Maximum kilometres or miles

I passed the 10.000 miles mark two weeks ago. Later this month my Vectrix will get a cake with two candles on top to celebrate its second birthday, just kidding, It will be me having the cake :-)

Surprisingly I am still on my FIRST front tire. It still looks ok'ish. Back tire was changed around 7k miles.

Norman

I passed the 10.000 miles mark two weeks ago. Later this month my Vectrix will get a cake with two candles on top to celebrate its second birthday, just kidding, It will be me having the cake :-)

Surprisingly I am still on my FIRST front tire. It still looks ok'ish. Back tire was changed around 7k miles.

Norman

You must be riding on very slick and cool roads!

I passed the 10.000 miles mark two weeks ago. Later this month my Vectrix will get a cake with two candles on top to celebrate its second birthday, just kidding, It will be me having the cake :-)

Surprisingly I am still on my FIRST front tire. It still looks ok'ish. Back tire was changed around 7k miles.

Norman

You must be riding on very slick and cool roads!

my own back tire is still original at 10400km

I very rarely do stop start traffic though.

always use regen to to stop

Matt

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my own back tire is still original at 10400km

I very rarely do stop start traffic though.

always use regen to to stop

Matt

There is no way I could get more than 5000km for a rear tire on my commute, no matter how much I avoid breaking.

It is mainly a function of the roughness of the road surface and the rider weight, I think.

From riding bicycles I know what an incredible difference the road surface makes to rolling resistance. All this tire rolling resistance happens a the rubber/road interface and translates into wear. The energy will also have to come from the battery, therefore the range will be better (and the lifetime range) for EV's that are driven on roads that allow long tire life!

One easy test of road roughness is the tire noise you hear in the car. I think that usually the noisier it is, the rougher the surface and the faster the tire wear. That might be different for concrete roads vs. bitumen roads, due to different sound reflection characteristics.

hi brian good luck..
tell them if they pass it like one of my old scooters.
you will do a burn out silently. hehe..
they was amazed..

Some days ago I took this picture.

27.000 km... My rear M Gold standard tyre has 13.000 km

I'm just wondering wouldn't one way to solve the problem of the batteries be to have the V updated to a removable battery.

If you could remove the battery with relative ease and swap the battery while the other one was being charged wouldn't this solve many of the issues of the battery charging problem.

You could charge the battery slower, over say 16 hours rather than the rapid charge then the battery may last longer and perform much better.

But like I said it would mean modifying the bike to allow for the battery to be locked in place via a key perhaps, then carry the battery to a location for charging.

If you had a garage you could leave it on charge use the other battery then when it is fully charged simply swap the batteries over, keep the on board charging for while out and about but swap the battery for all other uses.

True it wouldn't work at the moment but that is becuase the bike is not designed for battery swap, but if it were altered then it would.

That is a good idea in theory but the current size of the batteries would never work. This is the approach Zero Motorcycles has taken with it's two off-road varieties the X and MX. They have swappable batteries so you could theoretically have two charging all the time and never have to stop riding. The problem is that their pack in the dirt bikes are only 2kwh. In order for Vectrix to do this they would have to completely redesign the bike to accommodate this type of setup.

I'm just wondering wouldn't one way to solve the problem of the batteries be to have the V updated to a removable battery.

If you could remove the battery with relative ease and swap the battery while the other one was being charged wouldn't this solve many of the issues of the battery charging problem.

You could charge the battery slower, over say 16 hours rather than the rapid charge then the battery may last longer and perform much better.

But like I said it would mean modifying the bike to allow for the battery to be locked in place via a key perhaps, then carry the battery to a location for charging.

If you had a garage you could leave it on charge use the other battery then when it is fully charged simply swap the batteries over, keep the on board charging for while out and about but swap the battery for all other uses.

True it wouldn't work at the moment but that is becuase the bike is not designed for battery swap, but if it were altered then it would.

*shakes head*

rewski

Ok I’ve just been looking at the bikes battery location on the hand book and it looks as though it may be possible to alter the way the battery comes out by making the front end of the seat as a lifted part.

For example if the whole of the front side of the seat were made to lift verticle and a removable cover used for the battery instead of what is in use now wouldn’t this give access to the battery compartment with more ease?

I noticed another thing about this bike, in the hand book it shows a centre stand (optional) but I’m given to understand that most bikes do not have a centre stand, but by having one would also make it more feasible to have a removable battery.

I get the impression the cells are grouped into packs so each pack could be lifted out as a single unit and fitted with slot in press down connectors as the battery would come out through the top.

If the batteries are heavy by having them as packs would enable them to be more manageable and less likely to suffer charging issues due to the slower charging.

Of course there would need to be some changes to the bike but ultimately the design would be very similar in looks.

Is this possible or just pie in the sky?

Aircon

You still shaking that head of yourse oh my word, the screws must have come lose by now. ;-)

If you could remove the battery with relative ease and swap the battery while the other one was being charged wouldn't this solve many of the issues of the battery charging problem.

That's the idea of the goelix ebox, and other cargo e-motorbikes. Swappable batteries is the future in fleets.
The E-box's 3.6kwh battery weights 28 kg, instead of vectrix's 3.7 kwh 80gk, divided into 2 blocks... have you ever tried to lift 80/2 kg?

Is this possible or just pie in the sky?

there are other issues:
Every time you re-plug the battery a device (inrush current limiter?) is needed in order to prevent damage.

R

Every time you re-plug the battery a device (inrush current limiter?) is needed in order to prevent damage.

Wouldn't it be possible to have this limiter incorporated into the bikes connection point, so you could plug or unplug at will.

Sounds very much like the electronics on the V is very badly designed, apart from the other designe issues, it seems as though the bike needs a rethink on several fronts, overal the bike looks good but battery swap is definately the way to go.

Hong Kong has just extended the battery swap experiment they were conducting for cars I read on a web site, it seems to be somewhat a success.

If there is to be a place for bikes in the future then that is the way for bikes to go also.

The V battery may be heavy but if it were broken down into more managable battery packs then they could be lifted out I would have thought.

A whole battery may weigh in at 80kgs but they could be broken down into 20kg packs lift each one out and slot them together for charging, at the same time each cell could be checked for degridation.

As I said it looks very much like the front of the seat is the problem for lifting out the Vs battery, would such an alteration cause structual damage to the bike and could it be overcome if it did?

Of course if there were a better cheaper battery then there would be no need to consider such a move but it seems the most likely solution to a problem that seems to plague the V the battery.

The VX-1 is not designed for battery swaps and cannot be retrofitted sensibly, IMHO.

If you wanted to design it that way in the first place, you would need a reason to do so (like a battery or industry standard, so that there is maybe an infrastructure to support your design).

But, the VX-1 is the first of it's kind, and apparently a failure even without such available infrastructure. If you cannot sell enough scooters despite practically universal recharging ability via anything from 110V to 250V AC, how do you suppose to create a battery swap system from scratch that will allow this? Sheer stupidity!

By the way, the VX-1 NiMH battery weighs about 98kg. And I think that this weight, together with the packaging into only 2 parts (of 45kg and 48kg), was part of the reason for why they failed (I am jet to be convinced that they have not failed). It cannot be safely lifted (let alone be touched) without heavy equipment. I know some people can lift these batteries - last week I carried them over a bunch of boxes and a jet-ski to get them out of the transporting companies warehouse! But I was motivated and would have had no-one to sue if I had done my back in in the process - unlike the average employee....

Doing the maths on how much extra it would cost to own a Vectrix is one thing - you can work that out quite easily without access to the real ting.

But redesigning it is another matter altogether. It has been redesigned many times by people intimately involved and quite well educated about the relevant aspects of the design - people with hands-on experience of the bike.

If you, Just-looking, insist on writing about redesigning the VX-1 without even having seen one, you might appear rather silly.

Mik

But, the VX-1 is the first of it's kind, and apparently a failure even without such available infrastructure. If you cannot sell enough scooters despite practically universal recharging ability via anything from 110V to 250V AC, how do you suppose to create a battery swap system from scratch that will allow this?

I think you have missunderstood the point I was trying to make with regard to battery swap for the V, what I was getting at was that, should you have two batteries, you could have one on slow charge while you are using the other then at some point simply swap the batteries over so you could then be runnning on fresh and well equally charged cells.

I threw in the concept of the wider battery swap approach being tested in Hong Kong becuase it was such a good system and seemed to be making a huge success.

But if you had two batteries for the V wouldn't this solve many of the problems related to the Vs battery?

And wouldn't one way to solve the issue of being able to lift out the batteries be to make them slot together and also one solution for this lift also be to make the front of the seat lift so as to accesss a potential key system that could then remove a cover that could also slot into position.

I base this idea on other bikes I have seen with relation to access points to critical parts of the bike, they often use slotted panels and push fit parts for easy access all contained by a key located under or beside the seat.

As for the design, well it does seem to have specific issues which could be solved by the looks of things with a little bit of modification, and I say this based on what has been said here and on looking at pictures of the bike and the hand books line drawings plus other pictures of some of the bikes in parts.

But I don't think you actually need the vehicle to see that there are ways to make it function better else no bike would ever be made, you can base your ideas on similar vehicles or concepts, which is mostly what I have done.

I think the most limiting factor in this would be price. The battery is probably the most expensive part of the bike (correct me if I'm wrong), so to buy a spare would require another large investment on top of the bike purchase price. Also, Just_looking, you have said before that one of the most limiting factors, in your opinion, is the range. This doesn't help the range as you still have to get home to swap the battery over. This would basically achieve nothing, in my opinion. Up to date battery with a full bms is really the way to go with this.

It would be nice if Vectrix were a bit more public with their intentions - it's gone awfully quiet. Apart from Maryland Bob's visit to the factory where he saw the Lithium packs, I've not hear a peep about future plans on an official basis. While mine is still going strong, I would like to know if I have an upgrade path in a year or so. Three years no tears, is a friends favourite saying and I've so far had two...

I did hear from one of the traveling Vectrix techs who came by my house last week for a battery swap that he personally is riding a Vectrix with Lithium batteries testing it for the company. He remarked that the handling was much better due to the lower weight and that he got about 15 miles more range out of them. So my conclusion is that these batteries are no longer vapor wear. He also mentioned that the new Vectrix company will at some point in the future offer upgrades to existing customers but these will involve more than just swapping the batteries.
Take it for what it is worth.

sparker

Actually this is true it may be possible but not practical.

sparker

Actually this is true it may be possible but not practical.

With my Lithium pack, im finding fast (well less slow really) charging to be more useful than a battery swap would be.

My 60Ah Lithium pack cost ~US$3000 cells only, at the factory.
by the time it was in my bike, I was out AUS$5500 + 30 hours labor

The 80Ah pack that I can now get would cost another AUS$1425.

The 120Ah pack that I think I can fit in with the same amount of hacking I used to squeeze the 60Ah cells in would be total AUS$ 8900.

What I have found with other electric vehicles, is if you are buying more battery, mount all of it permanently.

My 35A charger cost me AUS$2500.
I put it in parrallel with the original charger and the charger I bought to charge normally to give me a total charge current of 53A.

that gets me 60km of range @ 100kmh in 50mins (or part there of).

The charger is small enough that I can take it with me, at the expense of all my storage space.

Matt

I'm 5 kilometers away from 9.000 kms :-)

I am to 32000 Km, have changed me the battery to 12000km

My mileage is now displayed in binary... well almost... it's 11001.1 (17,700km).

I fly one of these Belt CPs V3 also among others. What do you think of them? My Vectrix is approaching 900 miles!

BeltCP was my first RC Helicopter. I was learning 3 months on a simulator before taking Belt to the air. It's a great, cheap helicopter to fly and it can do all others can. I did inverted hover, tic-tacs, tornados,...

Here's a little video, but it's before I did start inverted hover and other things:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk0JDZheXws

Hi, I´m heading for 14.000 today with 11 of 12 original battery modules. The 12th module was replaced during doing the battery revision. This is was winter 09/10 and 12.000 km ago. Althoug I´ve reduced the useable capacity to around 20Ah it s still good for 50 Km per trip when staying below 70 Km/h. 50% / 7000 Km I did this year :-))

Greetings Mike

I'm nearly on 15,000 miles (24,000km) on the original battery at 3 years and 2 months old.

Can't say I've seen any noticeable decrease in range or performance.

Hi rady, nice to see you here again...
I want a trip on your LEAF!!!!!!!!!!
Tomorrow I'll install the Laird's hacked firmware, the vectrix will charge at 6A only...

I'm up to 22000.0 miles now - that's 35405.6km. Battery changed at 3000 miles so 19000 miles later, this one is still going ok (touch wood!)

Drew