370 miles: 37 mile commute time on my Zero within 10 minutes! of time it takes to commute on my 1000cc 80 ft/lb torque RC51.
I completed my third successful day commuting my 37.5 mile commute and within the first 200 miles of owning this electric vehicle I became very comfortable with managing the power and getting a much better feel for the throttle and motor power in terms of keeping it a max power available for the full commute. In this section I'm going to dwell a lot on the range of the charge and the time it took to get to work. Please keep in mind that I am sharing this to share the experience of pushing the bike, if my commute was 30 miles or less (or under 20 miles if 65mph freeway entirely) there would be nothing to talk about because I could use all the power I wanted on the Zero and with time to get to work just as fast as any other vehicle following the laws of the road. I am pushing this electric bike to go close to full speed for 37.5 miles and I'm sharing that to give a good idea of really how capable this bike is for just about ANY kind of city riding as at least 80% of commutes are less than my current commute (This site references Department of Transportation saying "The average United States driver travels 29 miles per day", note my total commute is over 75 miles right now. http://www.ridetowork.org/transportation-fact-sheet)
37.5 miles commute description
First 9 miles: two lane rural road, 55 mph speed limit the whole stretched. Only a hand full of cars are passed during these 9 miles
First 9 miles: two lane rural road, 55 mph speed limit the whole stretched. Only a hand full of cars are passed during these 9 miles
9 - 19 miles: two lane highway with continuous cars going 55mph. 10 foot wide shoulder nicely paved.
19 - 31 miles: Arterial 6 lane road 45-50 mph speed limits, suburban stop light frequency.
31 37.5 miles: 2-4 lane streets 35-40 mph speed limits.
The only compromise in the riding to get this to go 37.5 miles is to take it easy on about 10 miles worth of the 55 mph rural roads. If I keep about 10 miles worth at 40 mph that saves plenty of energy to travel at the speeds of traffic during the entire rest of the ride and make it at full power when I get back.
between maybe the battery getting conditioned in the first 200 miles and my getting used to the power delivery I have taken each trip at a faster average speed. I'm within 17% of the RC51 time and hope to get it under 10% within the RC51 time. Follow details of all ride data on the Google chart once I get it up soon. (*)
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