Has anybody any new information about the z-20?

I just talked to Fernando.
He is in the hospital - hence the delay in a call back.

He told me that all orders that have not shipped yet will
be in the next 10 days. There are no other outstanding
orders. Every current order will be completed by then.

FYI

Dwrath, have you got your bike yet? Did you get official information from Schneker?

Has anyone received word from Schneker?

Word.

I received this email from Schenker today after inquiring about which port container shipment arrives.

Good afternoon,

The scooters will be entering the port in Tacoma, Washington. The transit Time from China to Tacoma is approximately 14 days.

Kind Regards,

Schenker Inc. - Seattle
835 South 192nd Street, Suite 900
SeaTac, WA 98148

Just got the same thing. Here's the full version:

---------------
Good afternoon.

Scooters are currently being loaded at the factory and there is one vessel
currently on the water. Once your scooter is confirmed on board of a
vessel, we will be able to give you a ballpark delivery at that time.

Once you are notified, the following days are applicable.

China to Tacoma = 14 calendar days
Customs Clearance = 2-3 business days
Shipment to customer = 7 days

Total approximate days from China to door = 24 days

Kind Regards,

Schenker Inc. - Seattle
835 South 192nd Street, Suite 900
SeaTac, WA 98148

Hey DonCristobal,

No, no scooter yet, just this email from Fernando today:

WE ARE PLEASED TO NOTIFY YOU THAT YOUR MOTORCYCLE HAS BEEN SHIPPED.

In a few days it will arrive at the Schenker Depot in Sumner, Washington, USA from where it will be sent directly to you by truck with a lift gate.

Your updated Invoice-Statement is attached. Please review it.

IF YOU HAVE ANY PENDING BALANCE IT IS NOW DUE. If so please make your check payable to EVTAMERICA and mail to address provided in your Invoice.

If your balance has not been settled when your motorcycle arrives at the Schenker Depot, it will be held there until any pending balance is paid in full to EVTAMERICA. Storage charges may apply.

Once again check carefully the shipping address to be sure that we have it right.

If necessary, Schenker can provide you with more detailed shipping information. If you need to make changes to your shipping arrangements please contact Nancy Storrs by writing to evtamerica [at] schenker.com

Thank you,

Fernando Pruna
EVT AMERICA
T: 305-480-6007

Hope to have it soon :)

DWrath

Just got this from the shipper after requesting status...

Good afternoon,

I do not have your scooter information yet. However, I do know that they have just loaded another container yesterday and I should be receiving that information shortly.

Kind Regards,

Schenker Inc. - Seattle
835 South 192nd Street, Suite 900
SeaTac, WA 98148

FYI

Hi all,

I send an inquiry to Schenker and this is their reply:

Good afternoon,

The scooters are set to arrive in our Sumner warehouse on the 19th. Your scooter is set to leave the warehouse on the 20th. Typical transit time would be 7 days from pickup, however due to the holiday, it may be a couple of days past the 27th before it reaches you. You will be contacted by the trucking company for a delivery appointment.

Kind Regards,

Schenker Inc. - Seattle
835 South 192nd Street, Suite 900
SeaTac , WA 98148

Also for all Z owners:

The Z20 comes with a BattEq battery equalizer, as was announced in an earlier e-mail:

"We have now incorporated a battery equalizer, which is also potted (moisture proof) and will keep all the batteries, while charging and discharging, in perfect equilibrium. The importance of this feature is immense, as an unbalanced battery pack results in a shortened life span for the batteries as well as a less efficient power pack. The equalizer also has an LED light (one per battery) that indicates whether any battery or cell within the battery is malfunctioning showing which one it is that is bad, thereby allowing you to replace the battery and not have to replace the entire group or all four batteries. This equalizer is made in the USA developed by US engineers."

The message includes a picture of the BattEq LA-50 12V-4.

What e-mail is this? I do not have any information on this nor do I see anything about it on the website. I do see something about the alarm system which wasn't included when I sent my deposit...

The current E-Bike business model as it stands will always fail and here is why:

1. To-date, nobody with the money that could make a difference cares about why electric is better and why we need alternative energy.

2. Chinese people making these bikes care about one thing: Living like us. They want to sell lots of these so they can buy lots of material crap, eg. new hummer, cadilac, toll brothers cardboard mansion and a big mac everyday, etc. They have to mark these up so they make at least 1k per bike or it's not worth it to them. I don't understand why we should expect people from another culture on the opposite side of the planet to know what we consider "quality." These people don't understand that. They understand "money" = "food on the plate" = "survival." That's it. How could we possibly expect them to make an E-bike that actually works for commuting?

3. Go to the local library or college, even university and try and find a book that explains battery technology that is newer than 30 years old. On top of that find a person who really knows batteries and will take the time to actually cycle life test them. We have an IT expert, businessman, plumber, electrician, application developer, on every corner and the professions that matter the most are virtually extinct, eg. plasma physics, fusion research, nuclear research, advanced chemists etc. Case and point: You can't learn anything about these things because the knowlege is not there or you have to be a millionaire or live in mass or california to learn the skills.

4. Gasoline, despite rising costs, is still one of the cheapest liquids you can buy, period.

Here is what you can do:

After you get your bike and your batteries fail after 20 or so deep cycles, you will be part of our club and we will all sing "for he's a jolly good fellow." to you. Then you can do one of a few things:

Pray al queda launches a precision attack on the Ghawar oil field and is successful and legislation is passed so chevron has to cough up the rights to the only known tested battery to work in EV's and allow everyone to manufacture them without restriction. That's assuming the people that make our laws get smart over night. That will never happen. Nobody will get alternative energy until you have a life threatning problem.

Or you could rip apart your bike and remove the batteries, get an idea how much space you have for storage. Make an account at mouser or digi-key and order 800 dollars worth of nimh size c or d cells. That's after you have load and cycle life tested a few of the cells without incident. A 48AH pack built from C cells will run you less than 1k. The devices listed above for balancing and measurement couldn't hurt either. You'd also want to make sure the bike shuts off when the pack has reached 50 percent DOD to enhance life cycle. This will probably only give you about a 20 mile range or so roughly going about 35 mph when you commute.

Or you could just forget about all this and get married, make babies and let them figure all this out for you.

Kind of scary huh?

When I'm done cell testing, and the weather warms a bit, I will have the mod done to my Kasea ZE-2000 and I will be providing the data on a daily basis since I originally bought this bike to commute 16 miles to work one way. I know that a good quality bike can be made without major battery problems, it just takes time and major tlc.

In response to Bruce_Wayne:

The current E-Bike business model as it stands will always fail and here is why:

http://www.egovehicles.com/ seems to be doing ok.

1. To-date, nobody with the money that could make a difference cares about why electric is better and why we need alternative energy.

What about Tesla Motors? That business venture wasn't cheap. What about the Vectrix? Also not cheap.

Why don't you do some research into electric vehicle history. Ever since EVs declined 100 yrs ago its been one miserable failure after another to develop a BEV (battery electric vehicle) for personal transportation on road. So no, electric is not "better", and money doesn't guarantee success for electric vehicles to "make a difference."

What about alternative energy generation? I subscribe to service PNM has set up in New Mexico to buy wind energy from a wind generation site. I buy 90% wind energy for a few more bucks each bill. The generation site wasn't cheap: http://www.pnm.com/systems/nmwec.htm

FPL Energy built the generation site. They list their cost as $1.5-2 million/megawatt of generation capacity. At 200 mega watts output thats $300 to $400 million or almost a half a billion dollars for the site in NM if the numbers are correct.

FPL Energy generates more than 4,000 net megawatts nationwide, so thats $6-8 billion dollars in setting up those sites. Someone's got some money to develop alternative energy.

From FPL's site:

Another financial incentive in developing wind energy facilities is the federal Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC). The PTC was first enacted in 1994 and dramatically changed the economics of wind production through a tax incentive to develop and operate wind generation facilities.It provides a substantial economimc benefit that lowers the cost of wind energy for the customer. The PTC has dramatically changed the landscape of the wind genreation business in the U.S. and helps promote a sensible energy policy that wisely encourages diversification of energy sources.

So it seems the US government is helping.

2. Chinese people making these bikes care about one thing: Living like us. They want to sell lots of these so they can buy lots of material crap, eg. new hummer, cadilac, toll brothers cardboard mansion and a big mac everyday, etc. They have to mark these up so they make at least 1k per bike or it's not worth it to them. I don't understand why we should expect people from another culture on the opposite side of the planet to know what we consider "quality." These people don't understand that. They understand "money" = "food on the plate" = "survival." That's it. How could we possibly expect them to make an E-bike that actually works for commuting?

Hmm, maybe because they already have. And they make ebikes to use for themselves. They are way beyond the US or any other country in BEV use to my knowledge using a lot of electric bicycles for personal transportation. And they happen to make a lot of other things that work too, like who made the shoes you are wearing now? It so happens that they do know how to manufacture stuff, and it does work much of the time.

Pray al queda launches a precision attack on the Ghawar oil field and is successful and legislation is passed so chevron has to cough up the rights to the only known tested battery to work in EV's and allow everyone to manufacture them without restriction. That's assuming the people that make our laws get smart over night. That will never happen.

"Only known tested battery to work in EV's." And what might that miracle battery be? Nimh? Please. NiMh is becoming less attractive as we speak; LiFePo4 is the battery technology to look out for. Aside from that, lead-acid are the most proven EV battery.

Or you could rip apart your bike and remove the batteries, get an idea how much space you have for storage. Make an account at mouser or digi-key and order 800 dollars worth of nimh size c or d cells.

Or you could keep riding because your batteries haven't failed after 20 cycles.

Or you could just forget about all this and get married, make babies and let them figure all this out for you.

Yea, great idea. Why do we hate our next generation so much?

Kind of scary huh?

I'm shaking! NOT.

Andrew, it seems to me too much time is spent speculating about new batteries that haven't been tested by anyone here. Life batts are a perfect example. I refuse to cheer on new batteries unless they are affordable, and if they aren't, I at least get an explanation as to why they aren't, so far neither of the companies you mentioned are giving one.

Tesla is turning out unfortunately to be an endeavor to cater to rich clowns with 30 cars in their garage already. It's 2008, remember Gm's promise to deliver fuel cell vehicle's by 2010?
Where are they? And tesla's promise to deliver the roadsters a year ago? They've had years now to test the cars. I'll make a prediction here about the tesla battery and guess that is probably the real reason why they have delayed the release by another year.

Anyone can build an electric car. In order to make it successful you have to be creative. You can hire grad students from cal-tech all day long and if they don't possess any creativity you can forget about the car going anywhere. Not showing the public data on the cycle life test's they supposedly did on their patented ESS is a huge screw up. Funny how this same problem pops its ugly head in the software industry as well.

Open processes are why things succeed and meet the needs of the masses. If you wan't proprietary Microsoft, Cobasys, type business models, you will never see another affordable electric vehicle on the road ever. Money and greed halt progress. The open source model for software development is a perfect example. Nobody knows anything about that because they automatically think that because someone created something for "free" it has no value. Little do they know most of the internet main functions are GPL'd software, and from my experience proprietary software has proven time and time again to be mediocre at best. That is exactly why the internet has been so successful and managed to progress more than any other thing in history in the 13 years since it became mainstream.

No matter what way you look at it. This system was designed to benefit a few and enslave the rest in one way or the other using money as the tool to do it.

Where are the fine grained detailed specs on nimh battery chemistry? Oh yeah, chevron has them bottled up so only rich morons in suites who don't know what they mean can drool over them. Where are the detailed engineering specs for processing nano-phosphate lithium ion batteries? Once again bottled up by a few people so that nobody else could look at them and say, hey I've got an idea that will reduce the cost to make them.

Just imagine if einstein would have patented and sold his his E=mc2 equation to some rich clown and not told anyone what it meant. How would we have ever put it to use? Since 1930 scientific progress has been very limited to everything with the exception of computers. Everything else has gone nowhere because of the closed, give no information about discovery, business model. It shouldn't be a big surprise one of the greatest scientific contributors who ever lived dropped out of the system at mid-age.

I could go on and write a book about why the open-info business model is better. But everyone's too interested in making money to ever consider any of it. As far as being lectured by anyone here about our great capitalist system, it all sounds to me like the ferengi rules of aquisition.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisition

Apologies for this short thread hijack.....
"I'll make a prediction here about the tesla battery and guess that is probably the real reason why they have delayed the release by another year."
Tesla has completed it's "Production unit #1". The problem they are having is all about the transmission. The batteries are fine. http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/12/13/tesla-roadster-production-unit-1-completed-future-models-may/
Lithium ion is the way to go in the future. Cars, scooters, etc... Even usatracy, I believe, is planning on getting lithium ion sometime this Spring. And by the sounds of all this agm breaking-in, equalizing bank charging business it is the wise decision.

Nice quotes usatracy. I'm betting they came from a pretty cool individual ;-)

My impressions and feelings on EVT America haven't changed all that much, the real difference is that my paitence has been exhausted. Also, I am in agreement with you about the Efun trumping the technology on the Z-20.

If I had to place a bet I would bet against the Z-20, although the results still aren't in. We all knew that it was an amateurish endeavor upfront, but the hope was that they had, from an engineering perspective, put together a pretty cool bike.

We'll see.

P.S. USAtracy, I am really hoping that the XM-2000 turns out to be a bigger POC than the Z-20 just so I can tell YOU that I told you so. However, I think I told you where I am placing my bet.

Has anyone gotten their scooter yet ?
Mine won't be here till mid Jan

I found a connector set that may be more reliable in the
long haul than Molex connectors for bank charging.

This connector has a steel housing for a better grip
and a built-in cable clamp.

The connector is military surplus and high quality (amphenol).
The receiving end can be built into the side of the scooter.

Anyway, check out this link...

https://www.electronicsurplus.com/commerce/catalog/product.jsp?product_id=66908&czuid=1198125907720

I ordered one even though I already made the Molex connectors.

I received this email on 12/21:

Good afternoon.

Your scooter left the Sumner, WA facility this afternoon and is now in the
hands of the trucking company.

I do not have a firm date of when they will be contacting you, but my guess
would be somewhere between 12/26 & 12/31.

Kind Regards,

Nancy Storrs
Schenker Inc. - Seattle

So hopefully this week

Merry Christmas all

I have been testing the Vector 2/4/6 chargers.
Sometimes the fault light flashes and sometimes
it is on solid.

I see that it is on solid when there is no battery connected.
But what does it mean when it flashes after charging for a while ?

The documentation is not the greatest.

Ideas anyone...

Thanks

I just got word from my wife that my Z20 just arrived at the house. I will post pics and info in a new forum post once I get home and unpack it.

sweet. congrats.

This is good news to all who have been waiting all these long months (years for some). Please do post one or two pictures soon (more if time permits) as I am eager to see that the bikes actually do exists outside of EVTA posts.

Thanks!

First impressions and soon pics on this new thread.

http://visforvoltage.org/forum/2576-evt-z20-arrived-pics-and-impressions

I have a shipping notice as of 8:31 pm, so, the wheel is in motion. I'll post pics of the bright red R-20 when it get's here.
There is a school a few miles from my house that has a "children crossing" sign and a "you are going this speed" sign next to it that tells you how fast you are going. I know it is not as accurate as measuring the lengths of white stripes on a bridge in China compared to the time counter on the web video, but it will have to do, for now.
I'm sure that I can get my wife to chase me down in her car, and tell me in my hospital bed just how fast we were going before she clipped the back tire. Just kidding, she will play along. I'll update when I have some thing.

see http://visforvoltage.org/forum/2576-evt-z20-arrived-pics-and-impressions for all the details. But here is a sneak peek.

I found this today.

"Uncrating My EVTAMERICA R-20" video
somebody posted this video on the web, showing how to unpack a R-20 and attach the handle bar. I needed to use a speedy computer to get the video the not be so choppy.

http://blip.tv/file/565895

Congrats to you all, looks like your about to all have your dream scooters. My apologies to you for thinking you were crazy to send your money so far in advance of the product being available.