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[protomech]

$200 labor per hour? Did they hire four burly men to hold up the bike while a skilled technician worked on it?

[kcoplan]

Bdavis -- you might check out your state's lemon law and see if it applies to motorcycles.  In some states, if your new vehicle is out of commission for thirty days during the warranty period, they have to refund your purchase price or give you a new vehicle.

Good luck with getting the problem resolved!

[Richard230]

$200 labor per hour? Did they hire four burly men to hold up the bike while a skilled technician worked on it?

That is the result of the "flat rate" service billing system around here.  They charge a flat rate for each type of service performed, even if it only takes half the time to actually do the work.  Great for the shop and the technician's income, not so great for the customer.  As near as I can tell, all of the retail dealers play the same game.

I used to know a BMW motorcycle technician, who has since moved out of the state to another shop.  During the mid-2000 heydays of big M/C sales, he told me that with the flat-rate system and working 6 days a week, he was making over $100K a year. That was at a labor rate of $100, which was split between him and the shop.  I think the split was something like 60% for the shop and 40% for the technician.  Published labor rates are $100 an hour for the Japanese brand shops and more than that for BMW shops in the Bay Area, but with the flat-rate system, actual hourly labor rates are hard to figure out.

I just read in City Bike that my Zero dealer is now the only Japanese motorcycle dealer in the San Francisco area, since the San Francisco Honda/Suzuki/Kawasaki dealer closed.  They just took on the Suzuki brand and now have all of the major Japanese brands, including Zero.  The article said that their business has increased 50% since the SF dealer closed.  Their service department must really be busy, especially as the working area is not much larger than my garage.  I have a feeling that it is going to take quite a while to get an appointment to have the "glitch" recall performed when that finally occurs.  In the meantime, I am happy that electric motorcycles don't need $600 servicing - which was sort of the point of my post.   

[Bdavis]

Yep, lemon law here is 30 days out or needing them same repair 3 times within the first year. I have owned the bike 2 months. A week of it in the shop with no contact.

[Bdavis]

I would call or write Richard Kenton (Zero service manager directly)  richard@zeromotorcycles.com.

Thank you for the tip.  I did contact Richard and he seems to not only be on top of this, but keeping me the loop on what is going on.  It sounds like after all of the excuses they finally started to work on it. First they said it was the bms that needed to be sealed. Water getting to it could cause the cut out. I never road in the rain. Condensation is a possibility, but living in the las Vegas desert, I wouldn't count on that. After I pointed that out Richard said they are going to keep it longer to,run more tests and maybe have to replace the motor.

 Richard did tell me that to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else they are contacting all of their dealers and sending out the equipment they need if they do not have it already.

[protomech]

Glad to hear you're at least getting updates now.

[Bdavis]

I got the call yesterday from the dealership that they were finished with the repair and I could pick it up. According to the paper work the only thing they did was the facotry recall repair.  The only reason it was not done before was because the dealership was waiting on the parts. 
  I was able to ride it about 3 miles from the dealership to my work with no problems.  After work I made it home with out a glitch.  Hopefully that was all they needed to do.