#zerosr

Service Stats

In Service Date: 4/6/2016 In Service Mileage: 250 Out of Service Date: 9/23/2017 Out of Service Mileage: 5005 Service Life: 17 months,  4,755 miles

The History & Story

I was not always a motorcyclist. In fact when I met my husband I was very much against them, because I’d already flipped one and felt they were too dangerous. I had no idea that cleaning up the garage one day would change my opinion on motorcycles. While cleaning out the garage at his old townhouse, I came across a sealed turn signal lens cover that was too small for a car. I asked what this went to, and my husband stopped and dropped the box he was holding. He stared at the package I was holding between my fingers and took it from me never breaking eye contact with it. He then tells me this was the turn signal lens for Craig’s motorcycle. Ok, so, who is Craig?

Turns out Craig was one of his best friends in college. Craig died in a motorcycle accident. The day before Craig died, he and my husband skipped classes and hung out all day. The next day he was in the hospital after being struck by a vehicle. I’ll be honest I don’t know all the details, I do know that Craig was buried in Austin, TX and that my husband has a story about his funeral and the rental Mazda Miata he got from Enterprise to attend it.

So, great, I unearthed this rather sad memory. After I’m told this story my husband says that Craig had always said he’d teach him how to ride a motorcycle. I told him how I felt about that, but I could tell this wasn’t the last I’d hear about Craig and motorcycles. Not quite a year later, John shows me the website for Zero motorcycles and says he wants one of them to commute with. I was very, very much against it. However, over time, I caved in... happy spouse, happy life or some such saying. But we didn’t go straight for the Zero...

My husband started with a Sachs MadASS - think if Vespa and Ducati had a lovechild. It was a moped, but it looked like a motorcycle. I picked it up in Nashville, TN bringing back my dad’s old F150 and his 1986 VW Golf diesel to sell off for him. I forgot how long he rode that thing, but the next bike was a BMW 650CS, the short-lived City Sport commuter bike. I know he had this bike for a couple of years, and he was annoyed with it because he never took it on the highway (he had no reason to) and it didn’t like being used as a slow speed commuter. Often it would stall out going through intersections unless a friend of ours ran it on the highway once a month for us.

Fast forward to acquiring Gopher and saying goodbye to VW diesels. John had made friends with the sales guy at the local powersports dealer that sells Zeros, and that guy let him know they had a demo unit coming up for sale at a discount. Since I’d gone electric, it was only fitting that he did too. So we sold the BMW to someone from Maine who flew down and rode it back home and we hopped in the electric car to go buy an electric motorcycle.

I wish I could say that this bike was the end all be all, but it was really a headache from the start. We had numerous issues with the on board charger, the DC-DC converter, and I believe the main bike board failed on it at one point in time. There was a solid 4 months where we were riding the demo DSR instead of our SR because it was waiting on Zero to fix it. But more on that later.

During our time with it, both the powersports sales manager and my husband egged me on to ride it. I finally caved in because I felt it was like having a manual: you should be able to at least move it around your property. So I slowly started to learn to ride a two wheel vehicle again.

Fast forward to the EV Challenge the following year (2017). This event happened on the same day as “Tour de Brew,” a bicycle-based brewery tour that my husband was dying to attend. Because we had three vehicles to show (the BMW, the Smart, and the Zero motorcycle), we dropped the BMW off the night before with my husband’s bicycle stored in the back of it. The next morning I drove the Smart and he rode the Zero to the show grounds. In his haste to get to the starting line of the tour, he picked up the wrong Plug-in NC tote bag that had all the car keys in it instead of his bag with his wallet and gloves. I didn’t realize this until the end of the day, when it was time to pack up and leave.

I called him and he says he’s not far from campus -- over at a place off Lake Wheeler Rd, and that he thinks he left the key to the bike in its ignition. Sure enough, it was there. He said to just hop on it and ride over to pick up the car keys. I said no, I’m in toe shoes and shorts and I don’t know that your helmet will fit. He said well you can ride over here or you can wait two more hours for this to be over. I decided to see if his helmet would fit.

I hopped on the bike and said a small prayer, turned the key and twisted the throttle. Away I went -- I only needed to go 2 miles to get the keys. No big deal. I got there, got the keys, and then took a 10-mile detour to get back to the cars. Turns out, I really liked how the Zero rode. 

I loved it so much, I rode it home and promptly laid it down in my driveway, gently. There wasn’t much damage...

After this we started trading off on Tuesdays. I’d take the bike to work, he’d take my car to work and then his run club event afterwards. We did this for a short time before he decided that commuting with a motorcycle was stupid, and he wanted a convertible smart car instead. I started riding the bike on Tuesdays, and Sundays, and before long I was ready to try and do a long ride with it.

In 2017, Lidl opened their first store in Sanford, North Caroilina. I decided that I wanted to ride the Zero there -- it was 40 miles -- then ride it to my friend’s house in Durham. I remember I used my Pebble smart watch to assist with the turn by turn directions, and I was terrified on the few stretches of 55mph roads I had to be on. However I managed to make it to the Lidl, pick up some mixers, and head to my friend’s home in Durham unscathed. 

But sadly, the battery management on these early units was really problematic. A few weeks after this successful long ride, I had attended a meeting in Burlington with the Triad Auto Association on the Zero. On my way back home I was going to again stop at my friend’s home in Durham (this was my weekend thing for many years), and as I was 2 miles from his house the battery went from 7% to 0% and stranded me in Durham.

Service Stats

In Service Date: 9/8/2017 In Service Mileage: 393 Out of Service Date: 8/16/2018 Out of Service Mileage: 6,518 Service Life: 11 months,  6,125 miles

The History & Story

We kicked off National Drive Electric Week 2017 with buying a new Zero motorcycle. Like the last one, it was the dealer demo unit and we got it as a discount. We also managed to cash in on the federal rebate for two/three wheel EVs. This is the bike that I’d make my second Myrtle Beach by EV road trip.

I had no major problems with this bike, aside from hitting the limitations of its design: on days above 80F the battery pack would heat up to above 120F and would refuse to charge. 

This refusal to charge situation occurred for several reasons. One factor was that I was maxing out the payload for the motor, so it was always under a heavy load. Another factor was the lucite-sealed battery cells wrapped in a heat absorbing black metal case that is complete exposed to the sun. The two combined meant that you couldn’t do 200+ miles days from May to October.

The straw the broke the camel’s back was on August 12, 2018. It was a Sunday, overcast, 83F. I’d done my usual ride around Falls lake and ended at our Brunch spot. The bike Level 1 charged for less than 2 hours while we had lunch. Then I rode it -- on I-540, which is unusual for me but I was feeling fast ‘n furious today -- to my friend’s home in Durham for a pool party. I stopped at a Level 2 near his house for all of 10 minutes to go bump up my SOC so that I wouldn’t need to charge very long at his house. I get to his house and plug in, and the bike stopped charging within 2 hours of being plugged in. The bike was at 20% SOC - enough for me to get it home taking the slow backroads - and it was sitting at 120F after less than 120 miles ridden.