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[DonTom]

of course

why would the pack voltage change?

Don't know, don't care, at least not until fixed for good.  But did you answer my question or not? Was the battery confirmed to NOT have changed voltage at the higher SOC after the "magic charge" was done?  Very important to know, IMAO.  It is certainly something we should know for sure in such a case and not make such assumptions until the problem is fixed.


I can say exactly the same about the % of SOC as in the exact way you questioned about battery voltage changing.   IOW, why should the SOC % change at a steady 100 VDC when the bike is just sitting? What would be in the FW program to do such? Even if it is a FW issue, why the change only when battery voltage is down low?  We don't know why, do we? Shouldn't happen any more than a battery voltage increase and I have seen that happen on my Zero DS when the battery went bad. So I know it can happen from a bad battery. Battery voltage was low and SOC followed. Range was around a third or less of what it should have been. The fix in my case was a new battery under warranty. I got a 7.2KWH battery for my 6.5 KWH battery that was probably 2 KWH in reality. And what a BIG difference it made when the battery was replaced!


Anyway, with the magic charging issue, something is wrong, that is all we know for sure. When it is 100% fixed without a doubt than we can discuss what was really the cause. Until then, we need facts, not guesswork.


-Don-  Reno, NV

[MVetter]

oh my god

someone else take over i can't

[DonTom]

oh my god

someone else take over i can't

But is that because you do not have enough facts?


-Don-  Reno, NV

[electrictwowheeler]

I can confirm that the pack voltage does not come up more than a half a volt or so which is normal for a battery when the load is removed. I checked the voltage using a serial port adapter and terminal program as is explained in several posts and the unofficial manual. My bike only has about 10% magic charging, meaning that if I ride 90 miles and am at say 5%, if I shut it off and wait for 10 minutes it will be at 15% and the estimated range will go up appropriately. I'm at 21,000 miles. I wonder if it has something to do with how different owners use and charge their bikes. Are there use scenarios that encourage this problem and others that discourage it? Something to think about.
 There are really so many variables. I can't say what the voltage does on bikes with more severe issues.

[DonTom]

I can confirm that the pack voltage does not come up more than a half a volt or so which is normal for a battery when the load is removed. I checked the voltage using a serial port adapter and terminal program as is explained in several posts and the unofficial manual. My bike only has about 10% magic charging, meaning that if I ride 90 miles and am at say 5%, if I shut it off and wait for 10 minutes it will be at 15% and the estimated range will go up appropriately. I'm at 21,000 miles. I wonder if it has something to do with how different owners use and charge their bikes. Are there use scenarios that encourage this problem and others that discourage it? Something to think about.
 There are really so many variables. I can't say what the voltage does on bikes with more severe issues.

I think you're saying the battery voltage after the load is removed slowly creeps up around a half volt. IOW, tested unloaded both times. Yeah, I agree a half volt should not make a 10% SOC difference. But perhaps a two-volt change would.

Whatever the cause, it sure seems strange to me that FW will decide to go out of calibration when the SOC is low, cause the bike to go into limp mode and then take a while for it to recalibrate itself so the bike will run normally again. But for how long? Can it go into the magic charging twice on the same trip?

BTW, when my 2017 SR was new, it had "magic charging" at the high end. I would ride a few miles, be at 97% SOC. Eat in a restaurant, come back to the bike after eating and it would then be 100 SOC and take just as long to drop down to 97% SOC the 2nd time. When the bike had a few thousand miles on it, no more magic charging at all. Back then, I never considered it a problem worth checking into. In fact, I felt like I was getting something for nothing.

But a drop of 10% soc at the low end is a much more serious issue.

-Don-  Reno, NV

[NervEasy]

I can confirm that the pack voltage does not come up more than a half a volt or so which is normal for a battery when the load is removed. I checked the voltage using a serial port adapter and terminal program as is explained in several posts and the unofficial manual. My bike only has about 10% magic charging, meaning that if I ride 90 miles and am at say 5%, if I shut it off and wait for 10 minutes it will be at 15% and the estimated range will go up appropriately. I'm at 21,000 miles. I wonder if it has something to do with how different owners use and charge their bikes. Are there use scenarios that encourage this problem and others that discourage it? Something to think about.
 There are really so many variables. I can't say what the voltage does on bikes with more severe issues.

Can you check with your serial dongle what the lowest cell voltage is while you are charging (several times over let's say 5min).

[Richard230]

Neither my daughter's 2014 S (which has never had its firmware updated since January 2014) nor my 2018 has "magic charging". The SOC stays the same when the bikes are turned off and then turned back on. If the SOC was stable on the Gen 2 models, why are the Gen 3 bikes having this problem? It must be some alteration to the SOC programming that Zero made when developing the Cyber III system and now they can't find the bug. 

[mdemin]

The Cypher 3 firmware is for the dash, not for BMS. The way I see the problem is that they incorrectly calibrate the Ah left with the voltage. I don't know how they do it, but Nissan LEAF for example calibrates the battery as empty when any single cell (corrected for internal resistance) reaches minimum voltage (not empty, just Very Low Battery Warning). Then when you recharge the car to full, the battery recalibrates the state of health.
On ZERO the Very Low Battery warning comes on based on the Coulomb counter (AH, SOC) which is stupid, since the computer should clearly see that the battery still has capacity left based on the voltage reading. The BMS is only slowly increasing the SOC variable because the voltage is too high for the calculated SOC variable.
People are recalibrating the capacity on ZERO by running the bike to total empty until you get Battery Depleted Error and then charging as slowly as possible to full. I guess they should work on the algorithm to recalibrate more often. If the system encounters the phantom charging, it should increase the battery reported capacity so it does not happen next time.

[electrictwowheeler]

The magic charging can happen every time you stop and shut off the bike for a while. The farther and harder I ride the more the magic charging is. At 20 miles it might not happen but at 50 miles it will be a few % and if I ride it to very low it will be the most. I have noticed that the more I let the magic charging happen the time to full estimate when charging will be off more. If I charge to 100%, then ride 70 miles and stop somewhere to charge, the time estimate will be accurate if I plug in immediately. But if I shut the bike off and wait 10 minutes and turn it back on and see the soc go up and then plug in, the bike will reach 100% indicated before it should. Best to not let magic charging happen and just plug in immediately.

Nevereasy. Yes I can check the lowest cell voltage while charging but you only get a snap shot of the information so you have to send the command each time you want to see the most recent data. I actually watched it charge to a 70 % charge target last night. The lowest cell voltage tracks perfectly with the pack voltage. I can divide the pack voltage by 28 and compare it to the lowest cell v and it is only a few mv different. The battery appears to be fine.

What has changed with the new bikes? That is a good question. Well, the most obvious change is that Zero has put the same 14.4 battery in a larger, heavier, more powerful bike with much faster charging capability. The FST bikes should have had  bigger batteries don't you think? It will be interesting to see  how the new bikes with the larger batteries fare.

[Tony]

Not sure if it is helpful, but before the MC thing happened again, I did a full range check, going from 100-0%, just to record just how much range the batteries could physically produce. Because I was suspicious whether the MC problem was truly resolved (it used to tell me max 80km), or if the software just believed it was resolved, and somehow in the end would give me rubbish range when pushed beyond a broken batterys limit.

However, I ended up with a healthy 212km range, which indicates the battery did its job well.

But, right after this experiment, the MC came right back following charging the bike all the way from 0 to 100%. Perhaps the BMS got confused due to the fully drained battery and went insane again, after it was temporarily sane after a BMS reset due to the recent service? This is one theory I have seen. However, this is contradicted by people saying this issue was permanently fixed for them after replacing the battery.

A lot of guesswork here, anyway I tried to have it serviced to cure this issue, didnt work. I need a fully working bike and not a puzzle, so probably will be forced to selling it. I have no clue what to do now, I doubt the engineers at my service spot suddenly can figure it out when they already thoroughly tested everything to their knowledges limit before.

The drain post is here btw:

https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=12104.0

[MVetter]

People are recalibrating the capacity on ZERO by running the bike to total empty until you get Battery Depleted Error and then charging as slowly as possible to full. I guess they should work on the algorithm to recalibrate more often. If the system encounters the phantom charging, it should increase the battery reported capacity so it does not happen next time.

This was proven to not actually do anything at all. Hans had to admit it later as well.

[DonTom]

"However, this is contradicted by people saying this issue was permanently fixed for them after replacing the battery."

That was the case with my Zero DS. When the battery had obvious issues, such as one third the range, three times as fast to charge to full, etc, seemingly MUCH better regen,  it had magic charging big time. I could watch the SOC % slowly increase as the bike was sitting stopped with the key on.

After the battery was replaced in warranty (the 6.5 KWH replaced with a 7.2 KWH battery) there was no trace of any magic charging ever again.

Makes me wonder if the problem is they have many bad battery packs. Do all the new 3rd gens have this "magic charging" issue are only some?

But if the voltage only increases a half volt, perhaps not the battery. Very weird problem. But if it's so common, I would think the Zero tech engineers would have figured it out by now.

-Don-  Reno, NV

[MVetter]

jesus Don reformat your computer already

[DonTom]

jesus Don reformat your computer already

I swear that one changed after I posted it! Anyway, it's now readable. At least until it changes again.


-Don-  Reno, NV

[electrictwowheeler]

Not sure if it is helpful, but before the MC thing happened again, I did a full range check, going from 100-0%, just to record just how much range the batteries could physically produce. Because I was suspicious whether the MC problem was truly resolved (it used to tell me max 80km), or if the software just believed it was resolved, and somehow in the end would give me rubbish range when pushed beyond a broken batterys limit.

However, I ended up with a healthy 212km range, which indicates the battery did its job well.

But, right after this experiment, the MC came right back following charging the bike all the way from 0 to 100%. Perhaps the BMS got confused due to the fully drained battery and went insane again, after it was temporarily sane after a BMS reset due to the recent service? This is one theory I have seen. However, this is contradicted by people saying this issue was permanently fixed for them after replacing the battery.

A lot of guesswork here, anyway I tried to have it serviced to cure this issue, didnt work. I need a fully working bike and not a puzzle, so probably will be forced to selling it. I have no clue what to do now, I doubt the engineers at my service spot suddenly can figure it out when they already thoroughly tested everything to their knowledges limit before.

The drain post is here btw:

https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=12104.0

When you say the magic charging came back do you mean that you were only showing 80 km estimated range again after you charged it to 100% ? Did you charge till the charger shut off on it's own or did you stop the charge when it reached 100% on the dash?
I'm a little confused about your range test. If you rode a bike with severe magic charging like the one in Morgan's video on a bunch of short rides over the space of two weeks with periods of sitting in between wouldn't the soc just recalculate each time you parked it? When you did the test did the soc go up at all between rides?  If it showed 50% soc when you shut it off did it still read 50% a day later when you turned it on?