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Zero Recalling Electric Motorcycles Over Bad Power Converter

The days of dinosaur-juice-powered machines are numbered, with electric motors starting to slowly make their way up into all transportation applications, offering increased reliability, power, and less maintenance than the classic combustion engine. However, they are prone to manufacturing defects too, and on this note, Zero Motorcycles recalls most of its range over power problems.
2015 Zero Motorcycles lineup 1 photo
Photo: Zero Motorcycles
Electric motors are quite simple and require almost no maintenance, having only one moving part, a battery, and some electronics to control it. Still, electronics are quite fragile and if something fries up you can't do anything else but replace it.

Electric motorcycle manufacturer Zero will have to do that for some of its bikes as it recently discovered a problem with on-board electricity converters that might increase chances to crash.

The recall is affecting certain model-year 2015 SR, S, DS, and FX electric motorcycles. The problem seems to be a DC-DC converter that might provide an insufficient power output, starving some other systems their required amount of juice.

If the converter power output isn't enough, during and ABS activated event, the ABS and all vehicle lights would temporarily stop functioning. To put it in a real world scenario, imagine you're riding out at night, and you open up the throttle hard to pass a slow truck. Then you notice a hard corner comes up, and you need to slow down pretty fast.

You grab a handful of front brake, the ABS wants to cut in, but there's no power available for auxiliary systems so you skid. Also, your lights are out and crashing at this point becomes inevitable.

Don't worry, though, Zero is notifying owners of the affected bikes, informing them to take their machines to the nearest dealership where qualified technicians will inspect them and replace the affected parts at no cost. If you own one and have more questions, feel free to contact Zero's customer service at 1-888-841-8085. The recall number is SV-ZMC-016-356.
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