what you should see more easily is your Wh/mi change.
-Crissa
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Whoa! Sorry for making a post and bailing on all the comments ;D
To answer some questions.. for the first year or so I followed Zero's advice and kept mine plugged in at 100% at all times. After that, I let it sit somewhere around 60% when I wasn't riding, and I try to charge up immediately before riding (that's the way most EV manufacturers want you to do it, so the battery gets to 100% but doesn't stay there very long). My wife commuted on the Zero daily (before the lockdown) and we'd plug in around 30% and unplug at like 85-90%. Nothing really scientific or timed though. Also, I've taken the bike racing a few times, overheated the battery, and completely drained it to 0% to the point where it wouldn't even turn on.. so I haven't been THAT nice to it.
I guess a better way to measure how much our batteries have degraded is to check the pack's voltage at 100% when you buy the bike and check it at 100% after a few years. Zero doesn't have "bars" that drop like a Nissan Leaf, so even if it's at 80% capacity it will still read as "100% full".
including the energy regained from regen allows someone to travel using more energy than the 100% capacity of the battery.
This ^ sums up what I meant. If you can go 50 miles using a full battery, regen might make it possible to go 55 miles. It's more obvious in a big heavy car, but it still helps our Zeros in certain situations.
Thanks again for watching, everybody! :)
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A heavily degraded battery will still charge to the same voltages, in fact, they will get there quicker! Range test with no regen on, a full monitored external charge, and then reading the logs is the tried and trued method I have heard of.
My range when I purchased my brand new 2016 SR in Feb 2018 was more or less 70 miles at 70 mph. It was a little less in the cold perhaps, untested because I didn't want to end up stranded due to a cold battery. Then after a few more cycles my capacity likely increased slightly. A few months later I installed a cheap Spitfire windscreen. I then noticed 80 miles at 70 mph and it hasn't changed since.
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It's not confusing and it's not saying that, all it's saying is that with regen you can utilise more than 100% of the energy capacity of the battery.
There we go again with the non-conservation of energy! If you believe that, I can tell you about a recently black hole observation where the particles shoot out "faster than the speed of light."
I'm not saying the battery can hold more than 100% of its capacity, which is obviously impossible, but rather that including the energy regained from regen allows someone to travel using more energy than the 100% capacity of the battery.
To make it simpler let's use an actual battery capacity instead of 100%. Say we have a 25 MJ battery (roughly what a 7.2kW/h Zero is), without regen you can only ever use 25 MJ of energy to move the bike on a single charge. With regen you might regain a megajoule or two which can also be used to move the bike, so the total energy you have available to you is greater than 25 MJ or 100% of the battery capacity.
Alright, I'll bite into this thread de-railing. No, it is improper to say you have any more energy than what you started with. The correct way to phrase this is that you can re-purpose energy you would have wasted as heat in the brakes. The 25MJ is all you get. Coming to a stop by braking wastes some of it, regen puts it to better use only if you had to stop anyway. Coasting always should be more efficient use of your energy (at low speeds) unless you need to slow down or stop. Regen technically causes less than 100% of your bike's full energy capacity to go towards doing useful work due to conversion losses (anecdotal but I believe you can get <=60% of your energy back from climbing a hill/storing your electrical energy into potential energy due to gravity*).
*exact number depends on a lot of factors
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Ya know, yes, you get to re-purpose energy, potential or battery.
But the comparison to a no-regen system is that you end up with more energy to spend.
-Crissa
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For the most mileage on a charge, coasting first, then regen, then braking . Period.
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If you were watering a garden and collected some of the water you spill, technically you get to pump it again, sure. The amount of water that goes through the pump is not as significant as the total amount of water used (energy capacity) compared to the total amount of garden watered (range). Saying you can pump 30 gallons from your 20 gallon tank is not as helpful or significant as saying more *of the original 20 gallons* will make it into the garden, but no more than 20. "You end up with more +[of the] energy to spend." The "of the" is so important for clarity.
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No, it is improper to say you have any more energy than what you started with. The correct way to phrase this is that you can re-purpose energy you would have wasted as heat in the brakes. The 25MJ is all you get. Coming to a stop by braking wastes some of it, regen puts it to better use only if you had to stop anyway. Coasting always should be more efficient use of your energy (at low speeds) unless you need to slow down or stop. Regen technically causes less than 100% of your bike's full energy capacity to go towards doing useful work due to conversion losses (anecdotal but I believe you can get <=60% of your energy back from climbing a hill/storing your electrical energy into potential energy due to gravity*).
*exact number depends on a lot of factors
No, the total energy expended would be more than 25MJ. If it wasn't then the range would be the same without regen as with it.
In regards to coasting, I'm not saying that using regen instead of coasting would be more efficient. We're talking about using regen instead of braking, when you have no option but to slow down. If you can make a trip without ever having to touch your brakes then sure, having no regen would be the most efficient usage of energy, but that doesn't happen in the real world.
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No, the total energy expended would be more than 25MJ. If it wasn't then the range would be the same without regen as with it.
Ok, now that's even more directly wrong and anti-physical, the notion that one could expend more energy than exists.
Sam spoke some truth above: with regen you can go more distance on the same amount of energy (55 vs. 50).
Mathematically:
Distance (mi) = Capacity (Wh) / Consumption (Wh / mi)
"110% of the battery" implies that that when Distance goes up 10%, Capacity has gone up 10%.
No. Capacity is a constant. Rather, adding regen decreases Consumption.
Consumption varies with terrain. "110% of the battery" imagines it doesn't, hence why it's not a valid way to think about it. The integral of Consumption over Distance equals energy used, and is bounded by Capacity (14.4 kWh).
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No, the total energy expended would be more than 25MJ. If it wasn't then the range would be the same without regen as with it.
Ok, now that's even more directly wrong and anti-physical, the notion that one could expend more energy than exists.
But it's not more energy than what exists, some of the energy (from regen) is regained from what was originally expended. If you measured the energy output from the battery over the single charge you would find that it is greater than the 100% capacity of the battery.
When you ride the bike not all of the energy from the battery is used to drive the bike forward, some of it is lost as noise, some as heat, and some in braking (more noise and heat). None of that is useful work, however regen allows you to take some of that braking energy and put it back into the battery to be reused. It's not creating new energy.
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Adding regen doesn't decrease consumption. It adds back to the battery.
Remember that electric mining truck that would drive uphill empty, load up, then drive down full? It CREATED more energy than it used, because it was heavier while it was using regen. That's the kinda thing I was referring to, on a way smaller scale.
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Also, Tesla regen is so strong that you can tow them to recharge the battery at 50kW. I know Zero regen isn't anywhere close to that but I'd imagine if you towed it long enough, it would do the same.
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Adding regen doesn't decrease consumption. It adds back to the battery.
Remember that electric mining truck that would drive uphill empty, load up, then drive down full? It CREATED more energy than it used, because it was heavier while it was using regen. That's the kinda thing I was referring to, on a way smaller scale.
Regen does decrease consumption, to the point where it's negative. The way I figure it, every term has a clear meaning in raw numbers, and anything else is merely a colorful interpretation.
Electric mining trucks do not "create energy!" We all know that. It's imprecise to say that they do. Large amounts of potential energy are being added to it and converted. If you expand the discussion that way, then I can allow the motorcycle to start on a hill with an empty battery. It gets to the bottom then makes it another mile. I say "wow, it got infinity percent of the battery!"
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But it's not more energy than what exists, some of the energy (from regen) is regained from what was originally expended. If you measured the energy output from the battery over the single charge you would find that it is greater than the 100% capacity of the battery.
Capacitors store energy too. There is a capacitor in your cell phone that oscillates through 1V at several MHz. If we look only at the energy going out of the capacitor, that thing puts out 1.21 gigawatts a minute!
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Haha ok.. let's call the motor a generator then, because that's what's happening. The motor is used as a generator to put power into the battery. We're not creating energy out of thin air, but the power you're adding to the battery wasn't there before. It's new power, gained from rolling down a hill or coming to a stop. Charging while riding, if you will.
So like someone said above, the capacity you use on a ride with regen turned on is MORE than the battery's capacity. For example, using 10.5kWh from a 10kWh pack.
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You can say that the capacity you use on a ride with regen turned on is more than the battery's capacity. It can be misleading though in the same way I can correctly say regen always wastes energy that *could have* gone towards range. Or saying the range with regen on is lower than what you could get without regen for any given capacity. These are all perfectly true statements but they sound conflicting because we aren't being careful.
These need to be qualified and are not practical ways to express the system physically. For instance, if your bike can travel 100 miles and gain 6kWh, you should mention that you were starting on a hill and not climbing it again so everyone understands that the total system energy that got you there came primarily from gravity and altitude rather than your battery pack. This is a huge communication issue and I'm sure it irks many of our inner physicists to see people reasoning (at least semantically) they have more energy introduced in a system without getting it from somewhere.
We all agree on the conservation of energy and that regenerative braking does not violate it, correct? If you have 10kWh in all forms of energy ("total energy"- specifically potential energy due to gravity and electrical), you can only go as far as 10kWh can take you.
Here is my problem and solution:
"...including the energy regained from regen allows someone to travel using more energy than the 100% capacity of the battery." *ONLY if you had more energy to start from a hill, otherwise it's the exact same energy amount as the 100% capacity of the battery. If you don't mention the hill it is a problematic statement.
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It doesn't even need to be going down a hill, you could be on perfectly flat ground and still be regaining energy, as long as you need to slow down at some point.
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If you were taking a trip, which took 100% of your energy... Say you lost 10% to your stops.
...Then adding regen could reclaim that 10% energy so you could spend it again.
It's not 'making new energy' it's letting you spend energy twice.
That's the same way GDP is counted: GDP isn't the total number of dollars in the economy, it's the number of dollars spent. Many of those dollars were spent many times, and so were counted over and over.
Same with regen.
Sure, you can't spend more than 100% of the initial energy. Except, if you get to spend some of it twice, instead of losing it, you literally do spend more than 100% of the initial energy.
-Crissa
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TheRan, your last statement was qualified by the "as long as you need to slow down" and is correct.
I think we are practically in agreement Crissa. We all seem to have an okay understanding of how regen works it's just the semantics.
That's just it, reusing what would be lost does not mean it is over 100% of *initial* energy.
My problems are the words initial and spend.
Ideal example: If you place a 1kg ball on the side of a hill 10 meters up, it has 98 Joules stored of initial total potential energy due to gravity. If it rolls down that hill and then goes up and then down repeatedly on a series of shorter hills, finally rolling forever on level ground at height 0 meters for this reference frame, it has not "used" (converted) more than a net of 98 Joules into kinetic energy. If it technically converted that 98 Joules of potential energy into kinetic energy and back 10 times, saying something like "~400 Joules was converted into kinetic energy" alone is very misleading and not very helpful. Think of the potential energy as battery charge. Starting with 10kWh, spending 5kWh, regenerating 2kWh, then spending 7kWh so you are now empty--you've spent 12kWh but only used 10kWh of the initial energy. Saying you've spent 12kWh can seemingly imply you can "go 12kWh's worth far"..
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A 14.4KWh motorcycle with regen is more efficient and can go further than a 14.4KWh motorcycle without regen. Neither cumulatively expends any amount over 14.4KWh. That does. not. happen. Not in this universe.
In order to be able to regen some amount, many times that amount must necessarily have been spent earlier on building potential energy.
Edit: posted simultaneous with talons good explanation
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Getting to reuse energy literally does mean 'total energy spent' is higher than the initial energy capacity.
Yes. In this universe.
-Crissa
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I keep racking my brain going through different examples to pick a side in this when both have merits.
If you spend $100 to make $1000 you have both made $900 (net), and made $1000 (at one point).
Remove the part in parentheses and you don't tell the whole story so either statement isn't as accurate. So I lean towards the most obvious assumptions (the [net of] $900 imo). I'd assume if someone told me they made $1000 that it was a net in that reference frame, but perhaps they omit the $100 loss in their system.
You need an exhaustive amount of qualifiers added to your statements to communicate effectively, but that doesn't mean you are correct or incorrect without them... I think.
Sam, great video as always. It inspired me to do my range test, and I always am hungry for more cool EV content.
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A 14.4KWh motorcycle with regen is more efficient and can go further than a 14.4KWh motorcycle without regen. Neither cumulatively expends any amount over 14.4KWh. That does. not. happen. Not in this universe.
In order to be able to regen some amount, many times that amount must necessarily have been spent earlier on building potential energy.
Edit: posted simultaneous with talons good explanation
Sure, but without regen that potential energy would have been wasted as heat during braking. Regen captures some of that energy and puts it back into the battery. It charges the battery, no different to if you stopped off at a charging station to top up. Thus, the battery can put out over 100% of its total capacity during the trip.
For arguments sake lets substitute regen for a solar charger, the end result is the same. If you rode about with a solar panel strapped to your back and hooked up to a charger connected to the bike, and during your trip it recharged the battery just a little bit (or delayed the discharge, however you want to think about it), would you agree that you'd get more than 100% of the total capacity of the battery's worth of energy from the bike? No regen, so you're still wasting that potential energy as heat in the brakes (because slowing down is inevitable) but you're instead replacing it with solar energy.
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All I can say is that given a choice, I would rather convert slowing down when braking into electrons rather than into heat. ;)
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Regen captures some of that energy and puts it back into the battery. It charges the battery, no different to if you stopped off at a charging station to top up. Thus, the battery can put out over 100% of its total capacity during the trip.
A charging station is different. A solar backpack is different. Adding weight at the top of a hill is different. All those things really do add energy to the bike, and cannot be counted as initial energy capacity.
When you apply regen, you can get no energy "back" unless you've already spent the energy up front, and quite a bit more because regen is inefficient.
Getting to reuse energy literally does mean 'total energy spent' is higher than the initial energy capacity.
Energy is never "re-used", only converted between electrical potential, kinetic, and gravitational potential.
If I give you $1000 and you give it back, and I give you $1000 again and you give it back, have I given you $2000? The money appears to have been re-used. But wouldn't that be a highly superficial way of looking at it?
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A charging station is different. A solar backpack is different. Adding weight at the top of a hill is different. All those things really do add energy to the bike, and cannot be counted as initial energy capacity.
When you apply regen, you can get no energy "back" unless you've already spent the energy up front, and quite a bit more because regen is inefficient.
How are they different? They're adding energy to the battery, same as regen. One gets that energy from a power plant, one gets it from the sun, and one gets it from slowing the bike down. Where it comes from makes no difference, assuming that the bike needs to slow down with the brakes in the case of regen (which will be the case in all real world journeys).
Saying that regen requires energy to be spent in order to regain it is a meaningless strawman argument, you're not expending any additional energy compared to if you didn't use regen.
Energy is never "re-used", only converted between electrical potential, kinetic, and gravitational potential.
If I give you $1000 and you give it back, and I give you $1000 again and you give it back, have I given you $2000? The money appears to have been re-used. But wouldn't that be a highly superficial way of looking at it?
It's not about how much money is left at the end, it's how much money has been moved in transactions. You're "expending" $1000, "regenning" $1000 (obviously less in the real world), and then "expending" an additional $1000. In total you've "expended" $2000. And yes if you can convert electrical energy to kinetic and then convert that kinetic energy back into electrical energy you can indeed reuse (some of) it.
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There is no free energy. Except the sun.
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It's not free, but it's energy that's produced instead of brake dust, so it might as well be a negative total cost per watt.
-Crissa
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All I can say is that given a choice, I would rather convert slowing down when braking into electrons rather than into heat. ;)
This is my thought as well.
I’ve configured my Custom settings for full coast when off the rheostat & full regen when the brake is applied.
I feel it’s more efficient to coast then to attempt energy recuperation via regen when off the rheostat.
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I found 100% braking regen to lock up the rear a little too easily. So I'm doing 30-60 throttle-brake.
-Crissa
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I'm starting to see the "Regen Argument" amongst e-Bikers in the same light as "the best motor oil" argument amongst ICE bikers...
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I found 100% braking regen to lock up the rear a little too easily. So I'm doing 30-60 throttle-brake.
-Crissa
In my Dreams....
I wish Regen had a greater force but it might be my fault.
I’m guessing your not hauling around as much weight as my 16 DSR is.
190# fully suited rider with a side bag of tools, cable lock, air compressor etc.
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Even just riding solo with NO luggage, 100% regen doesn't get anywhere NEAR locking the rear wheel. I suspect the highway department near him must treat the asphalt with vaseline nightly; there is no other explanation.
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I live in the mountains on very steep hills. I also have the lighter of the S frame models and I carry much less gear than the rest of you apparently!
During hard emergency braking I nearly always lock up the rear, and I've had it slide out before getting my foot on the brake pedal (too much front brake, clearly).
Since that first mile colors every ride, I'm going to change my settings to reflect it.
I can't seem to get that 100%-coast intentionally in the throttle regen settings, either. So I chose just enough that I can coast down my hills and sometimes brake, while still getting some regen.
Your results will vary by your ride, too!
I flip between Eco, Sport, and my settings pretty frequently. Sport has high throttle and braking regen while Eco seems to have a middling amount of throttle and less braking. So it works out for me to have something in between the two for most of my riding.
-Crissa
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"Locking the rear wheel?" I see you have a 2014 model. I know my 2016 had ABS, and I know Zeros originally DIDN'T have ABS... I'm guessing your model doesn't have it?
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I don't know which models have ABS and don't, but yes, mine does not. ABS was slowly phased into the model lines.
ABS doesn't help if regen is too strong in slick conditions. It only modulates the brake pads.
Since regen is based in the controller, it would be possible for a traction system to override it. Zeros don't do this yet in any model that I know of.
-Crissa
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I don't know which models have ABS and don't, but yes, mine does not. ABS was slowly phased into the model lines.
ABS doesn't help if regen is too strong in slick conditions. It only modulates the brake pads.
Since regen is based in the controller, it would be possible for a traction system to override it. Zeros don't do this yet in any model that I know of.
-Crissa
The SR/F and SR/S have drag torque control that limits regen if it is detected that the rear wheel locks up during (strong) regen. 8)
from the owners manual "When decelerating, the drag torque control (DTC) manages the drag on the rear wheel by increasing or decreasing the levels of power regenerated. If the wheel speed sensors report rear wheel slippage upon deceleration, the DTC functionality will automatically reduce the amount of drag torque to assist in maintaining rear wheel traction."
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Thanks, remmie!
That's cool that they added it. It's much easier to add to an electric than an ICE.
-Crissa
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There's so much going on in this thread... I'll address some points:
- Regen does have an overhead, to produce a stator field. Regen has an efficiency/effectiveness curve with speed, as I understand it. Regen has been historically disabled at low speeds (<13mph) because it doesn't recover energy higher than the amount required to produce the stator field. There's an MBB setting for it.
- Zero rolled out ABS support across their model line in 2015, which involved a heavy retooling and investment in Bosch equipment. It wasn't gradual.
- Drag Torque Control support on SRF/SRS models is exactly what we all hoped for on SDS models, but I've heard conflicting reports on whether the Sevcon can implement this correctly or if it's just an R&D hangup. Hopefully that's a feature that gets rolled into firmware updates some day.