Looking for a street legal Electric Scooter/Moped

TheSiege

100 W
Joined
Jul 17, 2016
Messages
145
Ideally, I would want something less than 3k and that can go 40mph and has a 40 mile range. I have looked at CSC motorcycles and they have a couple that kinda work, but I would like to see what other options are out there. Thanks
 
getting those actual numbers requires a 5+kWh battery. no way you are getting that under 3k. at least not in any quality you want to pay 3k for....
 
Well, that’s not completely true. I have a ZEV s6000 that tops out at 55 and has a range of around 40 miles. It’s a 21s 50ah Chevy volt battery that is degraded to around 45ah and I only charge to 4v and shutoff at 3. So a 3.2kwh pack that is charged and discharged pretty conservatively can achieve those numbers.
 
I am just looking for manufacturers in the US or that ship to the US that have entry level electric scooters so I can sort through them and see if there is one that would fit my needs. I know over ZEV and CSC. If there are more, and I am sure there are, I would love to know their names.
 
TheSiege said:
Well, that’s not completely true. I have a ZEV s6000 that tops out at 55 and has a range of around 40 miles. It’s a 21s 50ah Chevy volt battery that is degraded to around 45ah and I only charge to 4v and shutoff at 3. So a 3.2kwh pack that is charged and discharged pretty conservatively can achieve those numbers.

no way you are driving 55 continusly and get 40 miles from that battery. that would mean you would consume 50Wh/km at nearly 90kph. that is impossible unless you have a litteral hurricane at your back. even a highly efficient scooter like a govecs 3.6 or an emax 120 will consume that power at or below 35mph.

bikes like a zero for example that is fairly efficient (for a bike) that do 60mph average out their consumption at 130Wh/mile if you DONT drive like a lunatic.

TheSiege said:
I am just looking for manufacturers in the US or that ship to the US that have entry level electric scooters so I can sort through them and see if there is one that would fit my needs. I know over ZEV and CSC. If there are more, and I am sure there are, I would love to know their names.

you are looking for an actual electric motorcycle, not a scooter. that comes with a price penalty unless you want to DIY it.
 
Yeah, I am not doing 55 for long period. But I have the ability is the point. When it comes down to it, I want to be able to get up to 35-40mph quickly and maintain it for decent distances. Its for street driving. And I dont want to be sluggish on hills or hold up traffic
 
TheSiege said:
Yeah, I am not doing 55 for long period. But I have the ability is the point. When it comes down to it, I want to be able to get up to 35-40mph quickly and maintain it for decent distances. Its for street driving. And I dont want to be sluggish on hills or hold up traffic

high top speed is different from acceleration.

top speed requires horsepower, acceleration requires torque.

i have build lots of scooters with insane acceleration numbers (0-35mph under 2 seconds) and still top out at 40-ish.

generally lowering the top speed with a lower winding means you can get higher acceleration.
 
Gotcha, well I have an EVT-168 and a EVT-4000e and they are both about 5-8mph too slow, thats all I really want to increase overall in comparison
 
those are cookie cutter chinese scooters. in my country you trip over these things.

if you want higher speed in those things you need to replace the battery with a higher voltage and the controller. voltage dicates top speed. and with a kelly controller (generally recommended as they are nearly drop in replacements) you can also crank up the acceleration.

replace the motor with a 4kW from QS and you can do 55mph if you really wanted to kill yourself....
 
How would I calculate what a 3000w or 2000w motor speed would be? The 1500w brushed motor at 48v on a 10in tire gets me about 30mph. My new lithium batteries will reduced the weight by at least 50lbs. And then switching from brushed to brushless, even at the same wattage would give me more top speed right? Right now I think the motor is labeled at 750RPM
 
more watts does not get you more speed.
is a stated directy above: voltage dictates speed. if you dont increas the voltage you will never drive 1 iota faster.
weight is not a factor. it just a factor in consumption, but not top speed.

the wattage of your motor only implies what it can take in regards to the amps you are sending it from the controller, not what speed it can do.
you can have a 500bhp engine, but how its implemented tells you what it can do, go 200mph in a slick ferrari that weights 1.5 tons or 60mph in a truck while carrying 50 tons of amazon boxes. they both use 500bhp..... :wink:
 
Volts times Amps equal wattage, good for getting up hills.

I had a 36V 25A and it wouldnt get me up a hill.

I changed controllers and made sure my battery was able to provide 40A.

I went to 36V 40A and I could get up that same hill, faster because there is more power (watts).

Top speed never changed. Its just I went slower up the hill with 25A, and I went faster up the hill with 40A.

So if the top speed on flats was 40kph on either 25A or 40A, then depending on the hill I would never go more then 30 or 35kph with 40A, and I would never go more then 25 or 30kph on 25A. So the steeper hills I would crawl with 25A, so much so I had to get off and walk up the hill before the motor burnt up.
 
watts does not get you up hils, amps do. cant have watts without amps.
 
Ok so the voltage is going to dictate speed/RPMs
The wattage will determine the speed, based on Amps it can handle while the motor is under load. 3000w at 72v will obviously be a lot closer to the designed RPM on flat terrain vs going uphill but a 2000w motor would see more of a speed loss going uphill vs the 3000w motor even at the same voltage.
And the amps really dont play much of a part in the speed/acceleration factor because wattage and voltage is a better measurement for that right? I am familiar with ohms law and volts/amps/watts, I am just unsure of how it affects DC motor characteristics as a whole.

That being said, if I was to design a new drive system and I have (4) 48v15ah packs. I would be better off going with 96v30ah and to get a higher top speed. Or I could do a 48v60ah and get a lot more distance.

I keep going back and forth, trying to decide what to do. I can do a 48v w/ batteries rated at 30a,60a, or 90a depending on how I have it configured. 96v w/batteries rated at 30, 60, 90 amps. or lastly, I can use my LiFePo4 cells and do 66v w/50 amp batteries.
I am really trying to get the most range I can get with a realistic top speed in the 38-45mph range. Basically a city scooter that wont slow others down. Can you advise on what wattage motor I should get?
 
ok, lets break it down where you mess up and fix it up.

TheSiege said:
Ok so the voltage is going to dictate speed/RPMs
yes. but, more on that below.

TheSiege said:
The wattage will determine the speed, based on Amps it can handle while the motor is under load. 3000w at 72v will obviously be a lot closer to the designed RPM on flat terrain vs going uphill but a 2000w motor would see more of a speed loss going uphill vs the 3000w motor even at the same voltage.

eeeh, almost. if the motors were identical but just a lower nominal rating you can still push the same amount of power into both motors but you would blow up the 2kW motor if you let it overheat.

TheSiege said:
And the amps really dont play much of a part in the speed/acceleration factor because wattage and voltage is a better measurement for that right?
going in slighty more in detail.

the motor does not give a shit about voltage, just amps.

now comes the:

ePqSNqU.jpg


the but(t) in all this is voltage and RPM. the realtionship is called the Kv of the motor. 10Kv means 10rpm per volt. so put 10 volt on the motor and it will turn at 100rpm. the voltage in the motor is ALWAYS directly related to the Kv. the motor is stationary the voltage in the motor is 0 volts. so you can have a million volts in the battey and floor it. the voltage is still close to zero until the rpms pick up.
now hopefully you start seeing the real problem if you understand ohms law. for POWER to be present (aka: Watts) you need voltage and current. but there are not volts to speak of as the motor is near zero speed wich is a problem. the battery voltage is completly irrelevant at this point as you can probably see now.
so for simplicty sake lets assume the motor is at 1V at a dead stop. if you have a controller capable of doing 100A on the phases you will get 100W at 1rpm of power. but at 10rpm you are already at 1kW of power. (that is about 1kph for a 10" hub motor) at 20kph you are at 200rpm at 2kW and so on. so getting the voltage up high faster is very important unless you want to trow hunderds of amps at the "problem". this is why you see 500A controllers and that is why controllers are rated for amps, not watts.

at the same time the battery only sees that 100W load at a dead stop wich quickly rises into the kW range if you dont limit the battery amps the controller is allowed to pull once you get some speed and the power levels get really "interesting".

TheSiege said:
I am familiar with ohms law and volts/amps/watts, I am just unsure of how it affects DC motor characteristics as a whole.

the motor is 3 phase AC, not DC.

TheSiege said:
That being said, if I was to design a new drive system and I have (4) 48v15ah packs. I would be better off going with 96v30ah and to get a higher top speed. Or I could do a 48v60ah and get a lot more distance.

again, voltage is not relevant. lowering the amps the controller is fed means less voltage drop, thinner cables and a higher voltage means you have a nearly unlimited top speed. so you can cap the speed at a hard (legal) limit and hold it there until the battery drains completly. if the voltage is too low your top speed will reduce when the battery goes lower in charge. so you start with a scooter that can do 50 but as the trip progresses the speed lowers to the low 40's before it conks out. not very pleasant driving.
your range is dicated by the consumption (aka:how fast you are going) and the capacity of the battery. the capacity does not change if you ree-arrange the battery, it just lowers the voltage and potential top speed and makes the experence less pleasant.


TheSiege said:
I keep going back and forth, trying to decide what to do. I can do a 48v w/ batteries rated at 30a,60a, or 90a depending on how I have it configured. 96v w/batteries rated at 30, 60, 90 amps. or lastly, I can use my LiFePo4 cells and do 66v w/50 amp batteries.
I am really trying to get the most range I can get with a realistic top speed in the 38-45mph range. Basically a city scooter that wont slow others down. Can you advise on what wattage motor I should get?

higher wattage motors tend to be more efficient, same goes with higher power controllers.
 
I was mentioning the configuration and amps because of the C rating of the batteries, and if I run them in parallel vs series. Do I want lower voltage and a higher discharge with parallel packs, or do I want higher voltage, and a lower C rating overall with less packs in parallel.

I am just struggling to decide which motor to go with. But I think a 3000w motor gets about 900 RPM at 55v. My 20s LiFePo4 pack which is 50ah and rated at 1c paired with the right controller should 42mph and a 30 mile range. Maybe even a little further.
 
the power rating of the motor has nothing to do with the speed it can get to. that is up to the Kv of the motor. read the above again or ask for clarification if i am not clear enough. it can be difficult to "get" the concepts of how motors work. the only thing you run into eventually is that the speed you are going exeeds the nominal power rating of the motor. so if going 35mph means you need 3kW of power you will blow up/overheat a motor that is 2kW nominal.

your battery current does not matter. the power it can output remains the same.

100A at 24V = 2.4kW
50A at 48V = 2.4kW
25A at 96V = 2.4kW

you controller is rated for amps. so a 72V controller that is rated at 100 amps will deliver more power at 72V then it can at 48. its still amp limted. so 48*100=4.8kW but the same controller can do 72*100=7.2kW. so yes, higher voltage is better as you can do more with less amps.
 
What you said made sense. I mentioned the motor wattage because my batteries have a max discharge rating. So my 20s LifePo4 50ah 1C discharge rate pack wouldnt be able to output 4000w. 3000w would be its max. So I wouldnt gain anything with 4000w right?
 
i dont know what cells you exactly have but a 50Ah pack will probably do a LOT more then 50A peaks.

sustained is a different story ofcourse. but short peaks for acceleration (where the fun is) defenetly warrants a bigger motor and lots of amps. generally a 4kW motor will have more torques so its usually more effiecient and runs cooler under normal operation.
 
On top of all that, another thing to keep in mind is that motor ratings are not always accurate. The "3000w" qs138 70h mid drive motor has been known to take 25kW burst and much more than 3kW continuous, and other qs motors are similarly underrated. If you are looking at buying a motor, or upgrading the controller for a motor, it is always a good idea to find as much real world info about the motor, don't just accept the given rating.
 
On top of all that, another thing to keep in mind is that motor ratings are not always accurate. The "3000w" qs138 70h mid drive motor has been known to take 25kW burst (with lower efficiency) and much more than 3kW continuous, and other qs motors are similarly underrated. If you are looking at buying a motor, or upgrading the controller for a motor, it is always a good idea to find as much real world info about the motor, don't just accept the given rating.
 
QS motors are generally pretty decent quality. I just mean do your research, look around on ES for threads about the motor you're thinking about or builds that use the motor. See what kind of power people are getting out of it, or of there are any issues.
 
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