Well I just had a new retension bar made to replace the mild steel retension bar that came with the bike. It was the 2nd retension bar I went through. The motor kept overcoming the two nut retainers and drilled out the retension bars. When I took the retension bar to the metal shop they actually laughed at it. The were laughing at the quality of the metal for the job it was to perform. Very bad design they said. The new retension bar is about three times as heavy and fits the axel to a tighter tolerance and is thicker.
Now the question is what will far apart next. Smile
A walkaround of a Motorino Xpe from E-ride.ca
A drive on an Xpe showing speeds on flat and climbing hills. 2 parts Spedometer is a cheap add on and may not be 100% accurate bike claims 32 KM/H max
A drive on an Xpe showing speeds on flat and climbing hills. 2 parts Spedometer is a cheap add on and may not be 100% accurate bike claims 32 KM/H ma
Here is a pic of the 2nd battery pack. When I bought the bike I ordered the 2nd battery pack to extend range and reduce power drops climbing hills. When the bike was delivered there was no 2nd battery pack. After contacting eride they said they were sending it seperately. 2 Months later I had to contact the credit card company to threaten to reverse the order, then they sent the batteries. They sent them by bus. They arrived wothout a pack just batteries wired together to a plug. I called e-ride and they said there was no pack for that model bike but their website today still shows a 2nd pack available for an Xpe. When I hooked the battery pack the connector melted and blew because the bike's(not the battery's) 2nd battery cable was reverse polarized. I had to make a new connector from 2 fuses and switches.
Here is a pic of the dc converter. A light fell out of it's socket and blew the converter. Replaced under warranty. The replacement has a fuse on it. The original converter didn't have a fuse.
Here is a pic under the hood. I moved the electronics here instead of being under the seat where they were HARD to get at. This pic doesn't show it but I later added a car blower fan sitting under the controller to keep it cool. The first controller blew a capacitor. When I opened the case there was a pool of solder in the corner which had melted off of the buzz bar. Replaced under warranty.
Here is a pic of the bike the day I got it.
Here is an idea I thought of to make use of the empty mirror sockets. Whent he second set of batteries arrived a generic set of mirrors came with it but no sockets for the holes to mount the mirrors. I attached the mirrors to the break levers.
The 2nd battery pack was too much weight for the seat case. I reinforced it with some duct tape and sheet metal.
Here is a small pic of the kick stand that rusted off in the 1st four months I had the bike. Proof in my opinion that e-ride sold me a demo unit or 2nd hand bike at full price without labelling the sale as a 2nd hand bike.
Here is a pic of the 2nd battery compartment. If you have an Xpe let me know if your compartment is larger, i.e. if the lock mechanism is farther back instead of in the middle.
The story
I bought an XPE from E-ride.ca and it's been a nightmare.
Bike arrived with a silver dollar sized chip in the shell near the bottom by the battery ( hard to see) they said sorry cosmetic shipping problem not covered. When I asked about getting a replacment shell segment they were like huh? A replacement what?
The bike didn't come with the alarm I ordered. They sent an alarm that won't work when the bike is turned off, they took 3 months to send one that will. It arrived with no direction or instructions or labels. I asked is it a12V or 48 volt, after 3 emails they kept saying it was 12V, when it is actually 48V. It does work.
The back bubble trunk wouldn't latch, - The latch was mounted improperly. Fixed and working.
They didn't send the 2nd battery pack, eventually they did but it wasn't a pack but seperate 12V batteries. They said that model doesn't have a 2nd battery pack, yet they advertize it does.
The ignition is wired so both 48V battery packs are used in parallel not seperately. ( It does eliminate deep draws off the battery climbing hills though.) No mention of this on their site though. Site implies you use one then switch to the second.
The cable for the 2nd battery pack was reverse polorized and melted upon hookup, I rebuilt a safer connector myself with a fuse on each line with it's own switch. There was no fuse on that circuit.
The DC converter had to be replaced(under warranty) when a light bulb fell out and the connector struck the bike frame( DC controller had no fuse - replacement does).
The center kickstand foot pull fell off due to rust(I store it in a dry shed off the ground). They sent a replacement stand with the alarm.
The bike didn't have mirrors, the sent some later but not the proper connector like in the pics. I have them attached via the break levers( actually a better position to see behind you instead of seeing you) but still annoying.
The bike got a flat within the week, I changed the tire mounted everything drove to work and the bike died. The cables going into the wheel were frayed and arc'd ( The wire coil protector upon inspection was RUSTED and the coil not tighly wound providing no protection. This killed the hall effect sensors. They claimed I didn't attach the retension clip the wheel spun in the mount and cut the wires,so it voided the warranty. I DID attach the retension clip the wires were frayed when I got the bike. They did send replacement sensors and I rebuilt the motor myself.
Now I'm getting periodic failures of the regenerative breaking. The front break won't initiate regen breaking but will continue it. Very rarely breaking once initiated will kick out and I'm left with regular pull breaks. This has been reduced but not eliminated after I moved the location of the electronics to under the hood.
Additionally I'm getting power outages where the bike initiates breaks on it's own. The Amp needle will drop radically from 15 amp to 10 on occasion and the bike gets a small kick. Climbing hills is not as strong as before. A hill I could take at 25 of 32 KM/Hr when new I now slow to 10 of 32Km/Hr and need to peddle to crest the hill. They said I had some loose wires. I made sure all the connectors were dry and put elastics on them to make sure they were firmly connected. I think the controller is dying and they are ignoring my emails now. This problem later went away when the controller was replaced under waranty when the controllers main capacitor blew.
When I opened the case of the dead controller I found that solder had melted off the buzz bar and pooled in the corner of the controller.
Oh and the 2nd battery pack was too much weight for the underseat carrying spot, it started to crack. I reinforced it with some aluminium sheeting to carry the weight of the entire seat-battery.
The motor. I sent the serial number of the motor to the manufacturer saying I bought it second hand and needed details so I could get a proper controller. Thay said it's a 350W motor. This was a surprise since e-ride site says it's a 500W motor. They use an over amp'd controller and a 350W motor to generate 500W output 48V*17Amp =816 MAX figure 62% continuous is 500W. This was really annoying because the XPe page was different from the XP page in that it said 500W controller and 500W motor, while the other pages just said 500W motor. E-ride's response was sorry we inadvertantly put the max details of one up and the other had the continuous details. Essentially "too damn bad". In response for my asking for a 500 W motor they said the 500W motors were slower.
You'll notice I cut out the back end of the seat. I put in a mesh basket for more storage.
Wow. Why didn't I find this post last year? It would have saved me $1800 and 10 months of disintegration into worthless junk.
As a manufacturer of Motorino scooters we were just referred by a customer to this post. There is nothing much I can say about this because in terms of the product quality we did experienced difficulties when we started importing electric scooters in 2003. I only want to apologize to this customer. However in terms of the service I’d like to emphasize that the bad service we might’ve provided was a result of the bad aftermarket support of our previous suppliers. Almost all of the bikes we were selling until the end of 2006 were manufactured from the "biggest" factory for electric bicycles in China - Luyuan in Jinhua City. This is a typical bike designed for the domestic Chinese market with acceptable quality for this market. In 2007 we changed our supplier and started our HT (High Torque) geared motors but we run into similar problems. During the first four years of our operation we worked with more than a dozen factories until we realized that they are all the same. During 2007 we designed our own CCT driving system and started the manufacturing of our three gears CCT controllers and motors in Taiwan. In the beginning of 2008 we implemented it in all of our Motorino XP series. At the same time we started partnering with Yamaha-China for providing us with the same motorcycle components they use for all exported for Europe and North America gas scooters. We redesigned them to make them compliant with CMVSA requirements to be qualified as Power Assisted Bicycles. Our current bikes are basically motorcycles on which we have accommodated pedals in order to comply with section 1.2.1 of CMVSA and all US federal requirements to be qualified as electric bicycles. They have nothing in common with the bikes we used to import in our first three years of operation. If you even compare our current Motorino XPv, XPr and XPn models that look exactly the same as Yamaha Vino and the Yamaha original scooters you will find that our scooters are equipped with dual hydraulic disk brakes with ABS, something that even Yamaha scooters don't have. Unfortunately many companies are still importing cheap scooters from China and spreading the bad impression that all electric scooters made in China are crap. If you know for example GEO bikes - they come from the same manufacturer we used to buy from and I see now that they haven't changed anything on these bikes since 2003. If we kept importing these bikes from Luyuan we would've been out of business long time ago.
The real problem with most of the imported electric scooters from China is that in comparison with many other products the electric bikes are not a copy of any other European, American or Japanese product – They are ORIGINALLY DESIGNED AND MADE IN CHINA for the Chinese domestic market. Currently the Chinese domestic market is so demanding for these electric scooters compared to the fraction of their overseas demand so nobody bothers to meet the quality necessary for the export market. On the other hand the gas motorcycles have a long history and they have reached the quality to compete with the Japanese, European and NA motorcycles. All of our high end electric scooters are combining now of the high quality of all gas motorcycles supplied by Yamaha-China and other reputable manufacturers and our CCT driving system providing performance comparable with high end gas scooters.
Steve
An excellent disruption of the difficulties in dealing with the different aspirations and outlook of manufacturers in the PRC. The critics of Mountain Chen should take careful note for experience.
marcopolo
Hehe, the pleasures of voice recognition....?!?
But back to the millions of ripped of customers in China: Why on Earth do they put up with this crap?
After all, their roads are made in China, too, and I cannot see why these poor quality scooters would last any longer in China than in other places! Rider weight might be a factor, but the quality is so poor for most of the Chinese scooters described in the forums, that even with a light rider they are dangerous!
Good if you have managed to improve it, thank you!
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!
This is an old thread but I just want to share what I've experienced by owning a Motorino XPn 2011 bought in May of 2011. I have now over 3300 kms on the odometer and the only thing that I had to fix was the odometer/speedometer cable, which was replaced at no cost to me by the E-Ride vendor I bought the scooter from. I rode this scooter all winter since we didn't have much snow this year. Like any other Motorcycle on this planet, none of them are made to ride in very cold weather but as long as the roads were clear, I could ride with the only problems being the left and right signal button freezing up once and the little switches on the brake lever would freeze up also. I'm a big guy, over 225 pounds and I have no trouble getting to the top of the steepest hills. The scooter does slow down but it gets up there. three weeks ago, I decided to just void my warranty and go with a Lithium battery, put bigger phase wires on the motor and change the controller for a better one. This is now an electric scooter that reaches top speed in under 10 seconds and hardly slows down going up the steepest hills. I won't say what the max speed is now, all I will say is I can keep up with the traffic but I'm still in the bike lane LOL It's great. I love my Motorino and my E-Ride dealer is awesome, I wouldn't hesitate of buying another Motorino or recommend them to othgers which I do frequently.