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[zap mc]

thanks for the post!
And they sure aren't trying to push them out the door! They want MSRP for them!

it may be surprising to find a dealer asking MSRP for their products nowadays but dealer margins on Zero products are slim they used to be only 10% and then the customer had to be signed up directly to purchase the bike from the Zero factory rather than the dealership. So the dealer had to wait for their commission. If you put a demo bike on your showroom floor imagine how many bikes you would have to sell just to make the money back for that despite the fact that demo bike were available to dealers at slightly better rates. I have a lot of sympathy for Zero dealers and can understand why they would want full retail for their bikes. However the recent price hike does not help to put them within the customers reach nor compete with the gas powered bikes.

[Richard230]

dkw, etc., regarding your question about running the bike down to the bottom of the pack, that is not something that I plan to do. I hear that Li-ion batteries don't really like that type of treatment and would prefer to be charged up at every opportunity.  I have no idea how accurate each bar on the "fuel" gauge is and I prefer to not push my luck and my level of anxiety while riding in order to find out.  Maybe some day I will discover how deep the well is, but I am not going to do that on purpose. I'll let someone else try that and then I hope to read about it.   

In any case, the maximum mileage you can get out of the pack is so dependent upon your riding style, environmental conditions and the speed, traffic, stop lights, acceleration from a stop, hills, etc. of every trip, all we can do is to generalize about range and battery capacity and hope that our ride will be similar.  This is going to take time and real-world experience to figure out.

[dkw12002]

I don't blame you. I only ran it down the one time cause I wasn't watching, had just bought it and it only had a few bars on it and I ran it hard like any self-respecting sport bike rider would do WOT up a steep hill, then I looked down and saw the flashing gas pump.

I assume the 2012 has a cooling fan too. How do you deal with that when you are finished riding? I just put my kick stand down, hop off the bike, then wait until the fan shuts off before shutting down the bike. I have always done the same thing with radiator fans. Then, since I am home, I wait 20 min or so before plugging in the charger, because I was told not to charge hot batteries. I am guessing about these two things however.

[Richard230]

If my bike has a cooling fan, I have never seen it nor heard it.  There is certainly nothing obvious like on the 2011 models.  When I get home I just plug in the charger and it starts charging with no noise at all.  Without looking at the charging indicators, you can't even tell anything is happening.  It is a very quiet bike.

[oobflyer]

Fluke or Significant Improvement?

Today I rode at a steady 55 MPH for 33 miles and used exactly 6 bars. Extrapolating, as I've been doing:

33 miles/6 bars = 5.5 miles per bar

5.5 miles/bar x 11 bars= 60.5 miles.

This is the first long ride I've done with the windshield - and I appeared to get better range at 55 MPH than I did without the windshield at 45 MPH.

I'll repeat this experiment at other speeds and see what happens.

[Richard230]

Maybe the batteries need some "breaking-in" before they can give their best performance?  I plan to ride to my daughter's home this weekend, a distance of 40 miles, up and over a couple of large hills, with about half of the distance at freeway speeds.  I'll recharge there for a few hours before returning home.  That should give me some real world experience riding as I would my IC motorcycles.  It is going to take a while before I get comfortable with estimating range, as there are a lot of hills where I live and I am constantly going up and down them to get anywhere. That makes estimating range much more difficult for me than if I was riding on level ground.

[dkw12002]

Knowing you can always just slow down if the bars disappear too fast should set your mind at ease. I don't think you will be comfortably able to go 20 miles at 75 mph if it is a 40 mile trip though. 65 mph for 20 miles should be no problem though. Let us know.

[protomech]

20 miles at 65 mph and 20 miles at say 45 mph should use about 2/3 of the pack.. give or take. A few hours charge might get you back up to 2/3 capacity. Sounds like it'll be close.

[Richard230]

I'll let you know.    

[protomech]

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

[paul]

There is no need for concern with running the battery so low that it damages the LiPo cells on a Zero.  The battery management system (BMS) watches each cell's state of charge (SOC) and will cut the pack off when they're getting lower than what's the safe minimum (somewhere around 3.7V)

I believe the fuel gauge self-calibrates and should get more accurate over time for 2012 bikes over the first few charges.  I do not know how many charges or how much improvement will be seen off the top of my head. 

I don't think that there is a 1:1 relationship between each bar and a fraction of pack capacity.

The methods employed for SOC determination aren't exact.  A certain margin of error/uncertainty is unavoidable in all currently viable battery SOC measurement strategies.  It's educated guesstimation based upon power in/out, not direct measurement of the charge in the cells.

[Richard230]

Thanks Paul. That sounds reasonable.   

[Daveruns]

I find this discussion fascinating as I have a 2011 S and am always learning more about the range. I have noticed that on cold days with the temp around 30 degrees, my range drops off markedly. We have had a strange winter and when it warms up, the other day it was 60 degrees and the range went back to what I was getting last summer. Wonder if you notice this difference in your 2012?

Also, there is a problem with the 2011 range indicator related to stopping the bike. I notice that when I stop and turn the bike off for awhile and then turn it back on, I gain two bars. The new reading is wrong and after a few minutes of riding it goes right back to where it should be. This can get you in trouble on trips that are near your range limit. For instance, I rode about 15 miles to attend a meeting and when I arrived, I had half a charge. After the meeting, when I started back, I had two bars above half. Feeling like I had lots of charge, I proceed to open it up and throw caution to the wind. After a couple of minutes, I looked down and I was two bars below half. I backed off and took it slow and managed to limp back home with no bars showing.

In general, I find the range indicator as imprecise and I try not to rely on it too much.

[Rossi46]

I would recommend the 2012 Sport screen over the summer screen, on my 2012 S ZF6 i found it increased top speed by 3-4 MPH and the summer screen did not.

[Richard230]

As near as I can tell, the range indicator on my 2012 Zero S seems to be working well and appears to be accurate.  There is no question that warmer weather will result in a longer range, but our temperature here has been all over the map.  Mornings can be in the 40's and afternoons in the 60's. Not a typical February, for sure.  The only time I rode in near freezing temperatures, I was taking it easy on a deserted road and was worried more about cold hands and wind chill than the bike's performance.   

Today I rode 16 miles on residential roads and some collector streets, keeping my speeds down to about 30 mph. I only ate up one bar of the gauge. On the way back, I took the freeway home traveling at 75 mph for 10 miles and the rest of the way was at 30 mph. On the run up a 6% freeway grade for three miles. I was able to maintain an indicated 81 mph up the hill. By the time I got home, I had used a total of 4 bars on the gauge.  I am convinced that I could go over 100 miles if I rode on flat ground at a speed of 30 mph. But riding on the freeway at high speeds will sap the juice for sure.

I might add that the Zero's performance going up that hill (Highway 1, from I-280 to Highway 35 in Daly City, heading west toward Pacifica and the Ocean), matches that of my 38-hp (at the rear wheel) 1978 Yamaha SR500 (when it was new, I no longer own it).