Maximum kilometres or miles

No need to be in oz to kill the batt pack .
a friend of mine killed is pack in Cannes in the south of france where max temp in the sun is say 35 °
the very problem with vectrix is the lack of information
when I bougth mine I've asked one of the higest space ingenieer of thalesalnaspace cannes france to studdy my bike and to tell me excatly what to do and not to do .
thing I could not read in the very short manual .
So I learnt what to do with my nimh batt , along this I wait for temp to get arround 25° in the middle of the nigth and then I ventilate for at least 3 hours and check temps gets under 27 ° before attempting when it is not possible (it happended a couple of time that at midnigth after 3 hours the higest cell was still at 30°) then I did not charge and did not use the vec the day after .
on the road in the summer I ride very very smoothly and gently and at the traffic ligths I press the kill switch and the left lever and check the bat temp ... when it goes over 33° I slowdown.... will it be enough to prolong the bat life .
after 5 months and 10.000 km the vec has just stops finding it's max range .
I have a 32km commute (with a couple of hills ) and arrive at destination with from 2 to 3 bars over half ... at the bienning I had only half bars, it slowly gained charge depth and then seems to satbilize .
I ferar the effect of temperature at the time ... I am more then cautious and pray ....
regards
jean mi

No need to be in oz to kill the batt pack .
a friend of mine killed is pack in Cannes in the south of france where max temp in the sun is say 35 °
the very problem with vectrix is the lack of information
when I bougth mine I've asked one of the higest space ingenieer of thalesalnaspace cannes france to studdy my bike and to tell me excatly what to do and not to do .
thing I could not read in the very short manual .
So I learnt what to do with my nimh batt , along this I wait for temp to get arround 25° in the middle of the nigth and then I ventilate for at least 3 hours and check temps gets under 27 ° before attempting when it is not possible (it happended a couple of time that at midnigth after 3 hours the higest cell was still at 30°) then I did not charge and did not use the vec the day after .
on the road in the summer I ride very very smoothly and gently and at the traffic ligths I press the kill switch and the left lever and check the bat temp ... when it goes over 33° I slowdown.... will it be enough to prolong the bat life .
after 5 months and 10.000 km the vec has just stops finding it's max range .
I have a 32km commute (with a couple of hills ) and arrive at destination with from 2 to 3 bars over half ... at the bienning I had only half bars, it slowly gained charge depth and then seems to satbilize .
I ferar the effect of temperature at the time ... I am more then cautious and pray ....
regards
jean mi

sorry for pressing the save button twice, and sorry for my bad english

Hi Jurba

I am a Vectrix owner in Antibes. Have run 4200 km in one year with the original battery pack and the firmware from 2008 (after
reading the posts I have decided not to do any maintenance on the Vectrix). No change in performances so far. Hope to see you on the road near Cannes, Nices or Antibes

Hi Everyone,
I have been looking at this forum with interest for some time now and I thought I’ll add my experiences of owning a Vectrix. Owned mine just over a year and cover 11,531 miles (18,557 km). I use it to commute to work every day, round trip 52 miles, charge it at work and at home. I ride at any speed between 30mph and 62mph keeping up with traffic or overtaking. Range anything between 30 miles & 48miles.
Before anybody asks, I am on my second battery, the first battery completed 5,000 miles (8046 km). Faulty temperature sensor, local dealer replaced the whole battery under warranty, still rode it for two weeks prior to replacement with no loss in performance. So I think it was just the sensor and not the battery that failed. The only visible problem was the battery and temperature light flashing most of the time, apart from this I have had no other major problems my Vectrix.

It's now 11 months since my purchase and I've covered 5,100 miles (8200km) with a daily commute of c.50 miles. Only problems so far is a blown fuse about 5 months ago and a couple of minor software glitches - simply resolved by switching the bike off and on again.

I'd recommend a Vectrix to anyone.

hallo!!!
my vectrix is at 26500km ...13500 with the last battery

hallo!!!
my vectrix is at 26500km ...13500 with the last battery

Cool!

hallo!!!
my vectrix is at 26500km ...13500 with the last battery

Great! World record?

Jurba, youve done many kms in very little time.
I have 4.200kms in 6 months and now i am on holidays so the Vectrix is going to have a rest of a month.
About caring of the battery i also try to keep in check the temp, when i am recharging or riding in hot temps, very similar to your aproach.

Hello,
I' Am just back from my holiday trip, horrible 2 weeks without vectrix ... a nigthmare,
today I've done a city trip 40 km with half of the bars, I don't know if my pack will last long but for the moment it is working ....
I have carefully monitored temperature during the charging process since I have plugged it at 18h00 PM .
the back pack warmest sensor was 33°c , I programmed a 2 hours cooling delay, after 2 hours temp had gone down to 30°c then it started charging, a sort of one hour and a half at 11 amp where temp stayed stable at 30°/ 31°, ( air temp was 28°c) then there was a tr mode (i don't remember it's duration) turning on the key during this mode I could monitored temps that remained at 30°, then the V started charging at 4 amp for about 2 hours still maintaining a 30°c temp, then the vec started cooling again still at the same temp, unfortunately it did not started an equalization mode so I could not check if temperature goes up during this mode more then during the other modes like some lads were saying monitoring their vec .
what is interesting in all of this is that in spite of a rather high air temp (28°/29°) charging did not caused a dramatic temperature elevation as it is sometime discribed on the board, I tend to think that this is because the batt pack is ok for the moment .
I think (but it is only a personal and non technical opinion) that when a pack has some faulty cells , those cells become resistant and that they heat when charged hence a global pack destruction via a general temperature elevation .
what seems absolutly increadible in a such marvellous and complicated machine full of eelectronics is that they did not implemented an individual voltage monitoring.... an I2c chain of Cans (analog digital converters ) to monitor cell voltage is a very simple technology that any pic programmer can design at home with a simple pic basic compiller ...
monitoring the cell voltage could mabye have permitted to stop pack destruction when a cell starts to fail ...
here we have 102 cells and in my poor opinion we are all likely to have at least one cells failling and it will inevitably distry a whole pack where a simple cell change could have saved the packs ... it is really stupid...well maybe am I stupid myself and pretentious to criticize the designers who may have think of all of this before me ...
I will carefully monitor every charging porcesses during the rest of the warm season here down in the french med coast and will report the results, and especially when the equalization will occur .
speaking with a couple of engenieers who work in space industry here down, I was told that the scooter was far too powerful for the pack, 3,7 kw for 21kw motor far is too high in their opinion, I think that it will be interresting to analyze the effects of the new soft limiting power asked to the pack when reaching the end of the bat charge, at least for the scooters or the packs that have never works with the old soft ...
we will see...
my two cents
in any way, before the end of the year if the pack survives I will display 20.000 km on my odometer ...
I will try to use it very carefully, and monitor nearly every charge just to try to see if is of any effect on the pack duration or if we are all participating to a 102 nimh cell lotery ...
it really increadible that we can't just buy replacement cells ....
anyway ...
regards
jean mi

Hi Jurba

I am a Vectrix owner in Antibes. Have run 4200 km in one year with the original battery pack and the firmware from 2008 (after
reading the posts I have decided not to do any maintenance on the Vectrix). No change in performances so far. Hope to see you on the road near Cannes, Nices or Antibes

ben prevoyons de boire un coup sur antibes un de ces 4 : meaning (for the rest of the world (((-:) "let's plan a few pints in antibes"

just a few more thougths
vectrix seems to have solded arroude 2000 units, we are talking about faulty pack and short pack life times,
I think that most of the user's getting problems must ruch on the internet , goole faulty vec pack or whatever, find visvoltage , or vectrix ridders or owner's and report their problem searching for a solution ,
then why the board is not saturated with complains and search for help ?
do you think it is because peolple have not ridden enough to get in trouble and that the saturation will soon appear ?
do you think that so far packs have been replaced then lad did not have to rush on the forums to report problem ?
or do you think that in fact faulty vectrix are not in fact so numerous compared to the total amout ofvecs on the road ?

The Vectux just passed the 11000km mark (first battery)!

Well done Mik!

I'm at 6700 miles now (10782.6kms) so not far behind. I had a battery rebuild at 2500 miles and the difference since then is astonishing. I'd say I still have full performance, whereas the degradation of the first pack was a slow and progressive process. One cell had failed and cooked two on either side. Still, thankfully when it was fixed, all went back to normal.

Happy riding

Best wishes,

Drew

My VE second battery pack has passed the 11000 kms also.

Congratulations Rady! You've reached the 5k mark very quickly! you'll catch me very soon!;-)
Despite it's initial problems (every first version always have some issues), Vectrix is by far the best electric scooter in the market!
Fancy a "carretera de begues" this sunday?
Cheers

Just at 4,600 miles (7403 km). More interestingly, my range is increasing. I'm currently getting 44 miles (71 km(to the death) on a single charge. I'm checking the temp and it's averaging around 17 - 22, even after a long ride. This is also 'everyday' riding averaging between 30 - 45 mph and also some hilly terrain. I'm putting my faith in VUKs advise and doing a deep discharge every week or so. I do check the temp and during charging it is around 22-25. The highest I've seen is 30 but that was a one off. I'm hoping that the Oct Software and the fact that my pack seems to have been supplied in a good state will help the longevity of my V. Fingers crossed.

Well, that's promising!

Maybe it would be worth dropping a new battery pack into an otherwise good Vectrix.

What kind of climate do you ride in?

I've been riding all through the UK 'summer', max temp around 28. Currently it's starting to get a bit chilly in the evenings, down to about 11. I charge overnight on a timer so the V is left for about 3 hours after riding. I've not implemented the pre-charge cooling as whenever I've checked prior to the charge the temp has always been low.

As a firm believer in Sods law I've probably jinxed myself by posting so watch out for the post where I tell you it's all gone wrong!

here in france the temperature in summer is also rather high, but I could charge the vec in the morning (at 4h00) after 4 hours of cooling, and I never seen any range drop at all.
during the day I charged in a 27° underground garage
now in september temp is 18° at nigth and I still cool the vec 4 hours before charging .
after 13.000 km the vec is still ok in range arround 35km for half the bar graph, and 28 km on the motorway ant 90km/h
just great
however now the 5000w lifeo4 chinese scooter have longer ranges, I hope that we will be able to get lithium kits one day ....I an dreaming fo getting rid of those 80kg of nimh bats .
grrrr 80kg of thunderskys would give the vec don't know 5-6 kw ? 130 km ?..... grrrrr bluddy expensive, fragile nimh gp bats ....
regards
jm

I am just short of 5900 miles in 15 months of use, several of those months inactive due to our harsh winter climate. I did manage to win a national contest for cold weather riding:
2008-09 Cold Weather Challenge Winners
March 2, 2009
The Cold Weather Challenge has ended for another year, even though it’s 18°F and snowing here in Chicago right now and Spring is nowhere in sight. Congratulations to the winners: First prize goes to Bob “Scootervillan” Hedstrom who rode over 10 miles on a 2007 Vectrix at -16°F in Minneapolis, MN on January 15. Bob’s our first winner on an electric scooter, and he’ll keep the title in Minnesota for yet another year. Runner-ups are Tom S. in Omaha (-11°, Yamaha Zuma 50 ) and Colin Doyle in Collegeville, MN (-10°F, Honda Ruckus 50).

I am running the original battery with all software updates. I usually charge using a one hour delay.
I plan to pass 10.000 km by next week.

: First prize goes to Bob “Scootervillan” Hedstrom who rode over 10 miles on a 2007 Vectrix at -16°F in Minneapolis

Christ! -16 degree Fahrenheit = -26.6666667 degree Celsius
that's really cold!!!!!
Did your vectrix work well under this coldness?

We could only try our Vecs in those conditions if we plan a meeting in the pyrenees!!

I've already planned it: It's called the "Volttour challenge". From Barcelona to Parc Nacional d'Aigues Tortes (and back home) in 2.5 days... over 500 km. Most of the recharging places are secured. Permission to access Parc Nacional is pending...
Would you join me? Next spring 2010...

Rady,
there was a time when lithium was expensive and then nimh could be a good solution, at this time we where also told that nimh was and old chemistry, well known and reliable.... and now .... expensive, no, reliable ? : I let you answer ...
but I also enjoy the vec as it is , what is sure is that if they put so mutch money to take over they should think about competition ... here in france a company sells electric scooters for 5000 euros with a range of 100-130 km .... ok our acceleration is superb, our sensation are awsome, great but we miss a little bit of range, and it is a petty hat we don't have some more kw .... the vec deserves 5kw really , this is what I think, and we all deserve to be able to buy cells if we need some instead of being unable to buy replacement nimh cells and instead of thinking to put our vec to the dump if the pack breaks in case they don't manage to survive at vectrix's
let's be honest who among us would have bougth the vectrix at it's high price if we had know that first it would be impossible to get a fresh pack in case vectrix corps go bankrupt
let's be honest who would have bougth the vectrix at it's high price if we had been told that a fresh pack costs from 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the bike ?
very few people I think
I have the luck to have a good job and for me 9000 euros are not the end of the world if I have to put the vec to the dump, but lt's think of the people that paid this price hopping the vec would be a way to commute and don't get enough money to by an other vehicle ?
as a person that has no financial problem (at the time) I think the vec is a dream and if I ever have to get rid of it prematurely It will have been a nice time, but for the one that bought it using their max financial capacities it will have been a nightmare really .
those people will certainly regret not to have bought a chinese thundersky crap scooter they could repair themselves buying the components for affordable prices ....
grrrrr
anyway