Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

Tesla very clearly builds some good cars.  The Model S is an incredibly well regarded car, and it certainly goes like stink in a straight line.

A lot of Tesla fans claim that electric vehicles are inherently superior, because with fewer moving parts, they'll be able to stay on the road basically forever - no piston rings to wear, no transmissions to fail, no oil to change.

But will they?  Frequently, the decision to repair or scrap a car isn't made based on what is technically possible, but based on what the owner thinks is financially reasonable.  In many cases, it's possible to repair a car long past what most people would consider reasonable, but cars end up scrapped anyway because someone doesn't want to pay for the repairs.

For the Model S to remain on the road long past the standard lifetime of cars, then, it has to be financially feasible for an average owner to repair it and keep it running.

Is it?  Read on and let's take a look.




What makes a "Repairable Car"?

Any car (or other vehicle) kept around long enough is going to need repairs at some point.  Things break.  It's the nature of the reality we live in, and it's especially the nature of things that go pounding down poorly maintained roads at high speeds for hundreds of thousands of miles.

What matters for longevity, then, is how easy it is to repair something when it breaks, and how expensive it is to get the parts and knowledge required to perform the repair.  If something cannot be affordably fixed, the whole vehicle gets scrapped.

I've owned a number of vehicles over the years.  Some, I've literally rescued from junkyards.  Others, I've intercepted hours away from the junkyard ("Hey, the scrapper offered me $125, beat that and it's yours."  "I'll be up there in half an hour with cash.") - and I've kept all of them on the road, and sold them in working condition to other people.  In the process, I've learned a lot about what is easy to keep on the road, and what is hard.

There are several factors that go into a repairable car.

The first, obviously, is being able to get the parts.  Having a common enough car helps a lot.  Nobody is going to have problems finding parts for a Mustang or a Civic.  You can get parts for them anywhere, and there are often a wide range of aftermarket parts available as well to improve on what the factory put in.

The second factor is the design of the car.  How easy is it to replace parts?  If you need a full factory service manual (that you cannot obtain) and a bunch of specialized tools to work on the car, it fails here.  If you can repair the common failures with a set of socket wrenches and a Chilton's or Haynes manual, awesome!  Worth a special mention for "difficult" are the cars that needlessly require a service computer to replace parts.  On a certain 1994 GM car I've had the displeasure of working on, replacing the brake master cylinder requires a $10,000 GM Tech 1 computer, because removing the master cylinder requires removing the antilock brake module.  This, in turn, requires detensioning the antilock actuator.  Which requires a computer.  Not a friendly car to work on, and I'd hope it's long since been turned into anvils.

How Repairable is a Tesla Model S?

Tesla has, at literally every corner, made it as hard as they can to work on their cars.  An incomplete list of issues with keeping a Model S on the road includes:

  • Service manual availability
  • Extended Warranty Transfer & Exceptions
  • Firmware Updates for Everything
  • No independent shops
  • Salvage title checks
  • Strong stated opinions about information screens
  • Lack of a working OBD-II port

Service Manuals

The first problem in trying to repair a Tesla involves the service manuals.  Historically, factory service manuals are easy to come by, and the Chilton and Haynes aftermarket manuals cover most things you'd want to do on a car.

Tesla, being of the internet age, has "progressed" past paper manuals you can buy and peruse - they've got their service manuals available online!  If you browse to https://service.teslamotors.com/, you see a friendly "WELCOME TO TESLA MOTORS SERVICE" banner, with information about available information subscriptions.

Yes, subscriptions.  $30/hr, $100/day, $350/mo, or $3000/yr (prices as of Feb 15, 2016).

Well, that's still better than shop labor rates, right?  One click takes you to the Registration page, where you enter your email, a password (complete with password strength meter), and once you select your country ("United States" for me), there's a bit of a problem.

I don't live in Massachusetts.

And there's no other options in the list.

So, sorry.  You probably can't get the service manuals outside Massachusetts.  In a car with sensors everywhere, you probably shouldn't pry anywhere with one.  Where are they?  Guess!

Why can you get the manuals in Massachusetts (if for obscene rates)?  Because they passed the Massachusetts Right to Repair Initiative back in 2012.

Extended Warranty Transfer

Tesla has an 8 year/unlimited mileage battery and motor warranty on their Model S.  However, the rest of the car has a reasonably standard 4 year/50,000 mile warranty.

If you'd like to extend this out to 8 years, you can - Tesla offers an extended warranty that can be purchased before the 4 year/50,000 mile warranty is expired.

For quite a while, this couldn't be transferred to a new buyer.  However, in the middle of February, 2016, Tesla did change this, and chose some really weird wording for the change.

The original, before mid-Feb: https://www.teslamotors.com/support/service-plans (Feb 14, 2016):
Can I transfer my Tesla Service Plan or Extended Service to the new owner if I sell my Tesla vehicle?
No, you can request a cancellation and reimbursement of your Tesla Service Plan. Please refer to the Terms and Conditions for your Tesla Service Plan or Extended Service for more information.
Shortly after some news sites noticed this change, Tesla said "Whoops!" and changed it to some shiny new wording:

Current wording, mid-March:
Can I transfer my Tesla Service Plan or Extended Service to the new owner if I sell my Tesla vehicle?
Yes, you can transfer the unused portion of your Tesla Service Plan or Extended Service Agreement with the sale of your Tesla. In addition, we’re going to take this opportunity to go one step further: Tesla owners can transfer the unused value of your Extended Service Agreement towards an Extended Service Agreement for a new Tesla Model S or Model X. Please refer to the Terms and Conditions for your Tesla Service Plan or Extended Service for more information. You can view these Terms and Conditions after logging into your Tesla account. Click on “Services Sign Up” and following the appropriate link for your chosen plan.
Tesla claims the previous wording was a mistake - but notice in the new wording, "In addition, we're going to take this opportunity to go one step further:"  What opportunity?  That they got caught with some changes?  It's really weird wording for a standard policy, at best.

Extended Warranty Exceptions

Not wanting to trust that everything would be resolved within the first 4 years, you wisely bought the extended warranty.

What does, and doesn't, this cover?

If you haven't looked over it, you should.  As of this posting, the document is dated Feb 18, 2016.  I'll highlight a few interesting bits and pieces.

Per-Visit Deductible

The deductible for an extended warranty visit is $200.  Per visit (not per issue).

Schedule Service Requirements

You did keep up with all the "optional" scheduled service, right?

To maintain the validity of this Vehicle ESA, You must follow correct operations procedures and have Your Vehicle serviced as recommended by Tesla during the Agreement Period of this Vehicle ESA. If requested, proof of required service, including receipts showing date and mileage of the Vehicle at the time of service, must be presented before any repairs under this Vehicle ESA commence. Service within 1,000 miles and/or 30 days of Tesla’s recommended intervals shall be considered compliant with the terms of this Vehicle ESA.
This is especially entertaining, considering Tesla's stance on warranty for the "regular warranty" (from https://www.teslamotors.com/support/service-plans#/tesla-service, March 2, 2016):

If I choose not to service my Tesla vehicle, will this void my warranty or Resale Value Guarantee?
It is highly recommended that you service your Tesla vehicle once a year or every 12,500 miles. If you do not follow this recommendation, your New Vehicle Limited Warranty will not be affected. If you are financing your Tesla vehicle through Tesla Financing, you will only be eligible for the full Resale Value Guarantee if your Tesla vehicle is brought in for service per the above recommended timeline. 
They conveniently fail to mention that by doing this, you might void your extended warranty.

Transport to the Authorized Service Center

It's on you.  Hopefully you live near a Service Center.
The cost of transporting Your Vehicle is not included in this Vehicle ESA and You are solely responsible for the cost of transporting Your Vehicle to the Tesla Authorized Service Center.
Tesla's new 500 mile roadside assistance offer doesn't seem to apply to the extended warranty.  Sorry.

Exclusions (What is not covered)

This section includes a lot of things that will void your warranty or aren't covered.  A sample of items:
  • Repairs, modifications or alterations, or the installation or use of fluids, parts or accessories, performed by any service provider other than a Tesla Authorized Service Center without prior authorization from Tesla;
  • …using the Vehicle as a stationary power source…
  • …including not performing all vehicle maintenance and service requirements during the Agreement Period…
  • Vehicles used for commercial purposes, which includes but is not limited to government purposes, pick-up, and delivery service, company pool use, or for service or repair calls, route work, or hauling;
  • Racing on or off road, competition, speed contests or autocross or for any other purposes for which the Vehicle is not designed…
  • Roadster and Model S vehicles used for towing;
  • Towing the Vehicle or improper winch procedures;
  • Tampering with the Vehicle and its systems, including installation of non-Tesla accessories or parts or their installation, or any damage directly or indirectly caused by, due to or resulting from the installation or use of non-Tesla parts or accessories;
  • Adjustments necessary to correct squeaks, rattles, water leaks or wind noise;
  • Parts and normal or expendable maintenance items and procedures such as annual service and diagnostics checks, brake pads/linings, brake rotor, suspension alignment, wheel balancing, hoses, air conditioning lines, hoses or connections, Battery testing, fluid changes, appearance care (such as cleaning and polishing), filters and wiper blades/inserts;
This is a small list of ways to void your extended warranty and things that aren't covered.  Basically, unless you've had a Tesla Service Center do all the work from day 1, on schedule, they can probably find an excuse to not cover you.

Regarding competition driving, autocross, etc - remember, this is a company who wrote their interpretation of a test drive, including such details as, "Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot."

Have you driven for Uber?  Ever?  That might be considered a "commercial purpose."  Is it?  Maybe.

I certainly hope you haven't done what a Tesla owner in Texas did, and towed a ton and a half or so behind a Model S.  That's definitely going to void the extended warranty!

If it leaks water anywhere?  That's not covered either.

And air conditioning lines not being covered?  They shouldn't fail that early.

Basically, if Tesla doesn't want to honor your extended warranty agreement, they can probably find some way out of it.

What about service center costs?

Service Center Costs

Since the only answer for service is, "Take it to your nearest Tesla Service Center," it would be helpful to know what will it cost to repair a Model S out of warranty?  Nobody knows!  They're all in warranty!

It's possible to take a look at known service plan pricing, though, and get an idea.

https://www.teslamotors.com/support/service-plans lists the services performed and cost for each of the three annual inspection levels.

For a service consisting of: Multi point inspection and alignment check, tire rotation, cabin air filter replacement, wiper blade replacement, and a new set of key fob batteries, you pay $400.

If brake fluid replacement and "AC Service" is added to the previous, it's $700.

And if the battery coolant is getting replaced, it's $900.

This is not particularly cheap.  At all.  Especially when one considers that the car is perpetually performing a "Multi point inspection" of itsself.  From a comment in a post on rebuilding a flooded Model S, the cars are constantly detecting and reporting faults back to the mothership, even as they flood (apparently with enough detail to determine that the battery pack was taking on water).  This isn't a 1970s Camero.  We've moved to sealed bearings and bushings for suspension, and everything else has a sensor.  What are they inspecting?

Don't expect the Service Center to be cheap, out of warranty.  It's not like you've got other options!

Salvage Titles

A salvage title is a reasonably straightforward thing.  It means the insurance company didn't consider the vehicle economical to repair (usually if it's more than 50% of the remaining value), and have fun.

You can usually pick up salvage title vehicles cheap, repair them yourself (since parts cost is less than "insurance company shop cost"), and be on your way.

Well, unless you tried to do that to a Tesla with a salvage title.  Tesla, unlike every other manufacturer, will only reactivate your car in their system if you take it to them first.


In a nutshell:
  • Tesla requires you to bring the vehicle to one of their Service Centers or a Tesla-certified body shop to do a detailed inspection, to their desired level of detail (which, of course, you can't find out in advance).  You pay actual cost for this inspection.
  • All warranties are void (this is reasonable enough).
  • If Tesla doesn't like the repairs, they won't touch the vehicle until you fix it to their satisfaction.  You, of course, pay for subsequent inspections.  And the repairs.
  • "If Tesla determines that sufficient repairs cannot be made to the Salvage Vehicle, Tesla will not service the Salvage Vehicle."
  • Tesla won't sell you parts to fix your vehicle (not that you can get the service manual anyway).
Basically, a salvage Tesla is useful as a source for parts Tesla won't sell people, and that's it.  Tesla has the final say on repairs, and if they don't feel like doing it for you, well, tough.

Would you like to do something interesting with a salvage Tesla chassis, like putting a stretched Vanagon body on it?  Sorry.  This guy's local service center sent him an email saying, "Due to the salvage status of your Model S , I have been instructed to cease providing you with parts."

Did you buy a salvage Model S and repair it yourself?  Oh... you wanted it reactivated so it would work?  Tough.  Not only does Tesla "deactivate" cars, you have to bring it to them and pay their inspection fees to get it working again.

Who really owns a Tesla?  Not the title holder, that's for sure.

Information Screens

Recently, a set of photos of the service menus of the Model S did the rounds of the internet.

Why is this remotely interesting on the 4th production year of a car?  Well, because most people can't get to it.  Even read only screens.  You're locked out, on "your" car.

The car has a wealth of information available to it, and the only way to obtain this is with a Tesla Technician.  Almost certainly, this will not be released to owners when the car is out of warranty (though if the car detected it's status and unlocked access, this would be incredible).

A Tesla VP, posting on Tesla Motors Club back in 2012, expressed a very clear opinion on the service screens:
The screens behind this password are behind a password for a reason. These diagnostic screens contain information that is not meant to be public. These screens are accessible in the car to help our technicians help our customers. They contain information about the car and its systems.
I won't go into all the reasons why I would prefer these screens not be posted here, or anywhere else for that matter, but if anyone reading this owns or works at a business that has information that is not meant for public display, then they will understand my request. If you work at a company with a client list, you would prefer that your client list not be published on the web. If you use any type of proprietary software or hardware, you would prefer not to have the code published on the web. If you have a new technology that you are fighting very hard to bring to market, you'd prefer that all the workings behind your new technology not be published on the web.
I could go on and on, but I will not. I will simply say that what is behind this password is not meant for public display. It is there to allow us to help our customers as quickly and efficiently as possible, and I would respectfully ask that the screens and content of the screens not be posted openly anywhere.
So, despite you holding the title, it's Tesla's information.  Even useful things, like tire pressure.

OBD-II and Network Ports

This information being unavailable is in contrast to almost every other car on the market that puts out plenty of useful information over the OBD-II port.  They're required.

Tesla has one on the Model S.  It just doesn't happen to work.  Even if you just want basic information like "speed" and "miles driven" for those pay-by-the-mile insurance discounts?  Nope.  Nothing.  They just think it's a parked car (before the companies involved figured out that it's not compatible).

Fortunately, the Model S has an accessible ethernet port.  Unfortunately, if you use it, you may get a phone call from Tesla that talks about voiding your warranty, industrial espionage, and then a firmware update that disables the port.

Tesla doesn't want you messing with "their" car.

Why does this matter?

It matters because Tesla would like people to believe they're making very long lived cars that will last nearly forever.  It's apparently been stated in some conference or another that Tesla has a battery pack that has done the equivalent of 500k miles in a lab somewhere, and "low maintenance" is consistently listed by owners as a reason they purchased one.

Right now, almost all the Model Ss driving around are under the factory warranty, and I'd wager a large number have the extended warranty (though see above for my opinion of it).  In another 4 years, the first wave will be leaving the extended warranty coverage, and then people will have to pay the full costs to maintain the car.

Which, unless something changes, involves going to a Tesla Service Center and paying whatever they want, since you can't get parts other places, and even if you do get the parts, you can't find out how to install them.  And, at least some of them apparently involve firmware updates to make things work, which you can't get the software to do.

It's pretty well locked down, and you simply don't have any options.  There are no independent shops you can use either.

So far, it doesn't seem to affect people that much.  The Model S and Model X are selling as fast as they can be built, and it turns out that people who buy new $100k cars don't really care much about out-of-warranty maintenance costs.

But this will become more and more of a problem as the cars drop in value over time - both for the Model S/X, and for the more inexpensive Model 3.  Not everyone buying a $35k or $45k car will be able to afford to replace it when the warranty is up, and with Service Centers being the only places for service at unknown prices, they could end up as very expensive vehicles to keep on the road.  If everything is reliable as expected, the power electronics and motors should be fine long term, but only time will tell how they actually handle decades of use.

According to the US DOT, the average age of cars on the road in 2015 was 11.4 years - and this has been steadily increasing over time.  So the question shouldn't be, "How easy is it to maintain a Model S in 4 years" - it should be, "Can they be reasonably maintained to survive 20 or 30 years on the road?"

Why not leases only?

There's actually another electric car that had this level of lockdown with regards to access and service.  The GM EV1.  From Wikipedia:
The cars were not available for purchase, and could be serviced only at designated Saturn dealerships.
If Tesla really wants to maintain this much control over it's cars, they could do it reasonably enough with leases.

But they're not.  They're selling vehicles outright, offering owners the title, and then essentially saying, "But it's still our car - not yours.  You can't access it, you can't repair it, and you can't have the information from it."

What can be done?

If you're an owner of a Tesla vehicle, it would be wise to keep a bit of a cash or credit buffer around post-warranty for repairs.  Until they're better understood in frequency and price, it's safe to assume they'll be quite expensive.

If you're Tesla?  Independent service shop certifications would be a good start, but so would making the information available to the owners of your cars.  A working OBD-II port would be a nice touch too.

And if you don't care?  Well, then don't care, and do whatever you want.
CONTINUE READING

I love love lov


I think the answer to the question, can you ever have too much sparkle, is a resounding no!  I do love me some bling... However, this is not just any old bling, these 'favourite things' are items I worked hard for so I love them even more.

For over a year I had a picture on my vision board of a blinged out set of Mercedes car keys, so when I found Deemonte designs just after I got my new car, I was so happy!!! My vision board was coming to life!

I love love love my sparkly car keys and everyone wants to know where they are from so here you go!http://www.deemontedesigns.co.uk/ They other car keys too, plus pictures and they can pretty much bling out anything you want.

Thank You!!! I love them!!

Lots of Love Ashly x
CONTINUE READING

BionX PL350 Based Build with Pack Powered Lighting

I've wanted to do a BionX based build for a while now, and finally got it done!  I built this as a "daily commuter" class bike for the Seattle area, tried a few things I wanted to try, and added a few touches of my own!


This build started with an older BionX PL350 36v kit that found it's way to me.  Only 230 miles on the clock, but the battery was stone dead (this is related to how it found it's way to me).  I rebuilt the battery, as I often do, with brand new cells.  It's now a 13.5Ah battery instead of the stock 9.6Ah battery, so this kit has about 35% more range than it did right from the factory!

I've also successfully demonstrated that one can do pack powered lighting with a BionX conversion - both headlights are powered directly from the main battery!


As always, keep reading for a lot more details & photos.


Basic Build Details

The bike for this build is a 2015 model Specialized frame I got on closeout.  It's a medium frame mountain bike with 26" wheels.  At the request of the eventual buyer, I swapped the original front suspension fork out for a solid fork, and added a disc brake to the front wheel.

It has my usual "commuter" touches as well - a bar end mirror, a bell, tightly fitted fenders that extend fairly far down (it does rain in Seattle, oddly enough), and heavily armored tires.  At this point, I consider those mandatory for anything that's going to be ridden regularly.  Fair weather bikes, ridden on separate trails, are boring!  And they're often carried to the trail on a bike rack, which is a silly way to transport a functioning bike.


One of the really nice things about the downtube battery BionX kits is that the weight of the bike is more balanced.  There's still the rear hub motor, but the battery pack is forward.  Contrast this to my commuter and you can see how the weight is better spread along the bike.

Brakes & Tires

I'd originally decided to try a rim brake build, because this kit has regenerative braking available from the motor.  Unfortunately, this didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.  The hills are just too much out here in Seattle.

As a result, it has a cable operated front disc brake now.  The rear brakes are still rim brakes, but the motor adds significant braking to the rear, and this arrangement seems to work out well enough.


The tires are Specialized Nimbus tires, with their Flak Jacket Puncture Protection.  They're 26x1.5, which is a narrower, road focused tire that's still capable of dealing with mud and trails in limited amounts.

Inside the tires, the tubes are a thicker, thorn resistant type, and are filled with a latex sealant that should seal any punctures that do happen.

This is basically the same setup I use on my commuter, and I've brought home a pretty good nail in that tire, so I know this layering works.



Pack Powered Front Lighting

Up until now, this has (mostly) resembled a standard, by-the-book BionX build.

You didn't really think I'd just stick with that, did you?

One of the reasons I did this build is to experiment with pack powered lighting on the older BionX systems.  I suspected it was possible, but I wanted to prove it.

There are two cables running to the motor from the battery pack.  The first is a small, multi-pin control cable.  The second is a large, two pin cable that looks like the type of thing that carries power.  Which, in fact, it does.  Pack voltage, even!

When the bike is turned off, the pack is disconnected from the motor power cable.  But, when the system turns on, full pack voltages is available on these pins (so about 42v fully charged with the 36v battery packs).

This connector, at least on the older systems, is an SAE 2 pin connector.  You can find plenty of extension cables and the connectors on eBay for not much money at all.

I ordered one, built myself an extension cable with a tap for pack voltage, and then got so excited to install it that I forgot to take pictures.

It's remarkably difficult to get this to fit - the cable lengths are matched, and I went and stuck another few inches of power cable in there.  You can see the "S" curve that I made to take up the slack.  The red & black twisted conductors carry pack voltage up to the front of the bike for the lights.


The lights are a pair of "ebike headlights" I got from (surprise!) eBay.  I ordered a bunch of different types, and these are the best I found so far.

The advantage of "ebike headlights" or "scooter headlights" is that they take a wide range of voltages.  Other bike lights I've reviewed were quite picky about their voltage, and wouldn't handle anything outside their designed voltage without letting out the magic smoke.  With a slightly more complex voltage regulator circuit, this variety of headlight can handle anything from 12v to 80v as the input voltage (so it will work on almost anything out there).

I kept the front reflector installed, but moved it to the other side.  I don't need the space for anything else, and while the lights are on any time the bike is powered on, the battery can go dead, so it keeps a reflector.

That said, I'm not actually worried about the battery going dead.  This bike has regenerative braking that can be turned on at any time, so a light level of regen acts as a wheel dyno that will power the lights.  Unless you want the lights to go out, you can keep them on.


The mounts aren't fancy.  They're just some metal clamps and hex head screws.

But, you know what?  This is about $30 of headlights, and they're pretty damned good.  I've got over $200 worth of lighting on the front of my commuter (a $160 Cycle Lumenator, $50 of random LED lights, and a pair of DC-DC converters to power the lower voltage lights), and there's really no difference in the end result.

Power comes up from the twisted pair of wires, and is split to feed both lights.  There's a set of connectors under the waterproofing tape, in case the bars need to come off.


This provides a good idea of how the lights look at night.  The center core of illumination is overexposed compared to what it actually looks like, but this shows roughly how it looks from the biker's perspective, and about how far you can see.  It's really quite good, especially considering the cost, and more than adequate for the speeds this bike will do at night - even on a pitch black trail.

I've ridden my commuter and this bike on the same trail at night, and this set of headlights is just as good as my commuter set, for a fraction the cost.


Rear Lighting

The rear lighting is a lot less exciting.  I'm using one of the "Laser 5 LED Bike Lights" I reviewed a few weeks back, a random USB chargeable light bar, and the stock reflector.  I've been trying to find a good tail light solution for electric bikes that works over a wide voltage range, and haven't found a reasonably priced one yet.  Grin makes a really nice 8 LED tail light that works at almost any voltage, but it's $60, and I think that's a bit excessive (so, of course, my commuter has it).

In any case, there's plenty of rear lighting on this bike for what it's going to be doing.


Brake Lever & Regen Control

Because this bike has integrated brake levers and shifters, I can't just replace the brake lever with a BionX compatible one.  I need to use the magnetic pickup and provided magnet, which I've done.  This photo is looking at the right shifter/brake unit from the underside.  The cylinder held on with the zip tie and 3M molding tape, and the magnet is also held on with 3M molding tape.  That stuff is really, really useful - I end up using it somewhere on almost all my builds.

The magnet and pickup are set so that a small movement of the brake lever triggers the regenerative braking.  I adjusted the rear brakes a bit loose, so the first stage of lever travel is just motor regen, and it works nicely.


Riding & Hill Climbing

This bike is just nice to ride.  Turn it on, set the assist level, and go.  The BionX system gets out of the way entirely when riding, but there's a smooth assist rising up to help when you need it.  It is, by far, the nicest system I've ridden.  You pedal, it assists, the console does things to show you what it's doing, but you can safely ignore that and just ride the bike like it wants to be ridden.

The bike is happy cruising along at 17-19mph with a low level of assist, and seems to use remarkably little energy getting around (as is to be expected with a pedal assist).  The upgraded pack capacity helps, but I'd expect 20-25 miles of "level 4 assist" with some energy left over for lights, and if you turn the assist down, it'll go as far as you care to ride.

It climbs hills far better than I expected of a 350W system - to the point where I began to wonder if it's pushing more than 350W through the motor.  According to NYCEWheels, the newer 350W kits will peak around 700W, and I would believe it.  I didn't have time to attach a wattmeter to this bike, but it chewed up my muddy pipeline trail test (a long, insanely steep hill filled with mud and gravel) far better than I'd expected.  While it puts out noticeably less power than my 1000W bike, it'll still manage 8-10mph up my "commute hill," and that's a radical improvement over no motor.

The only real downside I've noticed is that it will thermally throttle if you abuse it too much (say, a long, slow climb up that muddy trail).  At some point, it decides things are getting too warm and it cuts the power output significantly.  This is a bit annoying at the end of a hill, but it really does beat frying the motor or controller.

I was excited by the throttle option initially (since I'm used to a throttle based bike), but it turns out I almost never used it.  The pedal assist is a better way to ride this bike.

Regenerative Braking on Bicycles

The PL350 has a regenerative braking mode.  It's activated by the either brake lever sensor or the console buttons, and one can control the strength of the braking regeneration in the settings menu (code 2002, values from 1-64).  Since this bike has rear rim brakes, I turned it all the way up, interested in how much dynamic braking power I could get.

I've long thought that regenerative braking on bicycles is a bit silly.  Yes, you can recover a tiny bit of energy, but the light weight and awful aerodynamics of a typical bicycle make it hard to recover much of what you've put in - rolling downhill, air drag takes most of the energy.

After riding this bike, with regenerative braking available?  Well, I still feel about the same.  It's a nice feature, but I wouldn't go with a direct drive motor just for this.  The amount of energy that can be recovered is minimal, and if you live on a hill and start out with a full pack, the regenerative braking is quite limited - there's nowhere for the energy to go.  So you use your brakes anyway.

If I had a heavy cargo bike and normally charged the battery pack to 90% for longevity reasons, regen might be a useful feature.  But for a single passenger bike, it's just not that important.  It saves your brakes a tiny bit, and that's about all it's worth.

My commuter bike is heavier, a bit faster, and has a geared hub motor - so no regenerative braking at all.  I live on top of a rather impressive hill, with a steep 220' vertical descent in the morning, and the same climb on the way home.  Despite this, I can get 8-12 months of daily commuting from a set of Koolstop Electric Bike Pads before I need to replace them.

If the kit you're looking at for other reasons offers regenerative braking, you may as well use it.  But I don't think it's worth seeking out a specific kit just for this feature, unless you're on a cargo bike.

Conclusions

This was a fun build!  I enjoyed getting to work with the BionX system, and to ride one on roads I'm familiar with (I put 30 or 40 miles on in testing before selling it).

Coming from a 1000W geared hub motor, I thought I'd be underwhelmed by the power delivery - but I wasn't!  It's noticeably less power than my commuter, but the smoother pedal assist really makes up for it.  I work a bit harder on this bike, but on "level 4 assist" it's not much more effort than my commuter build, and I really don't notice the difference.  The exercise is probably good for me anyway.

It climbs hills well, it rides nicely, and BionX has clearly done their homework when it comes to smooth operation.

It may be old, but the PL350 is still a great system!

If you have one that you'd like the pack rebuilt on, let me know with the contact form on the right.  Or, if you have a dead system you're getting rid of, let me know as well!
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A Rant About Repairability and Proprietary Systems: Why Electric Bikes Need Rebuildable Batteries

It's the end of February, 2016.  The anti-Trump fortress of "Well, yeah, he's got some support now, but there's no way he can win the primaries" has been thoroughly overrun, and it's occupants are beating a hasty retreat to the stronghold of "Well, yeah, he's winning primaries, but there's no way he can win the general!"  Additional fallback positions may include "Well, he won the general, but he probably won't live to be inaugurated" and the rather dismal cave of, "Well, shit."

UK Censors, after being subjected to 10 hours and 7 minutes of literally watching paint dry in Charlie Lyne's "Paint Drying," were overheard saying, "It wasn't that bad.  It could have been footage from one of Hillary's campaign stops."


Cell Phones vs Electric Bikes

In another bit of news, an electric bike is not a cell phone or laptop.  One of these categories gets old beyond just the batteries, and one of these categories would remain perfectly useful indefinitely, were it not for battery packs dying (like this BionX battery from 2008).




iFixit is a company that does teardowns of shiny new tech devices, many of which are rather difficult to repair.  The vast majority of people don't seem to mind, and talk about how repairability is an obsolete concept, and besides, the device is slow and crufty in a few years anyway.

I find remarkably few people who care about repairability in 2016.  Which, I admit, works to my advantage.  I can turn a tidy little profit repairing phones, replacing batteries, and generally fixing things instead of throwing them away.  One man's trash...

That said, when it comes to phones, I mostly agree.  Technology keeps advancing, cell phones get slow at running the latest apps and websites, Apple doesn't update old enough devices (though I'm currently impressed - the iPhone 4S from late 2011 is on iOS9), and if you're an Android user, well, forget it - what it ships with is probably the only thing you're going to get.

I think this is a problem, but clearly billions of people don't.  At least you can get replacement parts & batteries for old phones.  If it was even a moderately popular phone or tablet, the parts to repair it are available.  Maybe not OEM, maybe out of some some little back alley factory in China, but you can get the parts.  eBay is wonderful for esoteric phone and laptop bits.

This "throw away device" approach to devices falls apart spectacularly when applied to transportation.  From my (admittedly biased) viewpoint, electric bikes are particularly bad about being turned into scrap before their time due to one part.

The "problem" with electric bikes (and electric vehicles in general) is that a bicycle doesn't get obsolete!  It may break and need repairs, but it doesn't get "obsolete" like a cell phone or computer does.  An electric bike from 2008 that worked nicely for transportation in 2008 still works nicely for transportation in 2016 - if you can power it.  The roads haven't fundamentally changed in the last 7 years - or even the last 70 years.

The same is true of other forms of transportation - a car from the 1940s or 1950s is still quite capable of running safely and at speed on today's roads, and bicycles from the 1920s or 1930s are perfectly useful today (a bit heavier than modern bikes, though I don't think today's carbon fiber bikes will be rolling in 2116).

The problem is that keeping an electric bike from 2008 (or earlier) running can be very, very difficult.  At best, if it's been used a lot (awesome!), the batteries are worn out from age and use.  More typically, the batteries are totally dead from sitting off the charger for 6 months or a year (or three).  This wouldn't be a problem if replacement packs were available, but they're not.  Seriously.  Go try to buy a new pack for a Trek Valencia Ride+.  Or a Schwinn Tailwind.  I'll wait.  They look like this.



Options for a Dead Battery

If your battery is a simple "Volts & Amps" style battery with no communication other than voltage, the solution is easy.  Go buy a new battery of similar voltage, connect it, and ride.  You'll either have more range for the same weight, or a lighter battery.

However, an awful lot of electric bikes from that era (and today is no better) have proprietary communication channels, fancy BMSs (that didn't do their job, like this Tailwind BMS), and are generally not easy to swap out for something newer.



This leaves a few options for people stuck with a dead proprietary battery:
  1. Scrap the bike.  Accept that you purchased a bike with a 3-5 year lifespan, and when it's worn out, you junk the whole thing.  Or replace all the expensive electric bike parts with new, also expensive electric bike parts.  Or just scrap the electronic parts and be left with a less-than-ideal bike for non-motorized use.  I think this is utterly absurd, but it's depressingly common.
  2. Try to find "new old stock" batteries that still work.  They exist, but they're often not in great shape either - at best, they don't have cycles on them but they still have years on them.  Good luck.
  3. Rebuild the battery pack.  This is what I do.  This is what Trek and BionX are making a very difficult process, and Schwinn has made basically impossible.
  4. Bypass the battery pack at some convenient point, and hook up external batteries.  This is what some other people try to do.  Depending on the system, it can work, but the BionX systems require opening the pack to do this, which can be very difficult.  This also requires internal batteries that hold a charge.  It's a valid hack for capacity loss, but it's not a safe fix for dead batteries.
None of these are amazing options for people who would like to keep bikes running, and many of them require specialized technical skills that are beyond what most bike shops are willing to do.

So, a simple request for those people designing electric bikes: Consider the people who will want to keep them running.

Keeping Electric Bikes Running

If you, as a designer of an electric bike, don't think anyone will want to keep your bike running in 5 years, then you must think it's a piece of crap, and you should ask yourself why you're selling it in the first place ("But Crowdfunding!" is certainly an answer, if a rather slimy one).

However, if you think you've designed a good enough bike or conversion kit that people will want to be riding it in 5, 10, 15 years - why are you making it difficult to repair?  Your batteries won't last forever in the best case, and they'll last a lot shorter in the common case.  If you've built a good bike, consider that people still ride bikes from the 50s and 60s, and design accordingly.  Make it easy for people who want to rebuild your packs!

I have no complaints about the downtube mounted BionX 36v packs.  They're reasonably easy to get apart, and rebuilding them is not a hard process.  BionX won't sell you a new battery for older systems - the best they'll do is offer you a loyalty discount on a brand new system (spoiler: they're not cheap).

The Trek Valencia Ride+ pack?  What were you thinking?  I see no reason whatsoever to use aggressive foam adhesive in holding this pack together.  Compressible foam would work just as well for holding the cells in place, without making it nearly impossible to rip open for rebuilding.

The Schwinn Tailwind pack?  Forget it.  They won't even talk to you.  Schwinn tells you to call someone who has nothing to do with building Schwinn's batteries, and Toshiba tells you to call Schwinn.  It's totally abandoned by everyone involved in making it, and it's got an oddball battery chemistry as well - lithium titanate, with a fancy, sophisticated BMS that nobody knows a thing about (except that they end up reliably not working).

I understand that the manufacturers are worried about liability, or lawsuits, or something.  Knock it off.  If it fails in warranty, it's your problem.  If it fails after that, it's someone else's problem, and if you think your product is any good at all, it's likely that they'll want to keep using it.  Don't get in their way.

Requests to Electric Bike Manufacturers

  1. When designing your packs, consider that they are a finite lifespan item on a bike that can and should last radically longer.  Consider end of pack life rebuilding when you're designing a pack.
  2. Provide full technical information on your packs when you no longer sell them.  If you're not selling them, you can't lose out on sales from third parties rebuilding, but you can make customers happy with your brand going forward.
  3. If you build a "kill switch" into your BMS for low voltage conditions, document how to revert it once the cells are replaced.  "Use the proprietary software random users cannot get" is not an acceptable option here.
  4. Don't design to prevent owners from using a third party battery pack in the long term.  It's fine if you don't interface properly with it, but at the very minimum, don't refuse to operate without the provided battery pack.  I should be able to put "Volts & Amps" across a set of terminals and have an operating electric bike.

Thoughts for Buyers

Ask about this before you buy an electric bike.  Consider that if you buy one, you may well want to keep riding it past the first battery lifespan.  If the battery pack is a glued together pile of proprietary nonsense only sold for a few years, you might not be able to do that.  And, even if there is someone who can rebuild it, you'll pay more and get back a pack that has been pried apart with excessive force.  It's not an appealing situation, is it?

This really is something to consider if you're buying an electric bike.  I love the nicely integrated stuff, but if you want to keep it running for a few decades, the cheap parts out of China are simply better.  They interface over a well understood set of unofficial standards, and they interoperate surprisingly well.  Volts & amps go in, forward motion comes out.  You can mix and match parts at will.  Is it as nicely integrated?  No.  But it'll be poorly integrated and functional while rolling down the road under it's own power, which is better than you can say about a BionX system with a dead battery.

If you're stuck with a dead ebike, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.  I care about keeping older stuff running, and I'm slowly building my list of packs I can successfully rebuild.  If you've got a pack I don't know, I offer a nice discount on the first rebuild of a new type, if I can rebuild it.
CONTINUE READING

Teardown, Analysis, and Destruction of a $5 "Laser Bike Light"

It's been oddly sunny and warm in Seattle this week - it was 60F yesterday - in February!  And I've learned rather more about corneal ulcers in ferrets than I ever wanted to know.  It would greatly benefit a certain elderly ferret to accept that he's not the alpha anymore, and to stop starting fights he loses - every single time.

I have no idea if you're the type of person who browses eBay and Amazon looking for cheap, interesting things out of China for your bike or not.

However: I most certainly am this kind of person!  This may not surprise the frequent reader of this blog much.

When I found a lot of "laser bike light" listings on eBay, I was curious.  They're insanely cheap, and they seemed interesting enough to justify picking up a few to mess with.  Plus, they have lasers!

These lights claim to lay down a "laser bike lane" behind your bike to make it easier for cars to see you and to get the idea they should move over.  Plus, they're a LED tail light with 7 patterns.

This is the one I'm tearing apart today.  It's one of two or three different models available, and if you pay more than about $5 shipped for this unit, you've overpaid.  Oddly enough, eBay has this model with blue LEDs as well, though why you'd want a blue tail light is beyond me.  Blue tail lights are also illegal in many places.


Keep reading for way more photos of this light than you ever realized you wanted, some teardowns of the lasers, and the (rather comprehensive) list of LED modes!

Exterior Overview

The top of the unit (shown above) has two buttons on it: LED, and LASER.  The LED button toggles the LED modes (see later in the teardown for details), and the LASER button toggles the laser modes ("on," "blink," "off").  That's it for the user interface.  It's very, very simple.  I wouldn't mind an "off" button that turned everything off, but that might make it a $6 light...

There are 5 red LEDs inside the lens - three pointing more or less straight back, and two pointing to each side.

On the bottom of the unit, there's a battery door, two laser emitters (one for each side), and a few screws.

Inconveniently enough for me, this unit comes pre-assembled. That's a problem for finding out what's inside, so I'm going to go ahead & "fix the glitch" shortly.


With the battery door off, two AAA batteries fit neatly inside.  There are two screw holes on either side of the battery box, and one near the bike mount.  It can't actually be this easy to get apart, can it?


Opening the Light

Amazingly, it really is that easy!  Three screws, and I'm in.  No glue, no fancy snaps, just three screws.  Not even a "You are about to void the warranty, authorized personal only beyond this point, confined space certification required" label.  As if it has a warranty to void...

Of note for those in wet places, on this $5 unit from China, there's (surprise!) no real waterproofing.  However, I really don't think it will be a problem.  It's put together fairly tightly, and there's nothing much for the water to bother anyway.  Don't take it scuba diving, but I wouldn't think twice about using this for my rather wet and muddy commute in Seattle.

With the top off, the circuit board is visible.  It has two pushbuttons (conveniently aligned with the external buttons for your button pushing pleasure), a bit of hot glue, and some wires going to two laser emitters.


It's really quite roomy in here.  There's not much of anything actually in the unit.

The off-white blob on the bottom of the circuit board is presumably where the control electronics live.  It's probably a bare IC bonded to the board, covered in potting, but I don't feel like digging that far in to find out.  The coating is quite hard.


With the red lens cover off, the LED arrangement is clear.  Five of them, soldered straight to the circuit board.


Lens

The lens is just colored plastic.  It's got some blobs molded into it to help focus the LEDs (perhaps), and a bunch of ridges that help scatter the light and make the bike more visible.  It actually works surprisingly well.



Circuit Board

The board comes out easily - no snaps, and just a strand of hot glue in the way.  It's well secured when the unit is assembled, but once the top and lens are off, there's nothing holding it in.  The underside of the board is dreadfully boring.  It's just the LEDs and the paddles for the battery compartment.


A closer look at the top of the board indicates it's almost certainly hand soldered.  The switches aren't fully soldered in (this doesn't matter a bit), and the solder joints are adequate, but not amazing.  They're kind of inconsistent, and a little blobby, but they all work, which is the important part.

And, really, that you can get this at all for $5, shipped, is properly impressive.  I don't think I'd be willing to do just the soldering on this for $5, much less whatever few pennies someone is getting paid to do it.  China has certainly optimized for low cost of production.


The Laser Emitters

You're not reading this post because you care about yet another cheap LED based bike light.  You're interested in the lasers.  And, really, that's why I bought these anyway.

The laser emitters are wedged into small tubes, and the plastic is melted to hold them in position with some sort of hot blade.  However, given how easily they came out once I removed the hot glue, this wasn't enough, so a blob of hot glue is present on both sides.  The hot glue holds them quite securely.


Lasers on!  You can see the rings from interference patterns coming out the back of the right laser (the left one is aimed differently).  I'm quite surprised by how much light comes out the back - I'd have expected them to focus more light forward.


The laser emitters come out easily after the hot glue is removed.  If at first you don't succeed in making something stay put, add hot glue.  Or duct tape.  Hot glue is cheaper.

This is what the laser emitter looks like.  A small board on the left, a tube in the center, and a lens on the right.


Looking into the end of the emitter, there's some sort of spreading lens.


This lens pops off with a bit of a twist.  It's just a cheap plastic lens to spread the laser into a line.


With the plastic lenses off, it's just a bog standard laser emitter of the kind found in every $20 cat toy.

You might notice the top spot appears a bit dimmer.  I... I might have been messing around with voltage a bit before I took this set of photos, and I might have damaged one of the laser emitters.  Just a bit.


Ok, more than a bit.  I definitely damaged one of them at 4.5v.  However, the laser emitters do send a perfectly good beam across the room.  They're proper little lasers, and for $5, this is a lot of potential cat, ferret, or small child entertainment!


Pulling the circuit board out of the tube, there's some sort of lens in there that turns the emitted light into a beam.  I really don't know much about laser diode optics, but they apparently need a "collimating lens," and I'm pretty confident that's exactly what this is.

Whatever it is, it works.


Here's the emitter, freed from it's tube.


And here's what the output looks like without the collimating lens in place.  The top spot still has the lens, obviously.  I'm no expert, but I'd say that bottom emitter definitely needs collimating!


LED Flash Patterns

With the board freed from the case, I hooked it up to my power supply for some testing, fed it three volts, and took some video.  Then, because Flash video is annoying, I converted things down to GIF loops.  Hopefully this works well.  Patterns are shown in order (at least on my unit) - press the "LED" button to step through them.

I am aware the video is a bit blurry.  Close range work with a fixed focus lens does that.


Pattern #1: Solid

The LEDs are all on, more or less solidly.


Pattern #2: Rapid Flashing

All the LEDs flash together, quite rapidly.


Pattern #3: Slow Flash

All the LEDs flash together, about twice a second.



Pattern #4: "Move Left"

With the board installed in the unit, mounted upright on the bike, the LEDs sweep left.  This actually seems to work fairly well, visually.


Pattern #5: "Move Right"

This is the reverse of the above, perhaps useful if you ride on the left side of the road instead of the right side.


Pattern #6: Sparkle

This is just a rapid pulsing of individual LEDs (there's some pattern to it, but I didn't feel like pulling out the high speed modes to figure it out).  It's a sparkle or dazzle effect, and is incredibly visible.


Pattern #7: "Knight Rider"

Yes.  I'm dating myself.  So be it.  The pattern bounces back and forth, as shown below.


Voltage Tolerance

In the past, I've played around with voltage tolerance on some other lights as well.  That light wasn't particularly tolerant of higher voltages, so I built a DC-DC converter to give it the proper voltage.  Of course, I wanted to try it on this light, which is radically cheaper.

The board has nothing that even faintly resembles a voltage or current regulator on it.  I wasn't particularly optimistic, so I tried anyway.

It turns out, as would be expected, that this unit is incredibly intolerant of higher voltages.  It's designed to run on about 2.5-3v, and you should run it on 2.5-3v.  Below about 2v, the LEDs dim and drop out.  Above about 4.5v, the laser emitters start failing.  The LEDs are really bright, though!

The below clip is a sweep from about 1.5v to 5v and back down.  The LEDs are being overdriven at the peak.  They never get the ugly "aggressively overdriven" hellish glow about them, but they're very bright.


Failure Voltages

Why test higher voltages if you're not going to test to failure?

The laser diodes take damage starting around 4-4.5v, and die fully around 5v.

Amazingly, the rest of the board continued operating until 8v, when something popped and the LEDs went dark for the last time.  I don't think it would have operated very long at 8v, but the core LED board seems quite robust.

After running increased voltage through the now-dead board, the component below the epoxy blob got rather hot, smoked, and finally gave up the ghost fully at around 25v.

Seriously, don't feed this thing much over 3v.  It just won't take it.  It's not designed for it.  That said, it has enough safety factor built in that it should be quite reliable - at least the LEDs.  Maybe not the lasers.  Feel free to run it on either alkaline or NiMH AAA batteries.


Actual Photos of the LEDs

With the unit assembled and the lens on, the whole lens glows brightly.  There's a good amount of lit surface area for people to see, and it's lit up over a rather wide angle - it's not tightly focused like some bike tail lights.

The light isn't blindingly bright, but it's really quite sufficient to use as a single tail light (though I'd recommend backups, just because... $5).  You can buy two and swap them if one fails.


Actual Photos of the Lasers

You scrolled here first, didn't you?  Just to see if I'd actually taken photos of the lasers.

The lasers are surprisingly bright.  This is a slightly dim indoor environment, and the beams are clearly visible with the unit at waist height.


Outside, well... that depends on the exposure time, doesn't it?

This is a 10 second tripod exposure on a fairly dark, wet night with a GoPro Hero 4.  This is the type of thing you'll see in the advertisements for the units, and the bulk of them are actual photos, near as I can tell.  I think they're just a very long exposure in a fairly dark area.  The main light is on solid for this shot.


But, this isn't what it actually looks like to a human outside.  A 2s exposure gets the distant street light closer to correct for a somewhat night adjusted human eye, and gives a better idea of what they actually look like.


They're brighter than I thought they'd be.

Are they going to make someone see you when they otherwise wouldn't?  No.  But will it give someone on a darker stretch of road a better idea of where you are?  Yes, I think they will.  At the very worst, the LEDs are pretty spiffy for $5.

Conclusions

I purchased a few of these things thinking they'd be total junk, and worth a few laughs to tear apart.  They're $5.  How good could they be?  I mean, I ordered a few partly because I figured there was a good chance one wouldn't even work properly.

But they're not junk!  They actually do what they claim, they're cheap, and they seem to be perfectly adequately designed for what they're doing.  Did I mention they're $5?  That alone makes them worth it as a tail light, even without the laser feature (which is genuinely cool, though I don't know how useful it actually is).

I'd wholeheartedly suggest picking one of these bike lights up if you need a spare tail light, or another tail light, or just want to casually drop the phrase, "Yeah, my bike has a laser light."

They're certainly not as nice as some other lights on the market - they don't compete with a $70 USB chargeable Proper Bike Light in terms of light or quality.  But in terms of "bike light value for your dollar," I think these are really, really hard to beat.  Five dollars.  I'm putting them on my bikes.  Are you?
CONTINUE READING
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