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Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: valnar on May 24, 2019, 03:30:14 AM
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Hi folks. First time poster here.
I'm contemplating getting a Zero and it would be my first EV. I need to figure out if the range would be adequate for my usage.
So for argument sake, figure on the 2019 FX 7.2. Spec are:
City = 91 miles
Highway @ 70 = 39 miles
Mixed = 54
Lets assume this is a perfect science. :)
At what speed does the range drop dramatically on a Zero bike? 50mph? 60mph? 65mph? I assume the drop from 91 --> 39 miles isn't linear, or is it? Has anyone made a calculator where you can plug in some figures and come up with a predictable range?
eg. I have a destination 29 miles away, which means (as you can guess) a 58 mile round trip. I can say that a certain percentage is city driving from 25-45mph, and another percentage is freeway so I'd go 65-70 to keep up with everyone else. What I don't know is how much each of those speeds eat away at the battery life.
Anybody "in the know" ever figure that out?! Lol
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The range drops dramatically from about 10 or 15 mph...at those speeds you can get over 100 miles a pack (kill the 12v accessories for that long ride!). Zero's range specs are pretty accurate.
An online calculator would be redundant. Zero already did that part for you, and produced reasonable range figures. You can extend or shorten depending on how your ride. Your 58 mile round trip is doable, but you will need to be mindful about how hard you accelerate and how fast you cruise. The highway portion will probably be the biggest variable if you accelerate gently. You may need to ride closer to 55 or 60 than 70 mph.
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10 to 15mph? I'm not sure if this is serious.
I wasn't quite sure what "City" meant but their specs have a dramatic difference between City and highway-70mph.
For me, City isn't stop-and-go. City is simply roads that are between 30-45mph mostly. There are a few lights, but not many. Since Zero is based in California, I don't know if "City" to them means literally sitting and waiting half the time.
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My personal observation is that traveling under 40 mph should get you Zero's claimed city range.
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Hi folks. First time poster here.
I'm contemplating getting a Zero and it would be my first EV. I need to figure out if the range would be adequate for my usage.
So for argument sake, figure on the 2019 FX 7.2. Spec are:
City = 91 miles
Highway @ 70 = 39 miles
Mixed = 54
Lets assume this is a perfect science. :)
At what speed does the range drop dramatically on a Zero bike? 50mph? 60mph? 65mph? I assume the drop from 91 --> 39 miles isn't linear, or is it? Has anyone made a calculator where you can plug in some figures and come up with a predictable range?
eg. I have a destination 29 miles away, which means (as you can guess) a 58 mile round trip. I can say that a certain percentage is city driving from 25-45mph, and another percentage is freeway so I'd go 65-70 to keep up with everyone else. What I don't know is how much each of those speeds eat away at the battery life.
Anybody "in the know" ever figure that out?! Lol
Expect to get roughly half the range each time you double the speed. For easy normal riding, take ten times the battery KWH, about 72 miles for a 7.2 battery. Forget about any type of accuracy, way too many variables, hills, wind road conditions, temperature (warmer gives better range--but hot gives problems). Ride slow on level ground and you can easily beat Zero's city range spec. Ride fast up hill, and you will be lucky to get 50% of the Zero freeway spec. Expect it to be all over. But use this simple rule, if your in a hurry, slow down! Recharge time is a lot longer (in most cases) than any time you will gain by speed.
I try to stay off the freeways as much as possible and because of that, I am quite happy with my range.
And when I must use the freeway uphill, I look for a slow truck to get behind, if I am concerned about range.
But when I am very concerned, I use an ice bike!
-Don- Cold Springs Valley, NV
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10 to 15mph? I'm not sure if this is serious.
I wasn't quite sure what "City" meant but their specs have a dramatic difference between City and highway-70mph.
For me, City isn't stop-and-go. City is simply roads that are between 30-45mph mostly. There are a few lights, but not many. Since Zero is based in California, I don't know if "City" to them means literally sitting and waiting half the time.
Completely serious. I'm not suggesting you ride at that speed, and the powertrain efficiency is poor, but since your main enemy is air drag, and the power needed to overcome that drag rises with the CUBE of your speed...yes, your range will drop dramatically from a very low speed. A partial solution to this is a fairing, or at least a windshield. The latter makes a noticeable difference on the highway and the right fairing could literally double your highway range at the expense of you looking like a goon in search of a speed record.
Anyway stop and go is worse for range. If you're going 30-40 in the city, and don't accelerate hard, you will easily meet zero's claimed city range.
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There are some Google Spreadsheet range calculators. DoctorBass made one in metric and I have one that uses imperial units and is unfortunately a little more complicated to DIY bike specs I didn't already enter.
Also, neither of us use FX bikes, so the weight/drag parameters are different. But it can be done.
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OK thanks everyone. That helped. I didn't realize going fast cut it down so dramatically.
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I have a 2016 DSR 13KW with a similar round trip commute that’s a few miles less (53+- miles).
Most of the time I only have 20-30% left over (sometimes less) but I don’t limit my power usage.
I think your combo (commute/battery capacity) will only work if you limit your max. speed to 45 (MPH).
Also you won’t be left with much reserve especially in Winter (increased air density, wet/slippery pavement, unfavorable winds).
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I have a 2016 DSR 13KW with a similar round trip commute that’s a few miles less (53+- miles).
Most of the time I only have 20-30% left over (sometimes less) but I don’t limit my power usage.
I think your combo (commute/battery capacity) will only work if you limit your max. speed to 45 (MPH).
Also you won’t be left with much reserve especially in Winter (increased air density, wet/slippery pavement, unfavorable winds).
I'm very tall (6'4") and only the FX felt good when I sat on it. I could probably make the DS/DSR work if I had no choice, but I'd need to get it customized. Lower the pegs and such. The highest battery on the FX isn't that high though, so if you're only left with 20% on a 13KW, that doesn't bode well for me.
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I had a 52 mile round trip commute on mostly freeway. Zero SR 12.5. When it worked right, I averaged 0.7 miles per 1% which would be 70 miles if consistent. If I got off the highway and rode the boulevards, including stop and go, I could get it up to 1.2 fairly easily.
One popular EV Vlogger says “put your money into the biggest battery you can afford before anything else.†He speaks of Tesla but it’s good advice especially for a Zero.
Too many variables in driving conditions and indeed, unpredictability of what the system might do after an update or two, future degradation etc, all add up to less range, not more. I would not recommend the smallest model for a 50 mile commute based on my experience.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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The DS is a much better platform on the freeway, especially with a windscreen. Only thing it doesn't do as well on the freeway as the FX is split traffic.
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Regarding land splitting...three weeks after selling my Zero, I was rear-ended on I-5 while on my Suzuki Cavalcade in Orange County, CA. (Thrown to the ground, bike totaled, but I walked away once I came to...thank you). As I sat in the CHP car to enjoy his Air Conditioning while waiting for a tow, the officer stated “the vast majority of our daily freeway bike accidents are due to lane splitting.†Perhaps a topic for another thread, but “just saying.†The Cade was too big and rubbery handling for splitting but I did go between cars on the SR sometimes.
I haven’t been without at least one motorcycle in the garage from 1969 until now. The accident woke me up to what can happen “even to me†in an instant! Several old friends have not been as lucky as I was.
I still have some limitations seven months later, and I miss riding. I am not saying never again, but I’m still not ready.
If you ride a motorcycle only to get to work a few minutes faster by zipping between cars, well...please do it in moderation and keep your eyes open! -Uncle George
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There is no lane splitting in my state, so no worries there.
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If you hypermile as much as possible, keep tires close to maximum posted on tire, add windshield, you might be able to get 20% over what Zero says
I could take my 2013 FX 5.7 around 60 freeway miles doing those things. I have had my 2016 13KW SR between Las Vegas and Los Angeles a few times.
Around town, I can get 200 to 300 ( No Fun, Just to see if I can do it ) miles. My furthest Highway without charge was right at 120 miles from Vegas to the
Charge station in Beatty, again, just to see if I could do it. Didn't have the Big windscreen then, just the little one. Didn't know where the charger was and
lost cell signal, so the last 20 miles was quite slow. Arrived with 7 miles left. Wind resistance doesn't seem to be much of an effect until you exceed 35 mph.
Keep in mind that a headwind adds to your actual mph. At the drag strip, a mild headwind cuts my terminal velocity by as much as 4 mph.
I have been driving / riding electric vehicles for about a dozen years and can easily exceed pretty much any posted range numbers for anything that I have
driven or ridden. Your round trip should be easily doable.
The first thing that I do when I acquire an electric vehicle is take it on a known "loop" and run it from full to empty so that I know how far I "CAN" go.
Then, ride / drive it a bit harder to find out what the difference is. If you take it "painfully" slow the first time or two, you will know what you are ABLE to
do, then, gradually increase speed ( add fun ) to see what the most optimal throttle positions are. Worst case pull into a grocery store, there are usually
open outlets around the vending machines. Damned homeless are causing many / most of the places around Vegas that USED to have outlets to put plates
over them.
Hope this helps.
Feel free to P/M if you have questions that you feel may apply to you more than the group
Good Luck
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I just bought a 2019 FX 7.2 three months ago. I'm over 6 foot and around 265 lbs. I'm a total data nerd, so I started tracking rides and performance immediately with the bike to find out what reality was.
Here are the ride stats from my last 15 rides to give you an idea of the range of the FX:
(https://i.ibb.co/fFjj6Zz/60485575-10216180977410611-7950551606737502208-n.jpg)
If you are substantially lighter, you might go a little farther than this. There is a guy that weighs 155 lbs on the Facebook Zero Motorcycles Owners Group that says his FX gets better mileage than what I get on mine. Most everyone else I talk to says my numbers match theirs and some even say they don't get as much as I'm showing above.
Basically, if you want to make 60 miles, you keep your average speed under 30 mph. If you want to go 80 miles, keep it under 25 mph. If you want to go 100 miles, keep it under 20 mph average. Going over 30 mph average will make it drop fast. Also, keep in mind cold temps reduce these numbers and higher temps increase them a bit.
I did another ride this week where I knew it was going to be a short ride, so I hammered it all the way:
Total Distance: 42.10 mi
Moving Time: 1:06:16
Average Speed: 38.1 mph
Elevation Gain: 1,798 ft
Max speed: 88.1 mph
Avg Air Temp: 81.5F
100% of the charge used.
This is what the speeds of this ride looked like to average out to 38 mph:
(https://i.ibb.co/MMTFj50/Speed.jpg)
You can see at the end of the graph where I was holding it wide open throttle and the bike was just continually slowing down as the charge faded away.
On this last ride, I just went out to have fun and run off the full charge of the battery. At one point you can see on the graph, I ran the bike wide open throttle for a couple of miles (@88 mph) and ran it into thermal protection mode doing so and had to slow down for a while. That ran the charge down a fair bit.
After that, I went into town to run some errands and that's the slower mid section of the ride. But even, after getting the charge in the 30% range, it still had enough to hit ~70 mph on the way home. Once I got sub 10%, I could no longer hit 70 mph. It was 65 mph, then it keeps dropping fast from there. At say 6%, it won't hit 50 mph anymore. By the time I got to my street, I was at 0% and it wouldn't go over 30 mph.
That's a weird thing to get used to with electric bikes. Unlike gas bikes where the performance is consistent to the last drop of gas, the performance of an electric bike deteriorates as the charge goes down. At 100% charge, the front wheel flies up on its own almost as it races up to 80mph. Around 30%, 70 mph becomes the max speed. At 7% charge, I can barely hit 40 mph and limp home. All stuff I wish I would have known prior to buying a Zero and things to factor in on a ride.
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If you can recharge at work, 29 miles might be doable on the FX, otherwise its probably not the bike for the job.
It takes 10-11 hours to recharge from 0%. If you could ride to work, plug it in and let it charge for 8+ hours, then ride it home, I think it could do this as long as you don't need to fly on the highway for very long.
Also, something else to consider, the bike goes into thermal protection mode if you hold it at or above 70 mph for over 2 miles or so. Going into thermal protection mode is NOT fun on the highway as it cuts power drastically. If you can get by holding 65 mph for your longest highway stretch, the FX should be fine. It's got plenty of power to be on the highway, passing power and such, but it just doesn't like holding those higher speeds for very long.
The FX was not designed for and really doesn't like going highway speeds for any length of time. It's a great stop sign to stop sign bike, but its not cut out for long highway miles. The DS/DSR fits that function better, I hear.
I personally just put in an order for a DSR after three months owning the FX. I really like the FX and just the feel of an electric ride, but don't like being limited to 40-60 miles for every single ride. I ordered the DSR with Power Tank which will have 18.0 battery versus the 7.2 on the FX. Granted, that much battery also makes the DSR weight 174 lbs. more than the FX, so its not going to be the light, flickable fun machine that the FX is.
My plan initially is to keep both, but if I can do everything I like to do on the FX on the DSR, then the FX might be up for sale in the fall.
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Nice to know you can still go a ways after it hits 0%. I'm not brave enough, don't feel like pushing the bike home. 😁
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I've found the range estimator to be pretty accurate towards the end of the charge.
Multiple times now, I've gotten to 0% on a ride and then I start watching the range meter like a hawk.
I've rolled into the driveway after 2-3 miles on 0% and the range meter was at .4 miles remaining.
I watch it much more closely than state of charge for estimating miles. So far, it has not led me astray.
Granted I better be on a 30 mph road once it gets under 9% as that's about as fast as its going to go the rest of the way home.
I'm really hoping the DSR+PT extends my riding range a noticeable amount.
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the bike goes into thermal protection mode if you hold it at or above 70 mph for over 2 miles or so.
That may be the case on your old motor in hot weather but it is definitely NOT true for the newer FX with the IPM motor in general. You can sustain 70 on a newer FX until the battery gets too weak.
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I have a 2019 and you are half right.
I went and tested it. I got on the highway and put it in eco mode and held it wide open at 70 miles an hour for several miles. And it didn't overheat. Then I turned around to go back and realize that I had a 20 mile-an-hour Tailwind. As soon as I turned around and did the same thing going the other direction, it overheated in about two to three miles.
I dropped it down to 60 miles an hour and let it cool off. The whole trip was 17 miles and I burned 47% of the charge in that time. I wonder if it could actually make 30 miles at 70 miles an hour or not.
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All good info guys. thanks. Makes me wonder if I should get a ICE motorcycle or scooter. I'm not overly fond of clutches and manual transmissions.
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I think I may have killed my FX in the name of science.
I made that last post at a dinner stop. On the way home, I thought I'd test it going 70 mph again but across the wind so it wouldn't be a head wind or tail wind. I found a road and took off. It took longer this time, but it over heated again. But instead of slowing down, I just held it knowing that if it moved from the first stage of thermal protection to the second stage, it would slow me down anyway, but it never did.
So, I just kept running 70 mph until I hit 28% and then it started slowing me down. 69, 68, 67 mph. At that point, I turned off to go home. Then it got really fun. The charge started dropping really fast. I got down to 0% really quickly, then the bike died while the range meter still showed 1.6 miles left. And the check engine light came on.
I turned it off and let it sit for a couple of minutes, then started it back up again. To my surprise, it moved. So I limped it home at 20 something mph as that is all it would go. Engine light was on all the way home. Rolled into the driveway with 0.3 miles left on range meter and turned it off. Temp on the dash had cooled down to 172F.
I went to plug it in and it would not charge. Here is what it showed on the dash:
(https://i.ibb.co/4NLvG6Q/60856686-536615960201644-6066274747321155584-n.jpg)
Here are the ride stats:
Distance: 34.31 mi
Time: 47:48
Avg Speed: 43.1 mph
Avg Air Temp: 87.8 °F
Max Speed: 71.0 mph
Battery Used: 97% (started with 97%)
This is what the speed profile looked like:
(https://i.ibb.co/yp0L0Y3/Capture.jpg)
34 miles and it was done, really it died the first time at 33mph then limped the last mile, averaging 43 mph.
Hoping it cools down and charges up, I've got a ride in the morning.
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All good info guys. thanks. Makes me wonder if I should get a ICE motorcycle or scooter. I'm not overly fond of clutches and manual transmissions.
Check out the Honda DCT bikes if you haven't already. NC700X, NC750X, Africa Twin, VFR1200X, Gold Wing, etc.
ICE bikes that are automatic, no clutch lever, no shifting, unless you want to. I have three of them.
My Africa Twin is for sale (to partially fund a DSR purchase) if you want it :)
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It finally cooled down enough to start charging. Hoping all is well in the morning.
Moral of the story, don't try to make an FX into a highway bike. It don't like it.
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Check out the Honda DCT bikes if you haven't already. NC700X, NC750X, Africa Twin, VFR1200X, Gold Wing, etc.
Yep, I've been watching the NC700X for a while. So many choices. I like light and nimble, so it's not first on the list, but it's there.
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Yeah, I know what you mean. I was content with my DCT bikes until I made a mistake and went and test rode a Zero... Now I've got the electric affliction. Already bought an FX and selling my once previously beloved DCT Africa Twin to fund the purchase of a second Zero, a DSR + Power Tank.
There are definitely pluses and minuses to both DCT and Zero bikes. The DCT's are heavier, less nimble, more sluggish, less smooth, much louder and hotter when riding them, but they can go for miles and miles as long as there is a gas station and they don't lose power as the fuel drops and they never go into thermal protection mode nor refuse to be refueled because the gas tank got too hot. They both have their compromises.
I personally like long rides in rural areas and the Zeros are not equipped for that. Last weekend, I went and did a 261 mile ride out in the boonies on my DCT VFR1200X. I filled up before I started, stopped once along the way and refilled in 5 minutes, otherwise didn't even look at my gas gauge. With my FX, I'm constantly looking at how much battery I have left and if I need to turn around. Sometimes, that is fun from a challenge perspective, but most of the time its a bother.
I'm looking forward to the day that a Zero can go 300 miles on a charge. Or that recharging stations are everywhere and can be done in 5 minutes. Once that happens, I'll be happy to dump the DCT bikes. Until then, there will always be one (probably the VFR1200X) in the garage.
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Update on the FX, all seems well. It was at 87% charge when I went out and checked it a bit ago.
I'm glad it cooled down and charged up. I need it at 100% this morning as I have a ride with friends in a couple hours.
I'm hoping the DSR+PT will allow me to ride more in the fashion of how I like to ride without going into thermal protection mode so frequently.
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Well this thread has morphed, but it's my thread so I'm allowed.. ;)
I started a new one over here which prompted this calculator thread in the first place. C'mon over!
https://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=9030.0 (https://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=9030.0)