Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free
hagerty.com
hagerty.com
I'd be surprised if it was literally dead weight. It's much easier to design a software control system that uses a common set of cells and caps the full charge than one that switches different cell blocks in depending on what's enabled.
On the other hand, if you connect the "unused" cell in parallel, it's absolutely crucial that it holds the same charge as the other cells at the time of connection. This is because the parallel pack's voltage will level out, leading to a substantial flow of current (essentially causing rapid charging/discharging of the cell). This can result in a fire or even a battery explosion if the cell voltages are too different.
All in all, physically detaching a battery might not be the best approach. The cells will experience different levels of wear, and variations in internal resistance will lead to problems with cell balancing and longer charging times.
This is some serious "c-suite message to help you fall asleep at night territory".
He doesn't care how long the total life span is. It's perfectly capable of it (access to the option can be paid for so it's not equivalent to a hack) and he wants to go further on a single charge, so this is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff to make.
Just let the user make that choice without an absurd subscription.
Phones are designed that way as a way to prolong the longevity of the phone. This bike is designed this way as a way to extract a subscription. These two things are not the same.
In this scenario, have them do step 3..
3) push the button a second time.
I don't see anything inconsistent with a subscription if the manufacturer is responsible for replacing the battery during a warranty time. I prefer large ecosystems with 3rd party parts to dealing with proprietary manufacturing and warranties though.
No it doesn't.
basically the more time that is spent not in the fully discharged state, the longer li-ion will last.
(this doesn't mean you want to leave it 100% charged either, that can also damage the pack; if leaving for extended non-use, leaving it at ~50% state of discharge is the generally recommended advice)
Industrial battery packs extract a fair bit more value from their cells than consumer packs because those customers pay for the extra expense to the manufacturer and they're willing and legally able to accept more complex warranty terms. It's tough to bring something like that to consumers. The fact that this is an option at all shows that competition is increasing along this axis.
HEVs also use only about 50% of the battery to reduce wear on it (go from 30 to 80 charge, no more).
No mom! I'm afraid of heights!
But anyway, I won't buy a vehicle with a subscription based feature list that isn't something like a concierge service. If it's in the vehicle, I've already paid for the gear. (This changes once there's a community of moto hackers that can disable the lockouts... ish)
The evil here is purely "pay monthly to unlock a configuration option", not the existence of such wear limiters. And that part is new.
Fuck Zero Motorbikes and their subscriptions!
Now, if you purchase any premium Zero like the SRF and SRS, every software upgrade comes unlocked and is apart of your purchase as you’d expect.
If you purchase their cheaper tier models like the DS and SR, then the “upgrades” can be software unlocked. I’m not a fan, but it is a one time fee from what I understand. It’s not a subscription. (correct me if you have conflicting data)
That in mind, my SR/F came off the lot with everything already enabled. I checked the app and there are no “upgrades” that can be purchased.
Zero also had a reputation of being one of the less repairable bikes, but they’ve been slowly going in the other direction.
I walked into a dealer being dead set on buying an Energica bike and not buying a Zero. They had no problem selling it to me, but after updating me on where the current state of Zero was vs Energica, I decided to buy the Zero and didn’t regret it in the least.
Seems like it could allow higher quality and cheaper products because they don't have to spend the money on keeping track of multiple hardware versions. Fewer models means the ones that do exist will be more tested and mass produced.
Then again, I've never ridden a motorcycle or even a bike, maybe things are different.
[0] https://servlib.com/sony/audio/cmt-ex1-hcd-ex1.html?start=29
I'm not saying it's good, it's just what it is.
When the EDA tools started making the prints fully automatically and all the tables and notes just became automated outputs to PDF... it kinda killed a bit of the artistry that went into the layouts of the prints. I also feel that the care and choosing the fonts / lettering styles / etc. have become eschewed in favor of just putting out whatever the defaults are from current software without care of adjustment. It's why all published schematics these days look alike, and boring by comparison.
The early Walkman manuals are a good example of this:
https://archive.org/details/wm-f15_202004/SONYWM-DD_service_...
The perfect little isometric views of the special isolated components in boxes along the outside, the shading of the traces on the PCB....
Yes. Absolutely.
Sadly, EDA tools like KiCad and Altium (two of the ones I use most often) make absolutely ugly schematics. Just horrible looking stuff. I always thought this had to do with engineers who did not necessarily come up drawing schematics by hand.
In the later-70's to early 80's --and a little beyond-- you could pickup magazines like Byte and Popular Electronics and see beautifully drawn schematics that were well laid-out and easy to understand. Same with data books. I built lots of projects from those magazines back then. Later on, professionally, I developed a schematic drafting style that mimicked the beautiful schematics from those publications.
CAD requires an effort. You can produce great looking schematics. It depends on how you choose to produce your libraries. We make libraries that make great looking schematics. The difference in legibility is, in my opinion, worth the time we spend creating good looking symbols and parts.
My takeaway is that they want their bikes to get serviced at dealers rather than allow people to more easily work on their own bikes.
I should say specific examples are the Ford Territory and the Great Wall Steed (Wingle 6 in the domestic market).
There are, essentially, bootlegs on line, but my understanding is that while before they had a dedicated Window application for their manuals, they're moving to an online only system, and only for dealers.
So, while there are manuals floating around now, who knows how that will go moving forward.
Obviously, this will be a key sticking point in the future with the "right to repair" laws trickling through the state legislatures.
You can sometimes find bootlegs of these computers (generally a "tough" Windows laptop with software and connecting cables). They usually don't have the latest and greatest version of the software, but if your car is older/out of warranty it's generally covered. I don't know if they get them from a recycle stream or dealer mechanics sell their old ones or how it works.
But other manufacturers who do this make the data available to consumers via AllData or similar services. BMW does not, presumably to make more money on service.
My local stealership wants exactly $200/hr for every service. An oil change for my motorcycle is $300, a brake job is $650. Mind you parts for these jobs are in the mid-to-low XX's. It's ALL service fees. Reshimming the engine (once every 15k miles or so) costs a minimum of $1200 going up to $2000 if the engine needs significant adjustment. I've shimmed sportbikes for years and 6-8 hours worth of work is insane. I can do it in a few hours excluding the time to go get beer.
It's borderline theft. "Stealership" is not tongue in cheek. I am seriously considering trading in my motorcycle for cash (even at a loss) and re-buying an old R100GS.
Wow, your dealer is really raking their customers. Mine charges about $200 to check valves on a parallel twin.
I know this is a fixed price because last time I took it in, it was a "bigger" service, where they had to check valve clearances. But apparently something went wrong when they tried to take apart something (I forget the details) so they had to work much longer than expected on it. In the end, I didn't have to pay more than I had expected, taking it in.
Now, all this isn't to say it's cheap. I was horrified with the prices: it often costs more than my Mercedes' service at a Mercedes dealership.
(Old) Ducatis are also a pain with the desmodromic valves (i.e. springless valves). Some of their valves have 0,0 clearance and the mechanic needs to hone down shims to an exact fit. Also the reshimming needs to be redone on older Ducs after only a few thousand kilometers/miles, or annually.
In contrast, BMWs older air/oilcooled boxer engines are a joy to service, easiest accessability (cylinder heads stick out sideways), only 3 tools needed for adjusting valve clearances (two types of Torx/allen keys and a feeler gauge set), 20mins of work or less depending on your routine.
Ugh, pulling and especially re-inserting the camshaft shouldnt be done in a hurry. At least from my experience with the V-Strom's V-engine. Needs to be cooled down and insertion of the camshaft needs proper care (no dinging of the bearing shells) and one must make sure to not skip a tooth at the geartrain/chain.
Even the oil change was a pain. I had to quite literally crush the dealer oil filter and break it off in pieces with a pipe wrench because it was shaped in such a way you needed a special tool to get a grip on it. I called the dealer, the tool was $180 and would take 3 weeks to ship. It only worked with Triumph brand oil filters (probably white labeled semi-custom K&N's) and they wanted $60 for a filter (vs. $14 for a K&N at the local bike parts store).
Even my best universal clamps + duct tape + sandpaper couldn't hold a grip on the stupid filter. Several trips to the local auto parts store trading wrenches back and forth until I said fuck it and went to Home Depot. Lucky for me a K&N oil filter fit exactly (dummies still used a standard thread for the oil filter port)...otherwise that would've been somewhat hard to explain. Even the crush washer for the drain plug was 10x as expensive... ended up taking the old one to Ace and finding a replacement for 10 cents. The only thing that was about equal in price was the recommended oil which I was able to score on sale at Walmart but otherwise would've been a wash.
As you can tell I can not stop complaining about this stupid thing. Do yourself a favor and avoid Euro motorcycles.
I was considering triumph as my first bike but after reading this its a hard pass.
To your knowledge are there any brands known for being DIY friendly on current models (read being able to provide/sell offline service manuals)?
So what is “a few hours”?
Yes, but it is not my job. I would estimate my tool's at around $5000 or so. Collected over a little under 2 decades of riding.
> Do you have to maintain a commercial brick and mortar
No. But a Japanese bike shop has the same tools and brains as the stealership and charges half as much.
It's well known dealers upcharge for everything. If you don't believe me, find the best 3rd party shop in town and simply compare hourly rates. You may even ask them to itemize a modestly challenging job (CV boots for a car, maybe) that would need a skyjack. I would bet dollars to donuts the dealer price is 1.5x-2x more.
"Special" motorcycles (e.g. euro motorcycles in America) are NOTORIOUS for absurd dealer upcharges. It wasn't until ECUs started becoming smart that this was a problem. I could service a 90s-0x's BMW, for example, for pennies on the dollar to BMW's specification in my own garage. This is why Right To Repair is so important. Car dealers are the tip of the spear in the fight against it because they lose quite literally millions because of people like me. It's one of the reasons I will never own an EV as long as I live. They are (especially Tesla's) money printers on 4 wheels for the dealer.
My Triumph, for example, has no fundamental reason I need to plug in and tell the ECU I bled my ABS. No reason AT ALL. They do this because if you do the work yourself they can still charge you an hour (~200 dollars) to plug their tool in, re-enable your ABS, and give you a finger wag about doing work yourself. This is the John Deere-ization of consumer vehicles. This isn't unique to Triumph. Many consumer brand cars have the same problems. They even build in anti-tampers (such as the oil filter I had to literally break into pieces to remove). Modern vehicles are hostile to the consumer. The auto lobbies would tell you this is because the "advanced technology" but in reality it's used exactly like John Deere does. That is, to screw the consumer out of every single penny for even the most modest of trivialities.
BMW motorcycle data is not available at all to consumers anymore, only certified techs.
Suzuki doesn't publish data, but Clymer usually fills the gap.
By contrast, Honda will still sell you some really great dead tree manuals on their motorcycles.
As far as I know they keep it as an interactive website so that PDFs are hard to make.
I haven’t found a good copy yet but it’s also possible that I’m just not as good at searching for pirated content as back in the old torrenting days (or perhaps just less motivated)
Triumph in particular is notorious for this. For most bikes made beyond 2018 or so there are nearly no 3rd party manuals available. You have to pay, quite literally by the page or by the hour, to view the manuals on their website.
For older bikes its often easier. Clymer's has a substantial library that are often better than even the dealer mechanic book. I'm the mechanic among my group of friends and newer bikes are exceedingly difficult to not only work on, but also find proper manuals for.
It's not a PDF you can just flip through, it's software.
You have to run it in a windows XP VM, following a very specific set of installation instructions. Getting locked out for no reason is very common (so you just boot a backup of the VM).
Not for the faint of heart.
They are based on the official tech manuals and only cover the stuff that is within reason of a home or small shop mechanic, and don't require you to have manufacturer specific tools in most cases.
I used to ride a Zero SR. It was a phenomenal bike but also completely unserviceable in Australia. I ended up reverse engineering the log protocol [1] to get a sense of how it was performing and maintain what I could myself. It was horribly painful, inefficient and completely avoidable spend of time.
Hackability for devices is one thing but when you straddle an energy source that propels you, a fragile meat sack, at speed imo it's essential to have absolute confidence in how the machine behaves.
[1]: https://github.com/zero-motorcycle-community/zero-log-parser
For an example I needed new lifting chain for the raider lawnmower and it was an ordeal finding the correct chain and making it correct length without such manual. With manual I'd expect it to take 5 minutes to find the correct piece, it's size, lenght and required stress endurance level.
It's 2023, doesn't have to be physical (or could for some extra buck), but at least have one available on your website.
I'm thinking about starting to ask for it for everything I buy... Not really hoping to get it every time but still...
1 Year with an Energica Ribelle by NewZeroland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne2GfBkxH2c
Enigica look to be following typical Italian exotica. It’s a premium/performance motorcycle with premium parts, breaks, suspension, handling etc.
Zero seem more middle of the road. Not designed to be exotica, not designed with premium breaks, suspension, not designed for all out performance/handling, it’s a general purpose motorcycle designed for urban environments.
I think Enigica and Zero are trying to target different segments and Enigica is targeting a segment above Zero. The sportier side.
Given the ratio between the weight of the motorcycle and the weight of the passenger/s they are extemely efficient, having the whole passenger vehicles switch to motorcycles would be even better than have them switch to 3000 pounds EVs.
The vast majority of people are too coward to drive them unfortunately
you could frame regular motorcycles the same way. i'm not sure 'coward' is the right word either given the statistics.
>Electric motorcycles are a terrible idea because they are not the problem as far as emission go.
people aren't only into EVs for the environmental aspects; they're unique and offer a unique experience.
Automotive is a 150yr old industry, you will not re-invent the wheel. Progress has plateued in the 1970-80s as far as fun goes.
When Americans come to Europe and try the Vespas and the Lambrettas , that's about the same fun upgrade as going from an ICE which does 0-60 in 8s to an EVs which does it in 4s, only the Vespa experience costs 20$ and the Vespa itself 1000$.
for some reason they come back home and completely forget about it and decide to fork 50,000$ for an EV instead
There are other reasons to want an electric motorcycles besides low emissions.
A 45,000$ Kawasaki H2R has won a drag race against a RedBull F1 car, an F16, a Gulfstream G600 a Bugatti, a TeslaP100..[0]
By orders of magnitude the Kawasaki was the cheapest vehicle in that race and smoked them all..but that bike can only be driven to the limit by the 1% of riders, the ones with the best skills and massive balls.
What's the point of an EV motorbike? 0-60mph in 2.2s is not enough? Want 1.5s? Cool but what's the point of numbers for numbers sake if people aren't ever pushing it to the limit?
Also what's the point when you can only do it once before it overheats?
I've been riding for ~40 years and I don't think I've _ever_ met someone who rode an ICE bike for the fuel/emissions efficiency. It's for the fun and adventure. My stock Energica does 0-60 in 2.8s. WAAAY more fun than my 30yo 1100cc.
Pretty GOOD idea from where I'm sitting.
Should I be impressed? That's the same of a 1999 Yamaha R6 selling for less than 1000$ [0]
And the R6 can do it all day, you'll run out of tires before you run out of clutch and gas.
The Energica does it once and then it's panting and overheating.
And as always the point in motorsport is that every noob squid and every idiot is capable of going fast in a straight line, the light supersport bikes such as the Ducati and the Yamahas will smoke the Electric motorcycles in corners because the latter are heavy due to the batteries
[0] https://accelerationtimes.com/models/yamaha-yzf-r6-n-a
Sounds like you've been had.
The Enigica has 215nm of torque, about twice the 2022 R1.
The R6, the power is all up top, it’s gutless down low, you have to be up near the top in the rev range for it to go, engine screaming away. You’d also need to be pretty skilled at launching to get that 2.8s acceleration from it.
The Enigica you get all the torque from the get go, so much they have to limit it at the start. You just twist and it pulls from the off, no flat spots, it just keeps on pulling. It’s the torque that gives you the buzz, trying to hang on.
They are very different power deliveries and the Enigica makes a far better road bike (power wise) with all the torque rather than a high reving 600 il4 that you need to be near red line to get the most out of it. Even a 1000cc il4 with more torque, they don’t really get going until above 6,000rpm then your license is gone as you click in to second gear when making the most of the power band.
The Yamaha MT-09’s/10’a are so popular as they have high torque down low where it’s most practical for everyday riding.
With the introduction of ride by wire in the early 00s the electronics became king.
You can customize the throttle ride by wire system according to your preference so the torque area becomes much larger and spread out on the throttle when you move your wrist.
Once the problem of wrist sensitivity has been solved by ride by wire customization the high revs you mentioned are much more manageable.
And also you say engine screaming away like it’s a bad thing.
1) a 4 cylinder in line at 10000rpm is music for an enthusiast ears
2) It makes people aware that you are there , which is a feature not a bug, motorcycles are notoriously invisible for car and truck drivers
Was my 100% transportation, rain or shine. SoCal, so not much rain. But, yea it rained. I had an I’ll fitting, $25 open face white helmet from K-Mart, and wore a ski jacket, ski gloves, and ski goggles for gear (the yellow lenses worked really well at night to be honest).
You could catch me with my original Macintosh in those very cool carrying cases we had back then bungeed to the rear seat. I’ve had stacks of books explode off the back when one popped out like a drunk jenga player.
I can attest that my ad hoc gear performed adequately when things got horizontal.
When I got a new job requiring a 30 mile one way commute into the heart of West LA, I traded the scooter in for a 600cc street bike. $2000 with highway robbery financing interest rates. It never crossed my mind to buy a car.
I got free parking at the building (vs $60 per month), free use of car pool lanes and, the crème de la crème of California motorcycle riding, lane splitting. Lane splitting in the rain on slick Bots dots is unnerving. Lane splitting made that commute sane.
Did that for a couple of years, had a scary get off (slick right turn arrow at 2am, I simply shouldn’t have taken that route), and that made me sell the bike. I also sold the Macintosh for $750, and used the money to buy a new bike — the later to be cult favorite, Honda Hawk GT. Dealership had a fire sale on them one weekend, so I got a good deal. The Hawk was notoriously expensive in the day.
Selling the Mac for the bike is one of the best things I ever did. I was a computer geek sans computer for several years.
Oh, the Hawk charted at 38 horsepower. Less than my previous bike. Got it to 110 once at a “high desert test area”. Fast enough for me. I never bought a bike on performance numbers. They were all fast enough (save the scooter). But speed was never my thing.
That bike took me up and down California and around the southwest. Plus my even longer commute when I changed jobs again.
I did finally buy a truck. Test drove it with my M certified license. Didn’t get my actual car license until after I bought it. As many have with many things, I bought the truck because of a girl. And so it goes.
I absolutely would factor fuel efficiency into my purchase decision, but it's also not the only reason. Because you're right, they are definitely fun :)
But the more important point is that electric motorcycles are amazingly fun to ride. No clutch and crazy of acceleration gives an amazing ride.
Every motorcycle is fun to ride, and the acceleration part, Yamaha clocked the 0-60 in 3s bit back in 1999[0] , we are really splitting hairs to somehow elevate the concept of electrification like it's some sort of re-inventing the wheel for the fun of the consumer and not for political goals, I have come to believe that it's a form of brainwashing
That is unless the concept of 'electrification' is used to mask the inability to use a manual gearbox as it pertains to motorcycles.
Motocross racing is probably going to see more electric because you really can't put that much power down into the dirt. And electric dirt bikes have much finer grain control of power delivery which makes them quite competitive against gas motorcycles.
And smaller electric dirt bikes can get away with going places where the noise of a gas engine would just draw too much ire. I've seen some Surron's going onto bike paths; they're not supposed to but if you're careful and courteous, I doubt anyone's gonna call the cops on you.
Surron was also doing demo's and training with their bike's indoors with the speed electronically limited to about 12kph (7mph). No tail pipe emissions, no noise, so no problems running them in a building. Folks that have never swung a leg over a motorcycle before could confidently mess around with one in about 20 minutes without having to think first about clutch or being scared of a whiskey throttle or stalling the bike.
And you gotta keep in mind, it's not the expensive high performance two wheelers that are where they're really thriving, it's the cheap personal commuter. Pedal ebikes and low speed electric mopeds are growing pretty damn quick.
Plus there is at least one intriguing idea in regards to security that gas bike's can't do. Having the electric motor apply reverse torque to the rear when someone tries to wheel the bike away without the key, effective turning the motor into a wheel lock for the rear when parked. I don't know how practical it really is but the ideal has some merit IMO.
As a riding experience, electric power delivery, the instant torque and performance will make the riding experience more fun. As a pure riding experience electric is probably far better than combustion engines, and I love my ice powered bikes, the noise, the different engine characteristics, singles, boxers, il4, v4, vtwins etc as much as anyone else.
Practicality, range, weight is different and we’re probably a long time off comparable practicality of mid to large capacity size motorcycles.
I own two and emissions have never been a consideration for my purchase. Nobody is buying electric bikes to save the environment.
To give a contrarian view, I would happily become an electric bike customer. I think it is a great idea to apply electric motors to motorcycles : - Torque is usable at low speeds. To have the same experience in a ICE bike require a huge and comparably heavy motor, like the triumph speed triple or a Harley-Davidson. - Range is still a bit low but not far from the 250km/150miles an ICE bike can have. By the way, most bikers I know, myself included, have to stop before reaching such distances. Confort makes it hard to do more. - Speaking of confort, less noise and vibrations is a huge plus
Price is still high bit it will reduce. We also can hope for range increases too [1]. My main concern currently is charging time, even with fast charging, 40min is still a bit too much for me, and I hope that progress will be made in this area (with 800v architecture maybe?)
[1]: https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-bikes/2023-energica-...
No it requires you to know the rpm range where the torque is on your motorbike and then be able to use the clutch and the throttle to reach it.
Slow relase of clutch + ride-by-wire system introduced in the early 00s allows for smoother acceleration compared to the past
An entry level electric bike for $25k or a top of the line BMW for $18k. It’s just not even a comparison.
Okay. 20k. Still less than an electric and more powerful with more features.
Top of the line, in it's class. A sports bike, with shaft drive, linked brakes, traction control, and heated grips.
Find me an electric bike with those features for anywhere near a comparable price. Specifically, I will not even consider a bike without a shaft drive (or in the case of an electric, a hub drive would be acceptable.) I am done maintaining chains and belts.
The disadvantages of belts are efficiency (especially compared to chains), off road durability and trailside serviceability.
My bike has been rock-fucking-solid. Its been in the shop once for a real break in 16 years for a busted fuel line. (not including tires and engine oil changes). Its really hard for me to believe another bike could be as reliable.
On an R1200/R1250 it's 12,000 miles or 2 years.
Now if you look at K16 specs, 160 horses at 6750 rpm with 123.7 lbs-ft at 5250 rpm. And it DOES have linked brakes, traction control, ABS and heated grips.
Both R1250RT and K16 are marketed in the sports tourer segment.
So NO, R1250RT is no where near top of line sports tourer and definitely not a sports bike.
I do agree with the general premise, that electric is more expensive. There needs to be more competition to drive prices down like is happening for cars.
and that's kinda the reason that the value proposition for electric motorbikes isn't very good. if you can give up the requirement of "i want to drive on the highway", an electric bicycle is going to do what you need for a fraction of the cost.
electric motorbikes lean more towards toys than practical tools, so they're priced like toys.
but i'm sure the FXE is way more fun.
The problem is that the electric motorcycle market isn't big enough to enjoy efficiencies of scale, so the only ones that exist cater to the wealthy/luxury clients.
The value proposition for motorcycles is really not as impressive either. The instant electric torque is more of a safety issue on bikes, because you can already trivially pop wheelies on regular gas-powered motorcycles.
On top of that, they have better range, because the battery capacity on a motorbike is limited by the width of the human hip, not highway lane.
The best use case for that is probably the thing you linked, Surron, which is an e-MTB essentially, where high torque is really nice for going up hills (and isn't really required for 60mph+ cruising on freeways)
I think they should work great for commuting, if you don't live too far away. But then, people would want to use the bike for other things, too, like going on road trips.
And that's where it hurts. You usually don't take road trips on the main highways because it's boring as hell. You'll take smaller roads, which often don't yet have any reasonable charging infrastructure. Combined with the shorter ranges, nobody is really going to risk it, so they'll just buy a gas bike. Hell, even with my gas bike's tank which is on larger side (19.5 liters), I sometimes have to cart around "safety gas", which I've had to use once. And no, it's not a dirt bike or anything, the only time it went off the asphalt was to go inside a hotel yard.
I think this is the reason why, at least where I live in Europe, you see next to no "serious" electric bikes, but practically all smaller ones are now electric: these bikes don't do anything apart commuting anyway, so electric is great for that.
I have an e-bike, I can take it on the train, go to some random town and explore. You can buy 'S-pedelecs" which are basically mopeds in bicycle form-factor - they have powerfull motors and go 45 km/h.
Then high-end electric motorcycles make sence
But lower end electric motorbikes, I dont get. You camt tale them on oiblic transport, they need a socket to charge, they cant use car-standarss for charging, and they dont have the range. So they seem to be in purgatory.
My point was about motorbikes. Which, as you say, have all the inconveniences of a full-blown motorbike, without the nice things, and the smaller ones aren't materially better than a souped-up e-bike.
So far the furthest I’ve ridden is from Bay Area to Big Sur and back, which needs to fast charge like 2 times each way.
This can be replaced by electric: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn...
There might still be automotive service manual torrents floating around with content which was partially a result of my efforts when I was in the "bookz scene" over 2 decades ago.
On one of them, it's gotten comically bad, where easily >90% of new posts are from spambots, and it takes days for them to be removed after I report them.
Subreddits and Facebook are much more active comparatively, and that's a bummer in my opinion.
Yes. I had a manual for a scooter (which was more similar to a motorbike than to a skateboard) complete with 3D exploded-views of every part.
...........?
Wheel bearings, axle grease, wheel alignment, fork seals, suspension bearings, head bearings, chain/belt, sprockets, brake system (pads, piston, caliper, seals, master cylinder, fluid, rotors), tires, cooling system. Plus the classics of levers, hoses, bent handles bars or forks, stripping bolts, broken kick stands, etc. None of that goes away with an electric bike.
And you do need to do inspections on electrical connectors at minimum. Being electric doesn't solve small design flaws. Suzuki infamously made the green connector of death. The headlamps and ignition switch on the same connector, which inevitably burns out due to resistance in the connection growing due to corrosion which eventually causes it to melt. Saw a similar problem with a Kawasaki with corrosion interfering with kill switch circuit.
I do most my braking with a combination of front and engine braking. I usually don't touch the rear until either I'm close to a full stop or if I'm doing slow speed maneuvers. So unless Zero's got regen on the front wheel, I don't see there being too much different between the two.
I get that there's still going to be screws to turn on an electric bike, but that's going to be about what it boils down to: a list of torque specs.
Harder then you might think. I've seen someone not install the pads and have the rotor grind down into the caliper itself. Then installed the pad on the broken caliper and getting so crooked that it eventually warped the rotor into a dinner plate. IIRC the edge of the was about 1mm or 2mm out of line from the center of the rotor.
Swinging back on topic though, I do disagree slightly on the premise that the service manual is just a glorified page of torque specs. Speaking personally, fixing something isn't usually that difficult. Time consuming, demanding in focus, and wise to be cautious but generally speaking the procedure is usually well laid out.
What's hard is diagnosing the problem in the first place, determining what the fix is, and then locating the necessary parts or suppliers for those parts. The service manual's usually invaluable for the first bit.
Just to give a car example: You have a car who's instrument cluster who's center LCD that's stuck at minimum brightness. Is it a problem with the instrument cluster, the dimmer switch, or the PWM signal generator that controls the cluster's brightness?
As it turns out, someone thought about that. The service manual listed out a self test diagnostic for the instrument cluster; with engine off and key out, hold the odometer reset for 5 seconds, insert the key and turn to the on position. It will light up every light to full brightness and disregard the input PWM signal.
Who could have figured that out without the manual listing that procedure? I probably couldn't. I'd probably be reduced to parts cannon.
Electronics aren't immune to manufacturing defects, design flaws, mislabeled products, abuse, or the outside elements. And if something does fail, it's an absolute bitch to trace down problems with the electrical. Service manuals are invaluable both listing how things are supposed to work as well as often having extensive trouble shooting guides that give a hint at what could be a problem.
I am not sure any amount of free PDF files can help that rider.
The regen on my Energica is definitely a lot stronger than on my Zero, though—it's a lot more like an electric car where you can keep your foot over the accelerator almost all the time.
Between the two bikes, I've got roughly ten thousand miles and all four brake pads sit at ~85%.
I strongly recommend this path, though parts availability with RE mean I probably suggest you look more at other low-displacement bikes, like the Honda Rebel, and let RE figure out its North American supply chain issues for a while.
All I see at https://service.tesla.com/service-manuals is the manual for the legacy Roadster, which Tesla no longer supports.
And if I login, all I can see is the option to buy some kind of service subscription.
You need to click "Model 3" (or whichever other model you were trying to find a service manual for) in the top nav bar. If everything went right, you will see this screen[0], with all the needed links (instead of what you saw previously).
Once signed in, I was able to hit “Menu”, then select Model 3, which took me to that page.
On that page, I can see the service manual and more, for free.
Do you know of companies charging for service manuals?
Tesla and these guys are the exceptions.