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Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free
- rasz 3y agoAfaik the current ev moto leader Energica just emails you pdf of service/owners manual if you ask them.
- cdot2 3y agoIs energica really the leader in electric motorcycle sales? I couldnt find any stats but Ive definitely seen some zero bikes on the road and Ive never seen an energica in person
- eightnoneone 3y agoIt’s surely the leader in the bikes’ capabilities and reliability.
- knob 3y agoWhat's your source for this opinion?
- eightnoneone 3y agoI’ve owned both.
- tiew9Vii 3y agoI can’t comment on reliability, don’t own one. 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.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y agoThey are going nowhere. Electric motorcycles are a terrible idea because they are not the problem as far as emission go. 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
- serf 3y ago>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.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago> > 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
- jameson71 3y agoThe statistics show that most people can’t handle a motor vehicle safely.
- bradly 3y ago> Electric motorcycles are a terrible idea because they are not the problem as far as emission go. There are other reasons to want an electric motorcycles besides low emissions.
- m463 3y agoRefreshing compared to the ways others have gone (tesla for instance)
- zlsa 3y agoTesla makes their service manuals available for free (you need to sign in and subscribe, but it’s free and didn’t require a payment method for me.) https://service.tesla.com/ https://service.tesla.com/
- LeoPanthera 3y agoWhere? All I see at https://service.tesla.com/service-manuals 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.
- freerobby 3y agoYou need to sign in with a Tesla account. Once you sign in, the service manuals are free for all vehicles. The paid subscriptions are for their proprietary software.
- magnetic 3y agoCan you please walk me through it on the site? I'm logged in and can't find any service manual (I can find the regular "Owner's Manual" though under "Documents" under the a specific car selected. Is that state specific? (I'm in CA)
- filoleg 3y agoAt first it wasn't working for me either, then I turned off my adblock, refreshed cache, tried again, and it worked. Not sure which part specifically helped. 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). 0. https://imgur.com/a/RDkuSUC https://imgur.com/a/RDkuSUC
- WestOaklandfan 3y ago[dead]
- post_break 3y agoOk but does it require any special software to modify or change parts?
- porknubbins 3y agoAre there any OEMs whose service manuals are hard to find? I restore cars and motorcycles and have never had trouble finding a pdf or hard copy for around $20. Its good that they are doing this though a lot of the secrets I’d want to know about an electric motorcycle are about the ECU when that software is some of the most tightly guarded of any.
- nicbou 3y agoSuzuki. 100€ or more, and only if you ask your dealership politely. Same for Renault. I had to find a torrent somewhere.
- mintplant 3y agoI acquired an old Sony CMT-EX1 CD player a while back and was tinkering around with it. I found the service manual online and was blown away. There are pinouts! Block diagrams [0] for the PCBs! Capacitor inventories! I wish we still did this for consumer hardware. [0] https://servlib.com/sony/audio/cmt-ex1-hcd-ex1.html?start=29 https://servlib.com/sony/audio/cmt-ex1-hcd-ex1.html?start=29
- kushie 3y agothis is out of nowhere but if anyone can help me find a service manual (not owners manual) for a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-50 i would be in deep gratitude. a few octaves intermittently don't work and i'd love to tinker
- sobkas 3y agoIt's service manual, at least it says so https://elektrotanya.com/yamaha_clp-50_sm.pdf/download.html https://elektrotanya.com/yamaha_clp-50_sm.pdf/download.html
- notjulianjaynes 3y agohttps://elektrotanya.com/yamaha_clp-50_sm.pdf/download.html https://elektrotanya.com/yamaha_clp-50_sm.pdf/download.html
- jeffbee 3y agoYeah but there’s nothing to break or fix on a Zero! I needed all those Honda service manuals over the years because honing cylinder walls and fitting rings and grinding valves and bedding in crank bearings are things you sometimes have to do. What’s complicated about an electric motorcycle?
- somerandomqaguy 3y ago>Yeah but there’s nothing to break or fix on a Zero! ...........? 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.
- bastawhiz 3y agoNot to be pedantic or invalidate your point, but most (all?) Zero bikes are air cooled, and they have zero hoses. Brakes get like an order of magnitude less wear thanks to regen, and the only fluid is brakes (well, and the battery, but if you find yourself in contact with it, the bike is a loss).
- somerandomqaguy 3y agoFair enough on the cooling, but brakes I disagree, at least with my riding style. 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.
- mmh0000 3y agoI’ve been wanting an electric motorcycle for years. But every time I look at the pricing I just can’t justify it. An entry level electric bike for $25k or a top of the line BMW for $18k. It’s just not even a comparison.
- leetrout 3y agoWhere are you getting the top BMW for 18? Or are you talking about the ones they farm out?
- mmh0000 3y agohttps://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/models/sport/r1250rs.html https://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/models/sport/r1250rs.html Okay. 20k. Still less than an electric and more powerful with more features.
- subhro 3y ago1250RS is not top of the line for sure in any of the segments it is marketed at. I would say a K16 would be more towards the top.
- leetrout 3y agoYep. Or the flagship of adventure bikes - R1250 GS also a bit more than the RS or RT.
- mmh0000 3y agoI disagree, the 1250RS is basically a redesign of the K1200S (my current bike). Just swapping out the inline-v for the BMW boxer motor. 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.
- i_k_k 3y agoOff topic, but does anyone make simple electric motorcycles? You know, a frame, battery, motor, etc., but without a connected app and all the goo that comes with it.
- userbinator 3y agoYou can probably find plenty of them on Alibaba.
- toyg 3y agoMaybe Maeving? They're kinda proud of being barebones.
- dabluecaboose 3y agoWell, that's very cool and was interesting to read about. Shame it's not available in the US yet
- bastawhiz 3y agoI've got a Zero and an Energica and neither really uses the app (the energica app is actually too old to install on my Pixel 6). The only compelling use for the Zero app is to download bike log data and upgrade the firmware.
- razemio 3y agoThey have a different name in the US, but in Germany the bike is called tinbot Esum pro. I am very satisfied. Have driven over 3000km in half a year. No issues so far. They aren't powerful but still fun to drive. Coming from a Kawasaki Z900 which was to expensive for me to justify. You can buy a tinbot for 5000€ brand new. They have a range of 80 km full throttle in the summer and about 60 km in the winter.
- russellbeattie 3y agoIt's going to take a while for people to get used to tinkering with electric vehicles vs ICEs. There's lots of great ways to get yourself fried in those manuals. I could totally see myself skipping the "High Voltage Discharging procedure" (despite the warning on every section involving the battery) just to make a "quick adjustment" and becoming a statistic.
- winddude 3y agoThis should be the norm.
- goku12 3y agoIt was the norm. I wonder if the HN population is young enough to have not seen them.
- RankingMember 3y agoService manuals being free was the norm? I had to pay for the one for my Japanese motorcycle from 1982 and on every other vehicle I've owned, unless you mean bootlegging on car forums. I don't know anyone who's gotten free service manuals direct from the manufacturer.
- userbinator 3y agoYou could borrow a physical copy from the local library, which often had a huge number of them. 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.
- RankingMember 3y agoOne of the bummers of the decline of automotive forums is the reduction in availability of the bootleg copies. So many are wastelands of broken links these days.
- userbinator 3y agoDo you really think automotive forums are in decline?
- RankingMember 3y agoI can only speak for the ones I visit, which are primarily for Japanese vehicles: there's been a noticeable decline in post frequency and the info that is there has gone stale/is full of broken pic references/links. 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.
- turdprincess 3y agoGood move, but another thing this brand does is charge you a monthly subscription to unlock the full battery range on your bike. If you don’t pay, you lug around a dead weight extra battery you cannot access. Overall this brand is notoriously unfriendly to consumers.
- randunel 3y agoI'd been considering getting a Zero versus other brands for over a year, and you comment got me to reconsider, thanks! I wasn't are of this scummy behaviour of theirs until now.
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- fit2rule 3y ago[dead]
- vladvasiliu 3y agoI wonder how this works in practice. Is this, in practice, equivalent to some laptops' and newer androids' setting of never fully charging the battery in order to improve the overall battery lifetime if you know you won't use the 100% anyway? Or is it just dead weight which is never touched and you just use fewer cells, but always the same?
- cowthulhu 3y agoIt’s literal dead weight. It’s especially bad because the bikes already don’t have great ranges (and the estimated ranges are often pretty optimistic), and extra dead weight cuts into your limited range even further.
- hgomersall 3y agoDo you have specific knowledge on this? 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.
- squarefoot 3y agoFrom a comment on that site, it seems only some models manuals are free.
- kimburgess 3y agoThis is great news, and somewhat unfortunate something so benign requires celebration. 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 https://github.com/zero-motorcycle-community/zero-log-parser
- hpeinar 3y agoThe more I get problems with different machinery (chainsaw, raider lawnmower, waterpump, powerwasher) I've really started thinking more and more how every piece of equipment should automatically come with a service manual included which would also have all the bits and pieces clearly stated and catalogued. I've seen some of these manuals not being a detailed as I hoped. For context, I'm in Europe. 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...
- ubermonkey 3y agoI bought a moto last year, and looked a little at Zero and at Sondors, but ended up just getting a small-displacement conventional bike (Royal Enfield Classic 350). It was cheap, gets excellent mileage (75 MPG), and has sufficient power for urban surface-street usage (it tops out at like 65, but honestly it's happier below 50). 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.
- liendolucas 3y agoI'm still wondering why there's no regulation on this, forcing manufacturers to hand-in both the user and service manuals. I own a Kawasaki motorbike and tried to get its service manual just to understand a bit more about it, and is impossible to get it at this point unless I pay Kawasaki 100€ for its printed version (a fucking ripoff). It doesn't cost them anything to release PDFs as a courtesy to its customers.
- IgorPartola 3y agoI have almost always had luck with searching the web for “Kawasaki vn800 service manual pdf”. The hardest manual to get was for my Harley but for $20 I was able to buy a scanned PDF from a site that’s almost certainly illegal but delivered exactly what I needed.
- liendolucas 3y agoYeah, I think for particular models it can be easy to find them. But for others no luck at all. My guess is that maybe after few years they can be found. In particular for the z650rs I wasn't able to get any good results.
- deviantbit 3y agoBlows my mind they didn't provide the service manual for free. I raced KTM off-road for 30+ years, and every bike came with the service manual, complete diagrams, and product replacement part numbers. Every time I pulled out on my KTM 990 Adventure R I had the manual with me as well.
- sameedahmad 3y agointeresting