2013: A bike Odyssey.

[FreepZ]

I finally broke down and called the bike dealer in Tampa to ask them for an ETA on my Empulse R (I've been trying not to be too obnoxious about it), and the dealer said that he expected a truck with 5 bikes to arrive in Tampa by the end of the month, and that one of those bikes would be mine!

Woohoo!

Of course I'm not going to really believe it until the bike is under my butt, but the signs are are looking pretty good.

My first challenge is riding the bike from the dealership in Tampa, over to my office in Maitland, which is about 113 miles away. (Yeah, nothing like Terry's trek across the country, but plenty long for me.)

with a couple of stops along the way to charge.

I've calculated that I should be able to do the entire trip in about 5 hours, provided:

• The battery will be fully charged at the dealership.
• I recharge for 1.5 hours at the first stop, and 1 hour at the second.
• The charging stations will be Level II.
• I keep under 65 mph on the highway.

My plans are based on a bunch of estimations* and assumptions, but I've hopefully included enough safety margin so my bad data won't get me into trouble.

Questions for people who have already got their Empulse bikes:

What do I need to know about the break in period?

• Don't exceed XXX rpm?
• Stay in Normal mode?
• Anything else?

* For anybody interested, here's the math that I'm using to plan the trip.

The important number is the Capacity for each leg of the trip (if that gets to 0, it's game over).
My calculations assume that there is a linear relationship between speed and energy consumption which I know is not true, but errs on the side of safety.

I figure that the battery level will let me know close I am following my planned energy usage, which will tell me if I can speed up or if I have to slow down.

[flar]

Without going through all of your math, for going long distances in electric vehicles the slower you go the less time it takes to get there (within limits).  With 121 mile city range, there is some relaxed pace at which you could do the entire trip with no charging at all in less than 5 hours - just keep it to 25-35 MPH roads (even the city range was measured with a portion of the trip hitting 55MPH so there is some leeway there, the average including stops is around 20MPH, but that averages in the time spent stopped).  Even if you don't quite make it, a much shorter charging stop will bridge the remainder if you stay off the highways.

If you really only average 20MPH, then it might take a similar amount of time, but if you can keep going at 25-35 (more boulevards than stop and go city) then you could make it in 4 hours or so.

[FreepZ]

What you say is true, but my goals are:
1. To ride the bike home.
2. To have fun.

It's going to be more fun to ride the bike faster and take a few breaks along the way, rather than to ride slowly down the road for 4 hours straight (my butt hurts just thinking about it).

There's a movie theater at the first stop, and by the time the movie is over, the bike will be fully charged.
There's a mall at the second stop, with plenty of restaurant choices.

I'm getting a lift over to Tampa from a friend who drives a Volt and knows where all the free chargers are, so I don't even expect to pay for any of the electricity (except through patronage of the places I'm going to visit while waiting for the bike to charge).

The total time may be longer with breaks, but I think that the highway speeds and breaks will make the journey more much more fun.

[protomech]

I'd need to do the math, but I think the fastest full-loop charge/discharge route is when you keep your discharge speed roughly equal to charge speed. For my bike, this means around 1 kW = 15-20 mph. For the Empulse, this means 3.5 kW = 35-40 mph.

Of course, you don't have to do a full-loop charge/discharge for the entire charge.. just about 1/2 of it.

I would budget a little more charge time than you plan on .. depending on the temperature you may see a little less than expected range. You really don't want to bust out the MTS towing plan with fewer than 150 miles on the bike : )

Otherwise, your range and energy figures look pretty reasonable. I'll echo what flar said about a slower route being faster, if possible - 30 more minutes spent riding @ 45 mph might save an hour of charging. (on the other hand, you can spend that hour charging sitting on your ass sipping a drink and reading a book.. so..)

However, I also suspect 3.5 hours to charge the bike is not a linear rate. Can any Empulse owners confirm?

28 * 4.2 = 117.6 V terminating voltage.

Eltek claims 170 - 450 VDC operating voltage, with custom voltages available upon request.

Let's say Brammo specified maximum operating voltage of 125 V. 3.5 kW / 125 V = 28 A.

90 A / 28 A = 3.2 hour charge rate, at least for the constant current portion of the charge curve. So the charging might be about 10% faster than just a simple time division might indicate.

[EmpulseRider]

Great to hear you're getting your bike soon Freepz! Congrats. Have fun getting that fine machine home!

[Virtually Yours]

I also called on Wed. and Jaime was not able to give me an answer but he said he would call Brammo to get an ETA but I haven't heard anything...  but he did say my R is one of the five bikes being delivered. I'm not expecting the delivery next week... I wish someone would at least call or email and let me know that the bike has shipped with an ETA!

[protomech]

What you say is true, but my goals are:
1. To ride the bike home.
2. To have fun.

It's going to be more fun to ride the bike faster and take a few breaks along the way, rather than to ride slowly down the road for 4 hours straight (my butt hurts just thinking about it).

There's a movie theater at the first stop, and by the time the movie is over, the bike will be fully charged.
There's a mall at the second stop, with plenty of restaurant choices.

Sounds like a good plan. Have fun on the ride! I think that'll put you at the longest point to point ride of anyone on this forum : ) Maybe the longest point to point ride I've heard of on a stock bike.

I wish Brammo would make a dual Eltek charger for touring - the Empulse then would be just as capable as Terry's heavily modded Zero. But it's definitely possible to do a longer ride even with the stock bike.

[FreepZ]

I also called on Wed. and Jaime was not able to give me an answer but he said he would call Brammo to get an ETA but I haven't heard anything...  but he did say my R is one of the five bikes being delivered. I'm not expecting the delivery next week... I wish someone would at least call or email and let me know that the bike has shipped with an ETA!

During ttxgpfan's interview with Brian on the 14th of Jan, at about 8m00s into the episode Richard asked about production (thanks Richard!) and Brian said:

"We've got a dealer in Tampa, Florida, that is due to get their production bikes here pretty soon"

That was 11 days ago, so it's going to be even sooner than "pretty soon".

I have to say thank you to the 4 other Empulse R buyers in Florida. I'm guessing that my bike is being shipped sooner rather than later because there are enough orders to fill a truck.

[ttxgpfan]

Congrats Freep!  Totally stoked for you.  And that plan sounds great.  Ride, charge while watching a movie, ride, eat at a relaxed pace, ride.  Glad you found the podcast helpful.  Honestly, I think they should have sent more than 5 bikes to Florida.  I know 2 guys that plan on checking them out when they get there.  And one of them has money burning a whole.

[flar]

If the charge stations at your planned stops are Chargepoint stations, then you should get a card with the bike. If you have an account with them, then you can reserve time at any of their chargers. Since you will need some guarantees that a charger is available, you might want to plan ahead and set up the reservations...

[FreepZ]

Charge point is all over Florida. A Volt driving buddy of mine says that he has an extra card that I can assign to my account after I've registered with them.

I think that you can even call some number to activate the charging stations, so the card is just a convenience.

I'm going to register with charge point some time soon.

[FreepZ]

I had a go at signing up with Charge Point. Sadly, they don't have any electric motorcycles in their list of vehicles, so I have to use "Other".

One question that they are asking is the Charging Speed (in kW). Can anybody tell me what number to put in there?

Of course I can always lie and say that I'm driving a Volt, since I don't think the cards are limited to a given vehicle, but it would be nice to report honestly. Also, if their website was really good it would allow customers to say what "Other" means, and then they could update their website to include common new vehicles.

[Brammofan]

You might want to try mentioning this on their Facebook page. I've gotten positive responses from other companies when I've asked questions in a friendly manner.

[protomech]

Empulse charger DC output is max 3.5 kW. It can draw a maximum of 16A from the wall, so 3.8 kW maximum input @ 240V.

[flar]

It charges 9.3kWh(10.2 max) in 3.5 hours so I put 3 for charging speed.  They only allow whole numbers for some odd reason.

You should get a card (with a nice Brammo logo on it) in the welcome packet.  If you have their app loaded on your phone when you take delivery then you should be able to activate that card from the app.  Plus, they are running a "2 free cards with a paid account" promotion right now so if you plan to carry a balance on it then you really won't need any more cards than that...