Current Motor Company

John,

I picked up my C124 from the shop yesterday and got it back home. This morning, I was dismayed to find that, when charging completed (cell volts 3.60 to 3.66). I found the "fuel gauge" was reading at the 3/4 point, and sure enough, the SOC is shjowing only 75%. Another thing, I'm not sure this matters, but the BMS's reported pack voltage is about one volt below the voltage indicated on a couple different reliable voltmeters.

For my, and other owners benefits can you provide information on ho to rset/recalibrate the SOC gauge? Thanks.

...

Here's some more manufacturer (biased?) data for you. We've been working on performance and heat management (not efficiency yet). We now have a C130 setup that allows me (5'7"/155lbs) to cruise on the local freeway (the I-94). The following data shows a run I did (my regular commute) - it has a peak (very brief!) at 79mph (I've broken 80mph once). Basically flat terrain.

Peak Speed: 79.31 mph
Avg. Speed: 38.78 mph
Distance: 13.90 miles
Efficiency: 147.70 Wh/mile

For those interested:

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/foxe_reports/ann-arbor-company-building-electric-bikes-20110808-wpms

One of the disappointments in promoting electric motor scooters since 2005 has been how (in the US anyway) few even are able to notice or care(?) that it is electric. Few notice its its quiet operation (or in the case of Current's bikes - a cool whine resembling the batmobile in the old batman TV series), lack of a tailpipe, and obnoxious odors. This seems to indicate some unfortunate things about the literacy of so many in technical matters or if a matter of caring, environmental apathy, which is really noticeable lately.

Some thoughts on my early experience as a Test Pilot:

David posted this in another thread:

If you just want to log the diag. stream, checkout this little unit, plug it into the BCU, and you will get a log on a microSD card that you can read from your computer later.

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9530

I wanted to call it out in its own thread for a couple of reasons:

I love my C124. One of the great things about it compared to my xm-3000 is that it comes with a built-in on-board charger. The plug for the charger is located under a door on the battery mound on the floor. To charge my xm-3000, I kept 5 small charging bricks under the seat that I connected to the 5 lead acid batteries. That worked fairly well except that I had a problem with the chargers burning out which could leave me with stranded at work with one uncharged battery.

The police set up a radar sign near my house so I took advantage of the opportunity to compare the speedometer on my C124s with my measured radar speed. The road has a 30mph speed limit and goes past the police station so I didn't want go too fast but I was able to drive by the sign at 30, 35, 40 and 45 mph. My speedometer seemed to consistently read 2 mph over the the radar reading. I then drove my car past the radar at 30mph for a comparison and both my car speedometer and the radar sign read 30mph.

Just thought I would post up a quick message about my bike. I love it. I decided I really wanted a digital dashboard so I built one. I've included the link to all the photos as the project "grew". I started just trying to do a 7 segment display with 4 numbers (first two would be charge, second two would be speed). Turns out the 7segments I had weren't very sunlight visible... that is to say, not at all visible. :) So I tweawked some more, learned some more, and the project grew bigger.. and finally turned into a LCD display.