Some time back I did an article about sparks between the charger plug and the battery (usually heard as a distinct "TICK" on plugging in the scooter) when plugging the battery in (see this blog post) which makes me wonder if this is actually related to an issue that manifests for a number of Wide Wheel owners.
The issue is that often settings are lost (almost randomly) (in my case) it seems when the scooter is powered down. I may have had the mode set to Power but when powering it back up its soon clear (from the lack of acceleration) that its in Eco mode. Also sometimes the Cruise Control randomly goes to off as well. Now my dual has never done this but my single has done it from pretty early on.
Today in a testing run I powered my Widewheel dual up and it was in Eco mode. Interestingly after a run yesterday I goofed with the power supply and didn't turn it on first, there was a loud snap and I cursed lightly.
My theory is this. The massive surge (which is big enough to cause an electrical arc) may be enough to damage something on the control board.
nothing is visible on mine, but the damage may be something inside a component.
I don't know if this is something on the new Widewheel Pro ... which has a different circuit board.
Let me know if you'rs goes from "no problems" to "randomly losing settings" after an accidental charger spark.
I've been of the view that off the line the MX60 is no faster (indeed feels a little less snappy) than the Widewheel. I've put this down to the larger diameter wheels (just over 11" vs just under 8") it has the same diameter armature and magnet rotor, which will essentially gear it higher (because leverage right). This will assist its top speed which is unquestioned (because bigger battery Voltage and higher diameter wheels).
I did some quick runs first and found that the speed limiter kicked in on the Wide Wheel earlier than the end of the run (which was about 100 meters) confusing the issues, so I turned off speed restrictions on the Widewheel for this test.
So first some data from my GPS app:
The dip in the middle is a turn around point, which my App didn't log neatly, so lets just work with take off. To me it looks like the initial hit of the Widewheel is a little steeper. Overlaying them we can see it is perhaps a little, but its close.
But this app isn't ideal for such comparisons, so I thought (in case) I'd video it and compare side by side. This is that:
This seems to show that the Wide wheel does get that initial kick going and leads by a nose for a short time, until the MX60 starts hauling it in. Which translates to "it feels stronger" off the mark. This is not unexpected when you consider the way electric motors deliver power and the effect of the effective lower gearing of the Widewheel (discussed above).
As you can see from this figure above the motive force of the motor is strongest when its stopped and gets to a point where it starts falling off in torque soon after take off. Of course since torque is the strength to do work and power is how quickly that work can be done, the more the RPM increases the more that power increases even though torque falls away.
Eventually however the electric motor spins fast enough that back EMF overpowers the foward voltage provided by the battery and you end up with nothing.
Conclusion
So as I've been saying in my ride dialog / blabbering, the MX60 is really a great "cross town" blaster, especially if you've got a number of nice long "bicycle paths" to reduce the stop starting. In theory you should not be riding at over 25kmh anyway, and so the Widewheel will keep up with all but the most serious Lycra Cyclists.
For those not restricted by (or not interested in obeying) such laws then the MX60 will outpace everything else around you except cars.
As I found on my recent video comparison between my Widewheel and MX60 the MX60 uses more juice than the Widewheel on the same trip as a percentage of the battery. Given how much more power that is in Watts it translates to much longer charging times and or much more powerful chargers.
I've got a 4Amp charger for the Widewheel, which nicely charges it (s 13Ah) battery up from 50% in less than 2 hours. To do the same on the 20Ah battery on the MX60 you'd need more than 6A and to be comfortable with such a flow you'd really need to be confident that the charging wires are up to task.
I personally thermally checked my Widewheel for signs of problems when I first bought that 4A charger. I'd need to do the same with the MX60.
As always more power comes with more costs (both time and money).
One of the nice places in my region is Carrs lookout, and its a place I like to take the motorbike up to now and then (especially in summer when its bloody hot). I wanted to see if the new scooter would make it there and back, so this morning with a full battery I headed up to find out.
Its pretty steep mountain road and a more or less continuous climb there and a more or less continuous down hill back home. GPS on the phone reports the return trip is about 38km
So basically because there is some up and down the total climb up that the scooter had to do is 1,317 meters (or 4,317 feet for those people still using feet, inches, fingers and when insufficient toes too).
The basic data shows that for a good portion of the time the scooter was doing just over 24kmh, but because of some long downhills gravity assist brought the average speeds up :-)
Its interesting to note also that the cruising speed (gear mode 2) changed from 27 on the way out (with a fresh battery) to noticeably slower on the way back (on basically flat ground with no significant winds).
Which is in keeping with the knowledge that power is Volts x Amps and as Volts sag you loose power or you have to pump in more amps (which I'm willing to bet the cruise contrller does not do) which will flatten the battery even faster. Recall the discharge curve at constant amps:
In the graph above I've chosen to compare an LG S3 2.2Ah cell with what I believe are the batteries in my Widewheel (and thus likely too those in the MX60) which shows that at first the cells in my MX60 give me over 3.8V per cell but at 3.5V you're getting steady loss of power that then falls off a cliff at either 3.3 or 3.1V
Because the MX60 is an 16S configuration thats 62.4V, 56V and 52.8V respectively
My MX60 left the building with 67.2V showing on the battery and 57V (or about 3.5V per cell) while on the road still under power in Gear Mode 2. Combined with the battery reporting a State of Charge of 43 ~ 42% with a short rest.
So assuming those curves are what indeed my battery was following (which seems a reasonable first order approximation) I would expect it didn't have many more kilometers up its sleeve. Perhaps 9 or 10km more on a flat less if there were hills. 38 + 10 = 48 which means that I'd feel comfortable doing 50km on this using gear mode 2 most of the time in "typical gentle urban terrain" without significant apprehension that you'd be doing the "Dead Battery Walking" routine...
For the interested, here's some video notes from the trip.
The bases of the plastic side covers on the Widewheel just seem to break all the time, no matter how I've tried they just destroy the base of the plastic. Until now I've used a variously some Silicon and lately the Gaffa tape solution (which is pretty good but falls off after a while).
The covers are more than just decoration they protect the motor interior from water ingress along the wires when its wet. So I've made what I believe to be a good fix with M3 nylon screws. I think it looks neat and I hope its durable.
I've used duct tape (which is different to gaffer tape) to cover the heads of the screws (which are clear but have white washers) and hopefully stop any vibration loosening.
In that video I used two lengths of screw:
12mm and
25mm.
washers: M3
and M4 (as spacers if needed, used 2)
In the video I show fitting the first but I fitted all without too much hassle. I just needed to clear the thread on one of the swing-arm fitment points from old permatex and I needed to trim a few mm off one of the bolts on another. I also needed to retighten (and or course re-permatex) one of the swingarm bolts (as per here)
