Which commuter scooter should I buy?

John H.,

To be clear, I am not unhappy in the least. My comment was merely a suggestion to enhance the quality of the boards and make it more user-friendly for people who consider this forum mainly a resource. As it stands presently it can be a rather challenging process to get cohesive information from here without reading copious amounts of postings from a variety of different threads. I am interested in making this board "better" with the idea that it will aid the EV movement on the whole and make it more accessible to a greater number of people. I understand that my interpretation of "better" is relative and I encourage more people to offer up their own thoughts on how to strengthen this forum.

Perhaps this should be started as a new thread?

Thanks.

Well I'm glad we're all friends again ;-) not that we ever weren't

crunchfam et al,
if I were to buy today I would by the BattEQ rather than PowerCheq's. I wasn't aware of the BattEQ at the time.

andrew
Thanks for the analysis - it will be interesting to see how close your predictions are. One thing that I think may cloud the issue is "when is a battery dead?". My Electier's are "crap" compared to when they were new. However, at 1200km I can still ride with a top speed of 40mph and a range of 12 miles. I do spend more time at 75% throttle now. I wonder how long they will last in this scenario.

usatracy
Do you care to give a prediction of how long the Z-20 battery will last? I'm not looking to discredit anyone - but it would be fun to see who is closer.

doncristobal
Fair enough. Your tone seemed to suggest otherwise - but as usatracy stated that's my problem not yours! ;-) The place for suggestions is in General Discussion, not here. BTW, the last suggestion I made was to encourage people to state their affiliations - that closely preceded a very "interesting" time on the board...

One thing that I think may cloud the issue is "when is a battery dead?". My Electier's are "crap" compared to when they were new. However, at 1200km I can still ride with a top speed of 40mph and a range of 12 miles. I do spend more time at 75% throttle now. I wonder how long they will last in this scenario.

My calculation was to 80% capacity. They will last a little longer. My calculations show that after they drop to 80%, than the capacity will drop about 1% every cycle to 60% capacity. After that it will drop more rapidly with each cycle, and it is very likely that one battery will be slightly off the others and die.

For my mileage calculation you may notice that I just took the expected range and multiplied by the expected number of cycles. You may say this is not correct because after about 70% of their life they will slowly drop from 100% capacity, and 100% range. But for the first 35% life they will rise in capacity over 100% to 105% capacity, and slowly drop from 35%-70% of the life cycle. So for the first 70% of their life they will provide more than 100% of the rated capacity. I think this "extra capacity" if added up each cycle and the energy totaled would probably be close to that lost over the last 30% of life.

Sorry if I'm getting too technical!

Average for first ten bike to report in with one or more battery failures less then 750 miles. I could go lower but I want to win. Smiling

I was going to say why so high? Really, you could be a lot closer. I have no idea of the quality of the batteries. I'm assuming the batteries will meet specs, and I'm sure you are assuming they won't. If your GS met their specs than you'd get at least 5,000 miles.

I guess we will see. I'm very interested to see if the Z20 batteries are in fact crap.

Thanks andrew, hmmm - sounds like my Electier's will probably give up the ghost soon. It's a good thing that it's getting colder and I won't be riding much longer - that way LiFePO4s can come down in price over the next 6 months and I can buy a set in the spring...

Sounds like a plan... ;-)

I wish there was a good lead-acid option for while you wait. A couple years ago lead-acid battery prices were at like 1/2 what they are now.

Graph source: http://www.kitcometals.com

Maybe you could do what usatracy did and buy some flooded lawn mower batteries.

Well hi there everyone!
I have been reading all these posts, and I must say thats alot to take in. lol
I had looked into getting an XM-2000 for a few months, but never gained enough good reviews about it to buy one. Since then I have however seen many good things said about the EVT (168/4000e). So I found one used (ha 72 miles on it. not all that used) and bought it after much reading here. - I heard it is well made etc...
Now I know it's not very fast at 30mph BUT I also dont need an M class licence in NY state for it. After reading all about the battery problems, and issues I have bought a set of powercheq's for the new battery string ($370 shipped)
I'm very glad I found this forum as it may just have saved me alot of problems in the long run.
Would you say I got a deal at $1100? shipping was $325 and new UB12500 12volt 50ah batteries.? would like to hear what some of you EV owners think :)

thanks