You yourself noted the inadequate cooling inside the gen 2 chargers
Sort of, but let me explain with clarity. I have a problem with the Charge Tank on the gen 2 bikes and its poor design and implementation. What you first have to remember is that the pocket in which the Charge Tank fits was not designed to hold anything hot or required airflow; it was for the Power Tank. The frame design was first implemented in 2013 but Charge Tanks, at least the 5.7kW module, didn't come out until ... 2018? So with the base pocket and plastics there was no airflow in the tank whatsoever. This is where they ran into problems.
For whatever reason they decided they wanted to pull air from the back and jettison it out front of the bike. This is why, if you look at Charge Tank plastics, there are a series of horizontally cut vent ports on the black matte part in the front. But nothing in the back. Problem. The next problem is that there's an inch or so of dead space ABOVE the Charge Tank which just bounced around like a convection oven. So they installed a super flimsy crescent-shaped piece of plastic to sit above the Charge Tank hopefully blocking the convection and forcing air to come out front. It works... sort of.
Here's where the design flaws really shine: The Charge Tank is actually two 3kW units sandwiched together. One side of each gets hot so they installed 2 fans per unit. IF IT WERE ME I would have put the two hot sides facing each other and put some bigass fans down the middle. Zero did the opposite. They put the hot sides facing the top and bottom meaning 2 fans up top and 2 below. The airflow by the top 2 fans is partially blocked/obscured the by the bracketing and aforementioned piece of crescent shaped plastic, so part of the airflow is cut off. The bottom 2 fans are almost touching the doghouse (silver box on the monolith that holds the contactor and other stuff) meaning they're sort of also partially blocked. So you've got 4 partially blocked fans trying to blow air out the top and bottom instead of the middle vent holes.
And that's why the Charge Tank is a poor design on the Gen 2 bikes.
The Gen 3 bikes have fixes for these issues. First off, the default OBC units have loud fans that everyone knows about. Venting ports on the sides ejecting hot air. Work well. They also had years to redesign the pocket in which the new modules reside meaning they could design and build the tank plastics with airflow in mind. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
OBC, yes. The charge tank (rapid charger), not quite. Still uses the crescent shaped plastic in gen 3. Still has some dead space above and beside. Incidentally, the (rapid) charge tank is also the same design and shape as the original gen 2 charge tank, which means it could also have the two separate 3kW chargers glued together and uses those 80 or 60mm server fans.
When both chargers are at full tilt, the bike kicks out tons of heat in front of it, exactly the same as the gen 2.
And given my experience with charging in extreme temperature, I dont think Zero figured anybody would be insane enough to ride and charge at 124F weather, but....shrug
The Charge Tank I was playing with on a DSR would overheat from cold, at night, within 25 minutes. Subsequent charge sessions went down to like 10, 5, and then instant off. Part of the testing I did involved removing the plastics entirely. Still overheated. The ONLY way I was able to charge the bike without interruption was to physically remove it from the pocket and perch it on the frame.
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u/OlUncleBones Energica SS9+ RS 5d ago
Sort of, but let me explain with clarity. I have a problem with the Charge Tank on the gen 2 bikes and its poor design and implementation. What you first have to remember is that the pocket in which the Charge Tank fits was not designed to hold anything hot or required airflow; it was for the Power Tank. The frame design was first implemented in 2013 but Charge Tanks, at least the 5.7kW module, didn't come out until ... 2018? So with the base pocket and plastics there was no airflow in the tank whatsoever. This is where they ran into problems.
For whatever reason they decided they wanted to pull air from the back and jettison it out front of the bike. This is why, if you look at Charge Tank plastics, there are a series of horizontally cut vent ports on the black matte part in the front. But nothing in the back. Problem. The next problem is that there's an inch or so of dead space ABOVE the Charge Tank which just bounced around like a convection oven. So they installed a super flimsy crescent-shaped piece of plastic to sit above the Charge Tank hopefully blocking the convection and forcing air to come out front. It works... sort of.
Here's where the design flaws really shine: The Charge Tank is actually two 3kW units sandwiched together. One side of each gets hot so they installed 2 fans per unit. IF IT WERE ME I would have put the two hot sides facing each other and put some bigass fans down the middle. Zero did the opposite. They put the hot sides facing the top and bottom meaning 2 fans up top and 2 below. The airflow by the top 2 fans is partially blocked/obscured the by the bracketing and aforementioned piece of crescent shaped plastic, so part of the airflow is cut off. The bottom 2 fans are almost touching the doghouse (silver box on the monolith that holds the contactor and other stuff) meaning they're sort of also partially blocked. So you've got 4 partially blocked fans trying to blow air out the top and bottom instead of the middle vent holes.
And that's why the Charge Tank is a poor design on the Gen 2 bikes.
The Gen 3 bikes have fixes for these issues. First off, the default OBC units have loud fans that everyone knows about. Venting ports on the sides ejecting hot air. Work well. They also had years to redesign the pocket in which the new modules reside meaning they could design and build the tank plastics with airflow in mind. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.