Dangerous Z20A and B and R20

"Hubert to blame the Chinese is an overreaction..."

Anyone saying that is in a state of denial.

The Z20 experience is an EXACT replay of the e-max debacle. Just replace the Piruna brothers with Tomas Gruber and a Greek guy - forgot his name (the e-max was fraudulently promoted as a German product); and Mr. Hubert with Larry Maltz in Austin Texas.

Chinese manufacturers have no philosophy of quality or customer service. It's throw it together, get the payment for the order, throw the container over the rail of the ship, and congratulate themselves. I'm fully expecting to hear in the news soon of a shipment of Chinese goods which don't work and when opened up only contain a mixture of sawdust and toxic waste inside them.

I don't know if this situation arises from a Chinese government policy that encourages it, or China is passing through it's own robber-baron era, like Upton Sinclair or John Steinbeck chronicled.

Japan in the 1950's and 1960, also had a reputation for shoddy goods too. That sure changed, maybe China will too.

TALKING here many times,both E-max and EVTA spent their life in China and control the chinese manufacturer completely include part purchasing and workman craft in order to get cheapest scooters from China.

It is nothing to do with chinese quality !

I have to agree with mountain chen. There are many companies with manufacturing processes in china that have good quality product output. One of them is B&B batteries. Black and Decker is another good example. Briggs and Stratton had the etek motor manufactured in China to lower cost, and the quality is fair.

For that matter, Chinese manufacturing is the reason for affordable Neodymium magnets, and many other products.

If you want to make it cheap at bottom dollar, than China is a great place to set up a manufacturing process. One could also set up a process in the USA to turn out garbage, and I'm sure Americans would happily work there. But, it would cost much more then to have the Chinese turn out garbage.

And ultimately who's at fault? I thought of placing a pre-order for the EVTA Z20. But, I had to stop myself because of simple reasoning. I probably spend too much time researching simple products, and I would feel pretty stupid if I gave money away for a scooter that I've never seen or heard about, to a company that hasn't demonstrated any kind of reputation, from someone I don't know thousands of miles away. All for a promise. And, I'm really glad I didn't.

A major event that happened to delay the release of the bike and rush it to market was a decision to switch from a brushed hub motor to a brushless hub motor. After so much bad press about accumulated brake dust and motors burning out in less than 10,000 miles for the EVT-4000e and EVT-168, a decision was made not to use virtually the same brushed motor. I personally emailed EVTamerica several times concerning this issue. I even asked if they would have a plan and system setup to fix the totally sealed brushless motors when they would inevitably fail prematurely. I got no direct response but several weeks later I noticed that they had changed the Z20 from a 48V brushed setup to a 60V brushless design. This change no doubt threw out original testing and required a significant change in design and sourcing of drive train parts. They did this on a shortened time line since people had been waiting patiently for a couple of years thinking they would definitely get a good product. It is ashamed that for whatever reason or excuse this did not happen. It is ironic and tragic that now the bikes are failing much sooner than the sealed brushed hub motors would have (controller, throttles, wiring problems etc.) even though EVTamerica/Pruna probably had the best intentions. Here is a recommendation for all electric scooter manufacturers. Please do not release immature products made with marginal components that have not undergone extensive real world testing. Furthermore a thorough quality control process should be implemented during the assembly followed by complete inspection prior to a product leaving the factory in a very secure and sturdy shipping package. All products should stock spare parts (especially proprietary parts like controllers, switches, lights, brake pads, etc.) immediately available to send to dealers and consumers in the event of a problem. Maybe this is too much to ask, but it is the expectation of most people in America when it comes to serious vehicular transportation.

>>>both E-max and EVTA spent their life in China<<<<

No they did not. The moment you turn around and stop your own quality control in China, things get really bad, so bad, that people's life are at risk who buy this kind of product. That's what Mr Gruebel did. The EVTA guys are not as well prepared as he was, it seems.

Let's face reality, the chinese craftsmanship reputation is one of the worst in the world!
Numbers and sales should not be your highest priority - the industrial revolution has taught everybody else.
The first brutal recalls on chinese cars will confirm this. Wait and see.

If you try to return anything you buy in China, they laugh at you or think you're crazy - not here in the US.
Recall - what a concept! Big learning lessons at the horizon.

My 10 cents

"Hubert to blame the Chinese is an overreaction..."

Anyone saying that is in a state of denial.

PJD - I'm saying it and I'm NOT in denial. You certainly know a lot about electric scooters but it appears not a whole lot about simple economics. If an American, British, Greek, Italian, German or freakin' Martian businessman goes to China and says "I want to pay bottom dollar for you to produce me an electric scooter" they will get a great price - and quality will reflect the businessman's obsession with price. Quit blaming the Chinese for cutting the corners that the US businessman asks to be cut so that he can make a quick sale and a bigger profit. You continue to blame the wrong "villains". Vectrix presumably pays premium wages to their workers and there are complaints with that bike too.

Yes, I know I sell X-Treme. Yes, I know they have the lowest price point in the market. At present though they actually have one of the better reliability track records for this class of bike. Just look at the data. Or continue to go around and stereotype and make decisions based on emotions. It's your choice. As an engineer I thought you'd rather look at the data (and that doesn't include extrapolating from a dozen cases spread over three or four different manufacturers to an entire class of bikes from an entire continent).

BTW, by your same yard stick all American's are obese, chain smoke, are unfit, war mongering, racist, xenophobic and have a sense of entitlement to boot. Does that describe you? It sure as heck doesn't describe me...

Delusional indeed! Humphh! ;)

I also had a technical problem with 32 (real) miles. It looks like it was a controller issue. As I live in Miami the repair was done very quickly by Andy. I reached today 130 (real) miles with no further issues. My daily commute is 13 miles and requires 1.22 kWh to recharge. I was selling the Z-20 because I had issues to license it here in Miami. Now that I've solved that issue I've removed the ad from Austinev. Top speed (real w/ GPS) is 40 MPH.
I had serious discussions with Fernando because of the licensing issue. You have to be very patient but at the end you will have a fair electric scooter for your short trips.

Some dishonest Chinese suppliers present very good samples of their products so you close the deal. When the fisrt batch arrives it's a nightmare. Sometimes only 30% or less of the batch can be used. I've heard many stories like this one before. I suspect that was EVT's main problem.

Alex

Andrew replied to Proton, (Andy of Falcon EV in Florida)...
You mention that you are the "representative manufacturing agent of NOVA Scooters": Re: Fastest Z20-A in the WORLD

There is absolutely no connection, association between the companies NOVA Scooters LLC or Falcon EV, nor any of the individuals of those firms.

Let me say one more time to clarify, there is absolutely NO agreements or relationships between theese two companies, now, or in the past, never.

NOVA Scooters LLC does not use Falcon EV nor any of their employees or principals as manufacturing agents or in any other capacity whatsoever, the two companies have ZERO relationship and have never had any conversations or considerations in the past to that or any other end.

I think to be even more clear, we have NO RELATIONSHIP AT ALL to Falcon EV or any of its employees or owners.

I hope this clears this up once and for all.

So what you are saying is there is no connection between NOVA Scooters and Falcon EV.

Did we all get it?

Just joking,
Chas S.

So, this begs the question:

Proton - what did you mean when you made that post claiming to be NOVA's representative manufacturing agent?

We're all curious.

-----

edit: Never mind - it looks like that post has been removed.

180 bucks ? for three bikes ?
You could have gotten new stronger parts from China for 40 bucks.

You should email us, we have the parts for those bikes that make them work and it wont break your bank. We have three EVT bikes here now that we are repalcing motor controllers on and another on the way from New York at the end of the month.

We have also inquired to two others on the west coast to see if they can place our fixes on the bikes for reasonable fees so those in that side of the country can get them running without shipping them across the US.

Haven't seen any stand folding up though, thats a new one.