Quote:
Originally Posted by adouglas
Can the charger run off a portable generator?
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Based on their specs page, you need a 15A circuit (12A continuous) for it, which seems pretty standard for 120V charging (the Volt defaults to 8A for safety, but can be set to 12A, depending on whether your outlet is on a 12A or 15A circuit). It's a beefy household circuit, so it probably depends on your generator.
It's kinda funny to think about using a portable gas generator to recharge an EV (says the guy who bought an EV with a builtin gas generator).
For some more comparison to the Volt, the Zero S gets 76mi on 8.3kWh or 102mi on 11.0kWh (depending on which battery size you get). The Volt gets 38mi on 10.4kWh. While the Volt (and other EVs) get about 3.5mi/kWh, the Zero is up over 9mi/kWh. It looks like the standard ICE bike:car efficiency ratio still stands even after switching to electric (maybe even more).
The Volt and older Leaf use 3.3kW chargers, which on these cars is about 10mi of travel for each hour charged. The Zero uses a 1.3kW charger which should get it about 12mi/hr. If they used a 3.3kW charger in a Zero, you could get about 31mi/hr. You can get additional external chargers to boost the charging speed, but I wonder how much extra it would cost to just build a
bigger "EV" charger into the bike. I would personally prefer a bike with a standard J1772 charging setup (to take advantage of public charging stations and the beefy EVSE I already have in my garage), rather than a special external charger that only used 120V. It would add some cost, complexity, and weight to the bike, but it would make it much more usable with existing charging infrastructure. That's less important on a track bike, but I think it's huge on a commuter.