ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: Fivespeed302 on January 16, 2017, 07:20:37 AM
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I found this sweet place with some real nice curves in the road. Since I'm in Florida, curves are hard to come by. It was so far from home, that I only went around it 1 1/2 times before I hit 50% on the battery and turned around for the ride home. 4 miles from home, I was at 12%, but speed cut down to 27 mph. I was about a full mile from home with 9% when it went straight to 0% and simply stopped. I pushed it the rest of the way home. :(
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At least you have nice enough weather to ride! Pushing does totally suck though!
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Yeah, it was actually pretty hot. Pushing a Zero is a little more work than pushing a regular bike. Pretty good core workout. ;D
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Now that's a positive approach! Maybe I'll push mine around the block a few times (in full gear of course!) to improve my fitness. It will also show the neighbors how hard I am!
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I have been driving / riding electric vehicles for about a decade and one of the first things I do when I get a new vehcile
is find out what my limits are in a controlled situation. I have various routes that I take that I know what kind of power use
is needed. As battery gets lower I switch to shorter and shorter laps so that I am never far from a known outlet.
In years of driving and thousands of miles under my belt, I have had only a very few instances where I ran out of juice
unexpectedly. The Zeros are pretty easy as they just require a standard out which can be found almost anywhere.
Grocery stores are usually pretty good, just find the vending machines / kids rides and there is usually an empty outlet.
If the bike does die, pull over ( as safely as possible ) to assess the situation. If you wait for a few minutes, you will get
a little bit of rejuvenation in the battery and be able to get a bit more distance. Any time I am about to stop, I circle the
parking lot to see if there is an open outlet to use as I am patronizing one of the businesses in the complex.
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People just let you use their outlets?
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Fivespeed302,
Time to think about upgrading to a newer model! I say that because I had that happen a few times on the 2014 SR I had. If you had checked the cell imbalance you would probably have seen a number like 130 mV or higher. I had my 2014 SR go from 17% SOC to 0% in an instant and that was that last long ride I ever did on the bike. Simply didn't trust it any more. Despite taking a huge hit on trade in value I got rid of it for a 2016 SR. Just rolled over 10,000 miles and it has been flawless. Vinny
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Fivespeed302,
Time to think about upgrading to a newer model! I say that because I had that happen a few times on the 2014 SR I had. If you had checked the cell imbalance you would probably have seen a number like 130 mV or higher. I had my 2014 SR go from 17% SOC to 0% in an instant and that was that last long ride I ever did on the bike. Simply didn't trust it any more. Despite taking a huge hit on trade in value I got rid of it for a 2016 SR. Just rolled over 10,000 miles and it has been flawless. Vinny
While I love my Zero, I'm not in a position to trade in my bike at this point. I'd probably get a FZ-07 or R3 or something similar if I had to. My warranty expires at the end of April so I will probably take the bike in to the shop to check for imbalances sometime soon.
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I have been driving / riding electric vehicles for about a decade and one of the first things I do when I get a new vehcile
is find out what my limits are in a controlled situation. I have various routes that I take that I know what kind of power use
is needed. As battery gets lower I switch to shorter and shorter laps so that I am never far from a known outlet.
In years of driving and thousands of miles under my belt, I have had only a very few instances where I ran out of juice
unexpectedly. The Zeros are pretty easy as they just require a standard out which can be found almost anywhere.
Grocery stores are usually pretty good, just find the vending machines / kids rides and there is usually an empty outlet.
If the bike does die, pull over ( as safely as possible ) to assess the situation. If you wait for a few minutes, you will get
a little bit of rejuvenation in the battery and be able to get a bit more distance. Any time I am about to stop, I circle the
parking lot to see if there is an open outlet to use as I am patronizing one of the businesses in the complex.
I tested the limits when I first got it like you said. It has never in 11,500 miles just dropped 9% so all the testing was for nothing. I was only 1 mile from home and should have been able to easily get home with 9%. And you should have seen where I was, in the middle of a retirement village. The only way I could have charged my bike would have been to steal electricity. In addition, after an hour it was at 10% and still wouldn't operate properly. The dashboard would turn on but the red warning light flashed like the kickstand sensor was faulty and the throttle was useless.
It wasn't until it was in the mid 40's when I tried again and it worked fine.
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I ran my 2014S down to zero charge once. It kept moving at 1%, but the second it hit 0% the bike stopped dead, until I let it rest for 30 seconds then it would move another 100 feet and stop again. I managed to get the last 1/4 mile (uphill) home that way. So I found my battery capacity gauge perfectly accurate. It does seem strange that yours would drop from 17% to 0% in an instant. (My bike was built in December 2013 and is still running perfectly. However, I have avoided obtaining any new firmware updates. I have always been of the opinion that if things are working well don't mess with them. :) )
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My 2014s used to allow riding down to 8% before switching to 0% but it has gotten progressively worse over the past 6 months. Now, at 19% it cuts the torque way back and at 17% it switches to 0%. The cells are closely balanced; so I am not sure what has caused the degradation. For now, I use 20% displayed to mean 0% charge remaining.
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I think we have to get a detailed than just year and model in our experience reporting for this behavior.
Some are reporting stability getting down in the low single digits SOC while others are reporting erratic drops.
Board and firmware? http://home.hasslers.net/zerologparser/logs/ (http://home.hasslers.net/zerologparser/logs/)
I've not been below 17% on my Zero (which is zero bars) So I'm nowhere near experienced on this subject of low SOC behavior.
03160 2013 Zero SS 2013 rev1 7
Though I've pushed my 79 Sportster hilly 1.5 miles (i mapped it to be sure) and would much rather push my Zero.
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On my fx I had it drop from 12% to 2% suddenly, then quickly to 0% and it shut off and had to catch a ride a couple miles from home. Outside temp was under 40 degrees. When warm out I can go down to 0% and still ride another mile or two slowly.
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Fivespeed302,
The cell imbalance is something you can check on your Zero App if you have it on a smartphone. When fully charged cell imbalance will be about 3-4 mV. On the last time I had this problem on my 2014 SR I had a cell imbalance of around 163 mV. I got to a 110 outlet and plugged in. The cell imbalance immediately began dropping and at a faster rate than the SOC charge was increasing. I had actually checked the cell imbalance when I was about 20 miles from home and it was only around 30 mV. Thought I had plenty of charge left to get home. That was also my last time to stop at a L2 charger. Didn't think I needed to. But the cell imbalance began climbing fast after that. When I had power cut to 25 MPH max speed I knew very shortly the bike would die and SOC would drop to 0%. For most day to day riding this was never an issue because the SOC never got that low. But not being able to trust the bike on longer trips was one of the primary reasons I got rid of it. As far as I know the guy who bought it has never had a problem but have no idea how he rides.
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And you should have seen where I was, in the middle of a retirement village. The only way I could have charged my bike would have been to steal electricity. In addition, after an hour it was at 10% and still wouldn't operate properly. The dashboard would turn on but the red warning light flashed like the kickstand sensor was faulty and the throttle was useless.
It wasn't until it was in the mid 40's when I tried again and it worked fine.
Or you could just knock on someone's door and ask to plug in....it's pretty embarrassing but sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do. I have had very similar behavior on my 2014 Zero S twice and several other times I have just taken it all the way down to 0% (no sudden drops) before reaching my destination. The first time SOC suddenly dropped to 0% I pushed about a mile past many houses to get to a parking garage that had an outlet. The second time I just sucked it up and knocked on someone's door that had their garage open.
Yes, it was awkward but the old man that lived at the house was very friendly. I tried to give him a few bucks but he wouldn't take it. You might be surprised how many people would have your back if you just have the courage to ask.
Some tips on the Zero behavior...
The BMS controlled cell balancing takes place when the batteries are almost fully charged. When you check cell balance at 100% it should be very low. As ultrarnr said, 3-4 mV is normal. I have seen my pack as low as 1 mV many times but I have also seen it over 100 mV many times. Here are some screen shots of some times when I have had low SOC and high cell balance as well as a couple times when I was fully charged and cell balance was just 1 mV. Note that in the one instance pack voltage was actually at 117 V with cell balance at 1 mV.
(http://i1074.photobucket.com/albums/w410/TheMrwilsn/2014%20Zero%20S%20cell%20balance%20screen%20shots_zpsqakrrgik.png) (http://s1074.photobucket.com/user/TheMrwilsn/media/2014%20Zero%20S%20cell%20balance%20screen%20shots_zpsqakrrgik.png.html)
As you drain the battery the cells will slowly get out of balance due the small differences in internal resistance within the cells. The lower the SOC the more out of balance they will get. As soon as you start charging they will naturally start to rebalance themselves. Once the pack is fully charged but before the BMS controlled cell balancing starts the cell balance should already be pretty good. Then the BMS will kick in and start to balance the pack attempting to get every cell to exactly 4.15 V.
The cell balance is measured between the cell with the highest voltage and the cell with the lowest voltage. Thus, when the pack is out of balance it's possible that most cells are very close and only one or a couple is actually much lower or higher than the others.
Higher rates of discharge are more likely to get the cells far out of balance than slower rates of discharge. Also, if you unplug before the BMS can balance the cells at full charge then you may see higher cell balance when you get to low SOC. If you just do this once you will be fine but if you go long periods of time without letting the BMS balance the pack then you will be at higher risk for seeing large cell balance at low SOC.
When you were ridding at 12%, your cells were likely too far out of balance. I think what happens is that when the cells are far out of balance, SOC is low and you try to give it too much throttle then the voltage sags too much and the bike drops to 0% even though the voltage rises back up when you let off the throttle. It could also be that the cell balance was worse than shown in the app but recovered before I was able to get connected and check it. I haven't been able to confirm this because voltage and cell balance are not options on the riding screen in the app. Notice that in the following picture I had just experienced the same problem as you with a sudden drop to 0%. However, cell balance and voltage are similar to the previous pics where I was at 8-11%.
(http://i1074.photobucket.com/albums/w410/TheMrwilsn/2014%20Zero%20S%20118mV%20Cell%20Balance%200percent%202015-10-1_zpsgmqkg8pu.png) (http://s1074.photobucket.com/user/TheMrwilsn/media/2014%20Zero%20S%20118mV%20Cell%20Balance%200percent%202015-10-1_zpsgmqkg8pu.png.html)
After plugging in, if you just let it go for a while and then unplug and try to ride you may see the behavior you described....still won't let you ride away until you got to 40%. If it happens again do the following...
Plug in the bike.
Connect phone to the bike and check the balance (just for the data point).
After about 45 minutes - 1 hour unplug the bike and turn it on.
Turn the bike off.
Reset the BMS using the reset switch on the front of the battery (instructions on the unofficial zero manual)
Wait about 20 seconds and then turn the bike on.
You should have a few percent and you should be able to ride away but with such a low SOC it would be risky that you might have the sudden drop again before getting home. But now you can at least plug back in and charge until you decide you have enough that you feel comfortable making a break for home (or wherever you plan to fully charge). Make sure you fully charge the bike and let the BMS balance the cells when you do get home. I think I waited until I was at about 20% before I rode home....actually, the first time it happened I rode home but the second time (pictured above) I gave myself just enough charge to make it to a charge point that was 2-3 miles away and then super charged for about 30 minutes to get the bike to 40-50% before riding home.
One other tip....when at 0% I have been able to push my bike with it keyed on for a block or two then turn the bike off and then turn back on and the regen was enough that I was able to do an assisted walk using the throttle while walking next to it. It didn't work the second time my bike suddenly dropped to 0% (even after trying a BMS reset)...but I have been able to do it successfully more than once.
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I found this sweet place with some real nice curves in the road. Since I'm in Florida, curves are hard to come by. It was so far from home, that I only went around it 1 1/2 times before I hit 50% on the battery and turned around for the ride home. 4 miles from home, I was at 12%, but speed cut down to 27 mph. I was about a full mile from home with 9% when it went straight to 0% and simply stopped. I pushed it the rest of the way home. :(
Fivespeed, you got yours out of the way, huh?
Does the old saying about riding bikes, "It's not if you go down, it's when you go down" apply to EVs?
"It's not if you have to push your bike home, it's when you have to"
I sure hope I can dodge this bullet.
By the way, I don't really like GPS etc... but I realized that it is essential on an electric bike.
The other day, I could pick between two on-ramps, one north (the right one) and one south (the wrong one).
I picked the wrong one and it could have put me out there with no charge left.
I was lucky that there happened to be an exit fairly close, but that's not always the case, especially on a toll road here in Texas.
Thanks for sharing, it makes me pay very close attention now as an EV beginner.
Thanks for your input too KrazyEd. You have a lot of experience.
Rider7
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I think we have to get a detailed than just year and model in our experience reporting for this behavior.
Some are reporting stability getting down in the low single digits SOC while others are reporting erratic drops.
Board and firmware? http://home.hasslers.net/zerologparser/logs/ (http://home.hasslers.net/zerologparser/logs/)
I've not been below 17% on my Zero (which is zero bars) So I'm nowhere near experienced on this subject of low SOC behavior.
03160 2013 Zero SS 2013 rev1 7
Though I've pushed my 79 Sportster hilly 1.5 miles (i mapped it to be sure) and would much rather push my Zero.
I don't think it's a firmware thing. The most recent time this happened to me I had just been at the dealer getting the firmware updated less than a month before it happened. It was October 2016. I was actually out deliberately trying to see if I could induce the error hoping the firmware update might have fixed it. I think this issue was actually fixed in the 2015 model year with the ZF12.5 battery but we can see if anyone that has a 2015 or newer posts about having the problem. It would also be interesting to see if anyone that has a 2014 or older but with an upgraded ZF12.5 or ZF13 has seen the problem.
I just bought a 2017 Zero SR but the weather has been bad around STL so I have been riding my 2014 Zero S and haven't been able to do all the different tests I want to run on the 2017....it only has 150 miles on the ODO even though I have had it for almost 2 months now....for comparison I put 1500 miles on the ODO of my 2014 Zero S the first month I owned it and have averaged 600 miles a month since.
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But not being able to trust the bike on longer trips was one of the primary reasons I got rid of it. As far as I know the guy who bought it has never had a problem but have no idea how he rides.
I agree....I have pretty much lost confidence in my 2014 Zero S for longer trips. I will only take it to really low SOC if I have been riding at low discharge rates for my whole ride and once it gets really low I am super careful not to give it too much throttle.
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My 2.8 FX drops from 17â„… to 0 as well. Since I am aware of that, i rode the bike slowly (10 kmh) , to prevent voltage drop did not help...
I'll try to update the fw.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
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Stealing power would be going to a non public area, or area with prohibitive signs
and plugging in. If an outlet is in the public area, ( business complex, strip mall ) and
I am patronizing a business in that complex, I feel no moral problem using publicly
accessible outlets. If I were to feel the need to charge to make it to next known
charging area, and the only possible outlet would be residence I would knock
on doors and plead my case. Offer some money, see what happened.
Worst case would be to call for tow truck ( I have roadside assistance ), or,
take public transportation home and come back with tow vehicle. Have
only had to do that once when a battery in my Electric Paseo lost a cell
and I didn't have the tools with me to diagnose.
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Asking nicely often works rather well.
I once was getting rather low, and explaining my situation I asked a gentlemen working in his garage if I could charge. A couple of cups of coffee and a nice chat later I was on my way. (the Elcon helped here)
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Mrwilson, excellent description of the cell behavior, I have a 2013 with the 13kw upgraded battery and as I was reading your post it dawned on me that the very few times I have taken the battery past 15% I have done it while riding quite gingerly (80 kmhr) I have had it all the way down to 3% and gone 2km more at 60 kmhr, I have never experienced the power cut and was wondering why I so often see it mentioned on forums etc, I now believe that the cells remain in better balance due to the fact that I try and ride economically when pushing my range limits, it sounds a little like the voltage sag experience in my lead acid solar batteries (hard use only leads to faster depletion of the pack obviously)
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It's pretty scary stuff to lose your motor when the % gauge is showing you have range left.
Maybe its just old school thinking - but remember the old days when we had reserve tanks - it would be pretty neat if we had just a small 2 mile or so reserve to switch over. This way if the motor stops at 10% 5% or 0% you would have a small reserve to get off the highway or a 110v plug.
Regards!
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Mrwilson, excellent description of the cell behavior, I have a 2013 with the 13kw upgraded battery and as I was reading your post it dawned on me that the very few times I have taken the battery past 15% I have done it while riding quite gingerly (80 kmhr) I have had it all the way down to 3% and gone 2km more at 60 kmhr, I have never experienced the power cut and was wondering why I so often see it mentioned on forums etc, I now believe that the cells remain in better balance due to the fact that I try and ride economically when pushing my range limits, it sounds a little like the voltage sag experience in my lead acid solar batteries (hard use only leads to faster depletion of the pack obviously)
Thankfully, the upgraded battery (2016 era) does not degrade at low % SoC like 2013-2014 batteries did. (Terry and others have explained how the cell upgrades helped this.)
It's still a good idea to leave yourself some indicated reserve of 15%, but the 2016 will usually run right down to 0% and then take you several more miles at low speed and low torque/power.
Battery chemistry unfortunately doesn't always offer a quantifiable reserve like a physical amount of gasoline would. State of charge is a software abstraction over things like cell voltages and temperatures, so when it "drops", it's an estimation update rather than a physical drop.
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It's pretty scary stuff to lose your motor when the % gauge is showing you have range left.
Maybe its just old school thinking - but remember the old days when we had reserve tanks - it would be pretty neat if we had just a small 2 mile or so reserve to switch over. This way if the motor stops at 10% 5% or 0% you would have a small reserve to get off the highway or a 110v plug.
Regards!
My 2012 S had a 10% reserve after the power level bars disappeared. But it wasn't advertised and you wouldn't know about it without people on this board encountering the "reserve" and mentioning it. :)
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I think that the "reserve" is probably still there, just with the newer
gauges and apps, we are just using it as power and ignoring the
bars on the dash
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My iPhone 6sPlus died today at 24%
I was at home and it was warm, then went out to ride and the phone got colder than it was quickly. My dog Charger was playing with another dog and I went to take a video and the phone stalled, I remember seeing 24% battery, next thing I know the screen went blank. Tried to power it on and the screen showing I needed to plug it in came on. 3 hours later I made it home and plugged it in, and after about a minute it came on and said 16%.
Some might think Apple is a big company with a lot of resources. At least compared to Zero. And Apple doesn't have it figured out yet. Calculating battery energy completely accurately is incredibly difficult. Other times my phone has been at 1% for like 2 hours of talking on the phone while I keep telling the person my phone will shut off at any moment and it never does.
The Zero battery is very similar. Sometimes it might say 20% but really be almost empty at any minute. Other times it might say 20% but have 35% left. The 2015's and up seemed to deal with this much much better than the 2014's but we've seen it's not perfect still. I've heard the 2017's have 2 completely separate current sensors, so this should be solved on the 2017 bikes to where you can depend on the SOC more than a 10% margin,
Remember when in doubt, check the phone app while stopped and check the battery page. If the resting voltage is 98 or below, start looking for a place to plug in. 88-90 volts is the lowest you will see where 93 volts might get you one mile at very slow speed. 97 volts and below it will start dropping faster and faster and will reduce power more and more.
Having some sort of fast charger with you means if this ever happens where you ride to the bottom of the range and it cuts power back you can simply find the closest place to plug in to high power and boost charge real quick to either get home or to find a charging spot where you can grab a bite to eat and use the bathroom if you are on a long road trip.
Phones and electric devices were almost better when there was just a battery icon in the upper right with 3 diagonal pieces that would fill it. With 3 pieces it was considered full. With 2 pieces, all we knew is it wasn't full. With 1 piece it let us know it could be empty at any time. When there were 0 pieces left it usually would flash or something letting us know not to expect too much. But this was the 25% mark. it could last a while, just no guarantees.
We all think the 2014 had the worst current sensing, but the 2013 had a bar gauge that wasn't a precision reporting meter to us, so we didn't expect to get it down to the bottom accurately. If you know how batteries work than you know not to expect anything under 20% that will ruin your day if it comes up short. Always have a backup plan, preferably with a fast charger.
Zero could hide 25% of the capacity from the user, and have it ramp down to 0% quicker, but you could have 25 miles left then and not know at all where you stand. it's pretty good the way it is, and the 2017 bikes with dual current sensors should make it pretty much perfect accuracy now.
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When I first got my DigiNow Dongle, while looking at different settings, I recall seeing something
about battery reserve. If I recall, there was the ability ( using the dongle ) to change what was
called reserve battery. It may have been at what point the gauge read 0%. Not sure, that was
a while ago. Will probably play with settings on the SR with the dongle to see what offerings
there are with the 2016 VS the 2013 FX.
Going back to the iPhone reference, In one of the earlier models there was a big uproar
about signal strength. Everyone was complaining about how many ( of few ) bars they had
in comparison to other brands in the same service area. Apple provided an update and now the
iPhones were all getting better signal. They weren't, they just adjusted what the phone
saw as signal to "show" greater signal strength. It's possible that Zero did this with the
battery bars. I doubt that would be the case though as they would want people to be
more careful at low SOC rather than have them get stranded because they THOUGHT
they had more battery.
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Apple provided an update and now the
iPhones were all getting better signal. They weren't, they just adjusted what the phone
saw as signal to "show" greater signal strength. It's possible that Zero did this with the
battery bars. I doubt that would be the case though as they would want people to be
more careful at low SOC rather than have them get stranded because they THOUGHT
they had more battery.
Right Ed, there are pros and cons to each. if you hide 50% of capacity for instance, then people would complain their new motorcycle only goes 40 miles on a charge, to which they would be asked did it stop running, and they would say, no but it was at 10% and so I figured it was empty when really they had 60 miles left.
The best case scenario is to report battery almost completely accurately to the user and let them decide the risk they wish to take. Maybe hide 5% or offer 5% pessimism on the display. The key is people have to just know not to rely on anything under say 20%. Although half the time they could ride to 0% and perhaps a few miles more, but the other half it might run out a few miles before 0%.
Like I said above, Zero I think fixed this issue completely with the addition of a second current sensor calibrated for a different range from the first so it should be highly highly accurate now in the 2017 models.
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The best case scenario is to report battery almost completely accurately to the user and let them decide the risk they wish to take. Maybe hide 5% or offer 5% pessimism on the display.
I agree completely, but the ICE vehicle manufacturers haven't done it this way for at least as long as I've been driving -- everybody knows when the needle hits "E", you've still got plenty of gas in the tank. It makes me crazy. If people are too stupid to refill before the needle gets to the "E", they deserve to be stuck on the side of the road! You have to manage your affairs better than that.
The reason I'd agree with reserving 5% or so is just because of the uncertainty factor. In spite of the best-laid plans, it is possible for the algorithm to think there's 5% charge left when actually the battery is done.
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The best case scenario is to report battery almost completely accurately to the user and let them decide the risk they wish to take. Maybe hide 5% or offer 5% pessimism on the display.
I agree completely, but the ICE vehicle manufacturers haven't done it this way for at least as long as I've been driving -- everybody knows when the needle hits "E", you've still got plenty of gas in the tank. It makes me crazy. If people are too stupid to refill before the needle gets to the "E", they deserve to be stuck on the side of the road! You have to manage your affairs better than that.
The reason I'd agree with reserving 5% or so is just because of the uncertainty factor. In spite of the best-laid plans, it is possible for the algorithm to think there's 5% charge left when actually the battery is done.
Right, ideally you want it so you can go 85 mph up to 0%, and then start progressively cutting back power. So the "reserve" can be the kWh needed to have left to still output 20 kW (or less if the Zero ever gets more aerodynamic)
The "reserve" might be enough to allow 15 miles of range at an average speed limited to 35 mph, where the first few miles are between 70 and 80, then 60 and 70, etc etc to where it finally crawls along at 20 mph for the last 2 miles. But at least can get you to a charge station if you make a wrong turn on the freeway right at the end of your planned trip and range. (Example, using the "Range" feature on the dash, or "Miles to Empty" on the App.)
The max legal speed until 0% I think is important as I have read accounts where Zero owners were frustrated that they couldn't keep up with freeway traffic near the end of their range but not empty by the dash SOC reading yet. I can understand that. If that means hiding just a little more, that that would be better.
The accuracy should be so good on the 2017 models that this should be able to happen right at 0% each time.