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[TheRan]

Thank you for sharing your perspective.
We are very aware of the certifications and licensing in EU, and yes, in terms of market share, 11kW theoretically would make makes sense.
In terms of the homologation itself I don't want to enter in boring details, with electric powertrains you can even have more then 11kW rated of motor power capability, because it’s not evaluated the motor itself but the ability of the vehicle deliver 11kW of continuous power for a period of time.
Your choice was not very clear to me. Yes 11kW you don't have to have motorcycle license in EU -  like most of the scooters - but putting a 6-10 kW battery would make it harder to compete with other scooters - ICE or EV where 80% of the time is in a city usage. 6-10kW is practically impossible to make it swappable for example, and simultaneously quite hard having a fast charge too (possible but not very feasible with a 11kW PT).
Afterall, you will have a concept that most probable is for a scooter client, with the disadvantage that if you make it in a moto format you will leave some of the female buyers outside and the price will be higher definitely higher then other ICE and EV scooters.
So what i mean is, I understand your perspective, but at the same time, those characteristics is a mixed concept, mostly scooter target, with other notorious advantages, but with a higher price.

You are right that for the majority of commuters 6-10kW/h would be unnecessary. I was thinking more about trying to market the bike, the biggest factor that puts most people off a particular bike is a lack of range, people always want more than they need. While a range of 30-40 miles would be enough for plenty of people they're going to see it on the spec sheet and come up with all sorts of scenarios that it wouldn't be enough even if they rarely or even never happen. People already scoff at the ~60 mile range of a 7.2 Zero.

However you have two areas where you can one up Zero and those are price and if you're using a 300V pack then you can get DC fast charging. The latter would be absolutely massive if you can manage it, I don't know who other than Livewire and Energica who offers that and you would be significantly cheaper than them and even cheaper than Zero. Charging times are also something that puts people off electric bikes, it really doesn't matter for at home but if you can get a full charge in half an hour while out then range becomes much less of an issue. If I want to go say 90 miles on my Zero then I'm stopping half way and waiting probably two hours to charge, I'd much rather stop twice and wait half an hour each time.

[jorgebarbosa]

Yes, that is accurately true for big majority of the new 2wheelers EV buyers. No doubt

We know that is very hard to have it all, big battery, fast charging and reasonable price (performance for an EV it’s easy to achieve).
Instinctively the client will compare it to ICE habits, where he can stop for 5min AT THE PETROL STATION; he will compare to the ICE price too, it’s what most the clients do independently of the product. Just not used to know the advantages of new product because it’s just new etc.

Having a fast charge (assuming 5miles/min) in a 7 to 10kW battery pack it’s very hard not to say impossible nowadays. Or you will ruin the cells very fast or a very expensive pack (if there is a cell for that) not taking into account that you would need to adapt the rest of the E/E components.
I truly believe, if Zero changed some internal policies combining their BOM with more made in Asia, could have fast charge at the same price.

Last year I and my team went very deep in terms of procurement for electric powertrains and we came to conclusion that if you want a mix of those three aspects - price, range and fast charging – you need to have a system that runs near the 300V, a battery size around 15kW of rated capacity so the production cost could be lower – around $8K FOB Asia – it will be possible to charge 60miles under 15min - NOT full charge in half hour - and around 140min if you want to have max battery lifecycle (home or work).
All of these conclusions are from our experience, with an margin of inaccuracy in other aspects of product developing that mutate in time.

PS: I’m sharing the OBC PDF sheet. The manufacturer brand/model is blurred… hope you understand.

[Specter]

One of the reasons you should try to get people to focus on the 20 / 80 when charging on the go on the bike.  You'll never fast full charge the battery it has to go slower to settle in and balance correctly.  Don't suck it all the way dry (not only for the health of the battery but what happens when the station you pull up to is OOC?  This gives you some left to get to another charging place) and charge it as high as it will go on fast, and then get back on the road when it starts tapering for the balance, this is typically around the 80 to 85 percent range.  Your C rate can affect this quite a bit.

Supercaps are hitting the market now and are performing very well.  Expensive though, and heavy too, however not as bad as battery.  A 15kw supercap storage weighs about 250 lbs and at 48 volts, I believe it can deliver 150 - 200 amp continuously.  Other benefits, it is not as temperamental about temperature as chemical storage is, and is claimed to have like a million cycle life with a 30 year normal lifespan.  Lithium cells, 8 years is about the peak before they tend to crap out, heavily / lightly used or whatever.  I want to say it's nanocarbon on plastic basically, so no dangerous chemicals in it.  The price of one of these is about 12k though currently.  Hopefully that comes down as production ramps up and they become more popular.

Aaron

[jorgebarbosa]

In my perspective i don't see the need a full charge the fastest way possible but a very fast for +/- 100km range.
Most of the daily use are even less then that. Hopefully riders will charge it at home most of the times. The fast charge will serve for long trips or unusual situations.

Yes, supercaps can be an alternative, but price wise and weight, not for the next 5 years at least.
At the moment, our quotation for a 15.1kW battery ( without the battery case) with the specs I mentioned before is a bit more than $2.5K ( for a QTY 8K) and I strongly believe that I can get the cost down a bit more.

The goal isn't to built the best e-moto but one that will answer most of the riders requirements, price included. I'm referring to a motorcycle, not moped or similar - those I think are good enough already

Again, a 48V system is hard to fulfill most of the rider needs too, not without long R&D and therefore keeping the price within the reasonable.

Cheers

[Specter]

agreed.  48 volts really is not going to cut it very well for a high performance bike.  For the KW needed, pushing all those amps, needs a lot of copper and that gets expensive and heavy, not to mention amps = heat to get rid of too.

One day we'll be there.  I'll probably be old and creaky and ya'll need to make me an electric trike so I don't fall over

Aaron

[jorgebarbosa]

 

[Motoproponent]

In my experience I would take fast charging, successive fast charging, over a monster battery.14-18 KWH is fine If I can get one DCFC after another....at full charging speed.

Also if there was a way to use AC motors, with less rare earth metals, and use the motor's inverter to charge the batteries. Giving decent 120vac and 240vac charging speeds.

Having a bike that can road trip all over the west (where DCFC charging is plentiful) and still being able to charge in a few hours on J-plugs and Destination chargers in charger deserts would be worth a premium.

to me.

[jorgebarbosa]

yes, i agree with the fast charging vs bat capacity topic.

I think there are bikes that fulfil those demands or at least very close to... the problem is the selling price in my opinion.
The regen power depends quite much of your system configuration and motor "architecture", still nowadays I don't think is bad 

[Richard230]

yes, i agree with the fast charging vs bat capacity topic.

I think there are bikes that fulfil those demands or at least very close to... the problem is the selling price in my opinion.
The regen power depends quite much of your system configuration and motor "architecture", still nowadays I don't think is bad 

Regarding "regen", I have owned electric motorcycles with regen since 2010. Personally, I don't think it does much with regard to recharging the battery pack on a motorcycle due to its light weight. (It seems to work better with heavier vehicles like cars.) In my experience it will add about 1% to 2% (at most) to the battery pack over a typical ride. More in stop and go traffic, less out on the highway.  However, it is very useful when braking and slowing down to save wear on brake pad material (and therefore likely helps the environment a bit by limiting pad debris on the roadway.) So I am in favor of having regen, just not all that excited about it. I might add that manufacturers should cause the brake light to be lit when regen is functioning, which is typically not the case on most electric motorcycles.

[Specter]

A motor and a generator are the same thing, it's just the current flow,  L and R hand rule there.
They are using a VFD basically to turn the DC into AC, so use it to turn the AC back into DC, even pulsed, since it's only charging batteries it does not have to be stupid clean, you can filter off what you need to clean up the 12v for the computer and it's easy to do.

Yes Id love to see a bike that can  do say 8 to 12 KW on 240 vac.  That is  within the range of a Nema 14/50 plug or even 30 amp DC on a nema 30, (although hours of charging would stress the plug before long).

A lot of people go by the 20/80 rule when road tripping.  that's 60 percent battery cap.  so we are talking 12.6 Kw say 13 kw of energy needed.  That is very doable on a nema 14/50 in a bit over an hour, not bad really.  Given you are stopping at 80 percent charge, it would be a full force charge and no balancing taper in there so no time wasted.  I think that would be very acceptable to a lot of folks.   

After seeing the insides of one of the bikes real good at Daytona last weekend, yah unfortunately there really is not enough room in there to pair up a second charger to put even 6kw of AC into the bike.  the charger is umm 15 lbs? and takes up some room under the seat.  But then again, feed it back thru the inverter and let that do the rectifying for you,  the circuitry on the bike right now is designed to take AC, whatever the motor is creating, and turning it into DC to regen, so why not just click a relay and instead of the motor, that input is coming from mains instead?

 Idea for future use, this could also be used to use your battery as an emergency home backup, .. a relay clicks to disconnect the motor, and connect the charging plug instead.  if power is there, then it puts it to the battery, if power is not there, and you could select from software menu, put bike in generator mode, and use the inverter to put 60 (or 50) hz on the plug to run the house, or tools or something.

Without seeing the software, so I can not comment with any real authority, how hard is it to use the inverter that's already there to charge the battery instead of a dedicated charger?  put it in regen mode however your charger is putting the ac in, not the motor.  It's all liquid cooled, put  a small fan on the radiator and you are set.

Aaron

[Specter]

Richard, the Energica DOES light the brake light when regenning.  I believe most of them do, for the reasons one would expect.

Regen, basically, at perfect return, (which is impossible) will put your last acceleration back into the bike.  However much energy you used to get the bike to that speed, will go back into the battery as you slow it back down.  So for marketing, yes it sounds awesome, really SOOper, but in real life, not that useful, unless as you said, you are stop and go a lot.

Not burning brake pads is a good thing, both from the dust aspect, as some still use asbestos, although burnt particles are not really considered frangible particles and won't screw you up as bad as the hooky ones so I am told.  Still though, the maintenance and heat dissipation etc, it'll prolong your equipment.  In theory, one could go full electronic braking Id think, because you CAN set it hard enough to lock your tire if wanted.  Maybe just use pads as  an emergency if the electronic braking fails and at very slow speeds, for like the last few feet of a stop?

Aaron

[Richard230]

I am not sure about the latest Zero models, but the older ones don't seem to activate the brake light when using regen. However, it is true that Zero's regen is so weak that maybe turning on the brake light wouldn't really be of much use to vehicles following you.

[Motoproponent]

I turn my regen off when trying to maximize distance traveled on a charge. In my experience the energy not used by coasting is a greater benefit than the small amount of energy returned by the regen.

Regen is much more valuable as a way to save wear and tear on braking when doing more spirited riding. Saving the actual friction material on the pads as well as limiting the heat the brake fluid is exposed to extends the life of both of those consumable items.

If I were going to make an electric bike I would have the regen controlled by a lever where the gear shift is on an ICE bike. It's pretty intuitive for someone that already has experience on a bike with enging braking that "down shifting" increases engine braking. Just have the regen controlled like engine braking. "1st gear" is Max regen, "5th" or "6th" gear is minimum and "Neutral" is off.

[Specter]

The energica is kind of like that now, you control the amount of regen applied by how much you let off the gas.  If you want to coast, you just tweak off it slightly.  But yes, at very best, the regen will ONLY recapture the energy you spend in your last acceleration.  However many watts you burned to get up to whatever speed you are at, you will recapture on your way back down to zero.  Minus losses etc of course.  I do like the throttle idea though, I think the Chevy Bolt had something like that, a little paddle you could push to control how much braking the car did.  I was told it's a bit odd at first, but once you get used to it, pretty neat.

Aaron

[Motoproponent]

controlling the regen with the throttle on then Energica takes some finesse.

its my personal opinion but having a robust mechanical switch that I can stomp on a few times to ramp up the regen before tipping it into a corner would be fun. And in the world of E-Motos, it would be a unique feature that the moto-press would eat up for a few news cycles. Given that it wouldnt be actually changing gear ratios, you could allow customization in the menu settings. regular or GP pattern, 1N2345, or N12345, or 12345N would all be variables that a user might select to customize their regen profile.

Totally not necessary, probably not even practical, but if I were looking at two machines with similar performance and price.....I would buy the one with the cool thing that reminds me of rowing through the gears on my old ICE bike.