XM-3500

I battery will last over 10 years. The Range is 44 miles @ 55 mph speed, and longer if you drive slower up to 65 miles per charge.

You are dreaming!

What is your actual ever longest range?

Mr. Mik

Yeah, the psychology of this is interesting isn't it?
OTOH he's super critical: It should be called the XM-3500Lie (very cute) but he laps up the press about 10 years and a 44 mile range - apparently regardless of weight and terrain.

That sounds too good to be true. And in fact it is not true.

Even the Vectrix manual says at 50mph the range is 36 miles and drops to 20 miles at 60mph. Where do you get 44 miles at 55mph?

Is there a 10 year warranty on the battery? I guess they assume 5,000 miles per year - because elsewhere they list 50,000 miles. The manual also calls this "estimated battery life". Yes, it's an estimate for the XM-3500Li as well.

BTW, The range on the XM-3500Li is about the one thing that seems to be about the same, or maybe even a bit better than the Vectrix. (The reason why I suspect is that the XM is about half the weight of a Vectrix).

I'm not saying the XM-3500Li is better than a Vectrix. I'm not saying that the XM-3500Li couldn't be made better. But, what's with all the spreading of FUD about the XM-3500Li? And all the over promising on the Vectrix?

Oh well, whatever - go ahead and write what you feel you must. But what exactly what do either of these approaches go in terms of good? "Data Talks BS Walks".

(MikeB, I think it's worth starting a new thread for certain aspects of what's discussed here - but not all posts (my reply here included) warrant their own threads. Sorry - it's a conundrum. BTW - I have my browser set up to display 300 posts per page).

As previously mentioned range is very much dependent upon driving habits. The Vectrix is designed as an in the city commuting vehicle. In such a mode you should experience 35 to 55 miles (56-89 km) of range on a single charge. This is also dependent on additional weight (gear) or an additional passenger will affect range. http://www.vectrix.com/company/faqs#faqq_23

Acceleration is the rate which you are attempting to increase the speed of your scooter. The greater the acceleration the faster you are depleting the energy in the battery pack. The harder and more frequently you accelerate the more adversely you will affect the range of your scooter. Being "first off the line" means you will also be the first to drain your energy supply.

The Vectrix scooter at approximately 500 lbs (227 kg) plus a 180 lb (82 kg) driver equates to a gross vehicle weight of 680 lbs (308 kg). If you add 50 pounds (23 kg) of cargo the total weight you are attempting to move is 730 pounds (331 kg) or 7.3% increase in weight. If then you add a 175 pound (79 kg) passenger the total weight is 905 lbs (411 kg) or a total weight increase of 33%! The more mass you are pushing/lifting the more energy it takes to accomplish the mission. Avoid keeping unnecessary items in your scooter since it will impact your range.

It takes more energy to push a scooter faster because you encounter aerodynamic resistance. The faster you attempt to travel the more important this factor becomes. Also it is a fundamental characteristic of battery energy storage systems that the amount of energy you are able to extract from the battery is inversely proportional to the rate at which you are drawing out the energy. The battery pack is rated for 30 Ah. If you draw 10 amperes of current you will deliver more energy that if you are drawing 100 amperes of current. Bottom line is that the more conservative you drive the further you will travel on single charge.

The warranty on the whole bike including the battery is two years, the expected life of the battery is 50,000 miles / 80000 km.

I have a correction to make about the Vectrix range, when I mentioned 44 miles I meant a mix driving (city and highway combined), of course if you drive it at 62 miles per hour solid you will get less than 20 miles range.
My commute to work is about 3 miles city and 5 miles 55mph highway. You will definitely get over 40 easily and you might get more if you accelerate slowly as well as using the Regenerative engine braking.

Another factor is the frame size, the XM-3500 is significantly smaller bike than the Vectrix. I've never seen a picture of the XM-3500 with a rider on it yet.

In Summary, I think XM-3500 is an neighbourhood bike with an imporved range from the previous ones. It is also so new to speculate if people will have problems with it on the long run.

Thanks guys.

Dear Mrladderman,
Thanks for the technical information :)

I have a correction to make about the Vectrix range, when I mentioned 44 miles I meant a mix driving (city and highway combined), of course if you drive it at 62 miles per hour solid you will get less than 20 miles range.
My commute to work is about 3 miles city and 5 miles 55mph highway. You will definitely get over 40 easily and you might get more if you accelerate slowly as well as using the Regenerative engine braking.

Stop making promises - tell us how far you actually got!

"Over 64.4km easily" is nonsense for most riders. You have to be quite careful to get that far!
Try it out, it will probably be a bit of a reality check for you.

Mr. Mik

Hi Mik,
I will do a range test this weekend and let you know exactly how far it can go.
Thanks

Hi Mik,
I will do a range test this weekend and let you know exactly how far it can go.
Thanks

Great!
Try to be uphill from a charging point when it's empty, it is next to impossible to push a Vectrix uphill!

Mr. Mik

Hey Mik,
I took today the Vectrix on my first long 35 miles ride, I stayed on the highway all the way (route 119 in PA), my speed was mostly 75-80km (50mph) and at times I hit 90-95km (close to 60 mph) when I had to pass few slower vehicles, I tried to avoid going over 50 or 55 mph because the range will drop significantly.

When I got back home the battery indicator still have 5 bars (total of 17 bars), and when you totally run out of juice, you still have 5 miles emergency range (but without much power or torque), probably just enough to get you home or to the nearest electric outlet.

I might venture out on a longer trips but you always want to play it save and keep some juice in the bike to get you to your destination.

The good thing about this bike is the power, you will not slow down going uphill (you'll use more energy) so you can pretty much maintain your current speed with traffic.

I wonder if anyone tried the Li5300, I curious to see the way it ride and handles, please don't compare it to your electric bicycle, you have to compare it to regular scooter or motorcycle.

HOpe this will help.

Hey Mik,
I took today the Vectrix on my first long 35 miles ride, I stayed on the highway all the way (route 119 in PA), my speed was mostly 75-80km (50mph) and at times I hit 90-95km (close to 60 mph) when I had to pass few slower vehicles, I tried to avoid going over 50 or 55 mph because the range will drop significantly.

When I got back home the battery indicator still have 5 bars (total of 17 bars), and when you totally run out of juice, you still have 5 miles emergency range (but without much power or torque), probably just enough to get you home or to the nearest electric outlet.

I might venture out on a longer trips but you always want to play it save and keep some juice in the bike to get you to your destination.

The good thing about this bike is the power, you will not slow down going uphill (you'll use more energy) so you can pretty much maintain your current speed with traffic.

I wonder if anyone tried the Li5300, I curious to see the way it ride and handles, please don't compare it to your electric bicycle, you have to compare it to regular scooter or motorcycle.

HOpe this will help.

Can you please move this discussion somewhere else, if I would be curious about Vectrix performance, I would look at the Vectrix thread....

The odometer now reads 741.6 (kilometers, I think), I have discovered two issues.

1. The rear wheel is out of round by 1/16th of an inch, additionally the wheel wobbles side to side by about the same. The front wheel seems to be round with no wobbling.

2. The rear brake is not mounted properly, only about 50% - 75% of the pad touches the disk. The front brake is mounted properly.

Excellent find! I have noticed my back wheel moves side-side about 1/16" as well (brake disc follows) and "very carefully" worked on the disc to get it moving less, but didn't notice the brake pad. I did notice the wear on the disc looked different than the front.

I have also noticed at low speeds the rear brake caliper assembly will "chatter" and now I see since the pads are not over the disc fully this could be what is causing this (the caliper assembly has cantilever movement causing the resonant chatter at certain low speeds and since the pads are not fully over the disc this cantilever motion is more).

Looking at the frame it appears the top mount hole has to be moved. Note the top part of the pad is more over the disc than the bottom part which is what Henry shows and looking at the center of motion for the brake caliper assembly swinging it on the lower bolt and moving the upper will get it there. However, the frame will have to be filed to make room for the caliper piston assembly (I see why they didn't get it fully over since the frame will stop the assembly from being moved in correctly).

Thanks Henry!

I also have a screach screach from the back disc and if i jam on the brake once or twice or sashay at 15mph or so the noise will stop but it is embaresing to show the byke and have it do that ! also when the byke is on the stand and i run it slow , you can see the drag the brake is doing . Not good for range !! LaTeR

Rossasaurus also has the same noise (mentioned on another thread). I also have run the rear up on it stand just like you said strawhistle and can see it chatter. I am going to mount the brake right and hopefully this solves it! Stay tuned...

Hey,
What if this pad mis-alignment is the ABS :O

Everyone - see these images for what I did today to fix the rear brake pad alignment. A few quick tips;

1) Be careful what you do to grind the frame since the brake disc is near by (I had no problems but just an FYI). Same goes for slotting the lower mount hole.
2) Use masking tape to mask off the disc and area around here since there will be metal filings.
3) I used Rust Oleum black paint to covet the bear metal.

The rear brake caliper chatter/noise is gone!!!!! The caliper assmebly is sitting much nicer and solid now and the bike doesn't make any noises at low RPMs...hopefully Mountain Chen sees this and gets this revision into the XM-3500LI design.

that looks like the answer !! :) I'll try that . thanks a lot LaTeR

Thanks for the "How to" to fix the rear brake.

I discovered another issue that needs attention. The Positive (red) cable to the circuit breaker was not tight.

I was adjusting the rear fender (since it was not aligned with the bike) I carefully removed the storage compartment when the wire just slid out. I put it back in and tightened the screw.

Wonder if the second container of 3500Lis have washed up on the US shores yet. Anybody heard an updated status? It is so hard to get a straight answer from X-Treme.

Gordon

Wonder if the second container of 3500Lis have washed up on the US shores yet. Anybody heard an updated status? It is so hard to get a straight answer from X-Treme.

Gordon

AFAIK, they're due on September 15th.

Hope this finds you all well, it's been quiet as hell on this post.Well now things are going to start heating up pretty quickly because I just got a call from Extreme to tell me that they are planning on shipping out my XM3500 on Tuesday which will be headed to the west coast and Seattle. I tried to get as much information out of her and I first started out on the battery packs because I was hoping there would be extra battery packs that I could purchase and then wire into my 3500 to get extended range? What do you guys think of that? She said however there was only going to be two or three full battery packs on this shipment. I then told her about this blog and the report of bad cells in the bikes the owners have reported. She agreed with me that they would probably need those battery packs for replacement of bad cells which have been common with the new bikes as we have found out via this forum. They will however have extra battery chargers on this shipment.I forgot to ask her about the BMS but that answer is probably a foregone conclusion wouldn't you say? She was very clear that the top speed was 45 mph and the top distance was about 40-50 miles also. She then asked if I was still interested in following through with my purchase given those revised figures. I thanked her for her integrity in telling me and not just trying to push this bike off onto me/us with what they originally had listed: BMS--- regenerative brakes ---55 mph and 70 miles distance. So that's it for now guys but stay tuned and I'll let you know when I get my bike and I will try to take a video or two. Also we have some hella hills here and I will let you know how it does on the steep motherfuckers. Mikie

ps Hey guys, I just want to let you know about my thinking about whether or not to keep this scooter. What with the economy as it is spending $4000 is of course quite a risk especially for an artist such as myself (even though I've been in business for 23 years it's still a risk spending that kind of money) I have any VW Jetta TDI station wagon which I really love and run bio diesel in. I've had it for three years and have about 50,000 miles on it and it has appreciated about $5000 since I bought it used for $17,000, simply because it is a large vehicle and get 40 miles per gallon. There is nothing else available that gets 40mph with that much room! For the past two years it has been the hottest selling car in the states and even as recently as two months ago there was only one or two for sale in the whole country on cars.com.(NOw because of the economy people are selling whatever they can to make ends meet and cut costs) So I figure if the economy gets really bad I can always sell my TDI and ride this scooter pretty much everywhere I want to go. That would give me $15-$18,000 of assets I might need to help keep the lights on here in my studio. So this was an economic decision a in worst-case scenario and then of course hopefully I'll be able to sell this bike if necessary for close to as much as I paid for it. That's it for now I hope you guys are doing well and I know I'll be hearing from you all soon.... Mikie

Sorry to report I had a cell failure today on my XM-3500Li.
I was out measuring each cell as I obsessively do after a charge cycle and one of my cells is sitting at .7V, yes 700mv!
As you can guess, most of the other cells were at a higher than normal voltage after charging; up to 4.2V per instead of the usual 3.6V or so, compensating for the low cell.
I turned on the headlights and ran the motor to drop the higher cells down a bit.
I couldn't encourage anyone to buy one of these unless they plan to get a BMS on it pronto.
I've been riding it pretty sparingly, and I had decided a week or so ago to not ride until I researched and put a BMS on it since my cell voltages were developing a spread from 3.26V up to 3.89V and I had no way to bring the low cells up; I parked it for the last week until today.

Filed my Support Ticket tonight with X-Treme, sigh.

The charger is junk. Mine overheated after only 500K or about 3 weeks of use. The bike is fun to ride and I WAS using it to commute. Now I'm waiting on a backordered charger!

I would be cautious of ANY electric bike using LFP batteries that does not have a BMS for balancing, not just the 3500LI. Even RMartin says they will not have one and they will have 24 cells (the more the cells, the more likely one can sit very low and end up dead from the others shutting down the charger since all the charger sees is the full battery pack and not individual cells).

The charger is junk. Mine overheated after only 500K or about 3 weeks of use. The bike is fun to ride and I WAS using it to commute. Now I'm waiting on a backordered charger!

That would be on a 3000, not the 3500, correct?

Can someone tell me how well the battery meter works on this scooter? Is it adequate, or is everyone too afraid to run their batteries low enough to find out?

Not very good.I have run my pack down to ~60% (I am using a Paktrakr to monitor cell voltages and SOC) and this corresponded to the ~2 hours required to charge yet the battery/fuel gauge was still at Full. I plan to redesign it to be more accurate once I get my 21st cell added (I am going to set it to hit the "time to think about charging" threshold at 3.1V per cell or about 65V). I am wondering if this gauge was set for the original 19 cell design so 20 cells over reports.

P.S. I went 15 miles doing 35-45 with several miles of 10-15 degree slopes, so I am content with range so far. I expect you would get about 40 miles driving heavy and 55 miles conservatively.

Thanks for that answer eped.

Does the fuel gauge move when accelerating from a stop when the batteries are somewhat discharged, increasingly so as you draw them down? In other words would you be totally up a creek without that PakTrakr?

When charging, how even do the cells stay together? What is the voltage spread between the highest and lowest cell?

I'm working hard to create a solution for all you EV heros. :-)

Hey sparc5 - yes, it moves when full throttle from a stop or maxed out on a flat. It would dip down to about 80% full when the pack was down 60%. However, I would look at the Paktrakr when I was stopped running errands to see where I was at (the gauge gaives me a very crude feedback but I do look at the Paktrakr).

When charging, my cells are staying within 30mV of each other BUT that is using my BMS circuit I designed. The BMS keeps the top-end charged the same, and the cells track each other discharging and recharging up to the BMS kick-in still within 30mV so the cells are behaving similarly (I think the BMS keeps them this way). Before I had the BMS I would have some cells hitting 4V while a couple were at 3.31V and the charger would shut-down since the full stack was at the limit of the charger.

Eped,

After a discharge what is the voltage spread? I am trying to quantify the need for battery balancing during the discharge. Also do you know how many resistors on your BMS are active at any given time? It shouldn't be more than 2 or 3, and usually the same ones near the front of the pack.

The lowest one at the end of my run was 3.28V and the max one was 3.31V (the Paktrakr only does two decimal places). When the BMS first kicks in there are about 5-6 that first light up and they are usually the middle of the pack (and then the others all start to light up within a very short time; the charger shuts down right when the last one lights (I set the overall BMS average so it would do this on purpose). It is interesting that the BMS has kept the pack balanced even during charge and discharge while it is not on but I liken this to a reset of the overall pack condition each time you charge full. The one cycle LFP discharge tracking seems to be quite good if they all start out from the same full charge state so BMS discharge control is probably not needed.