Nikola 100V Plus review/wheelog/journal 🦓

[Marty Backe]

5 hours ago, chrisjunlee said:

== Quick Update: Saturday 9/21/2019 ==

Went out for a group ride and my Nikola exploded 💥

Those 👀 jolting give you an idea of how much OOMPH that had.

Will post details later.

 

Good way to leave us hanging.

Any wheel, even KingSong @eddiemoy, can smoke if the wheel hits just right during a bad crash. Are there a lot of Nikola's exploding?

[EUC Custom Power-Pads]

4 hours ago, Marty Backe said:

Any wheel, even KingSong @eddiemoy, can smoke if the wheel hits just right during a bad crash

No way Marty, I have read the whole 16X Manual and have found nothing about a possible explosion. 

You're a liar. 

[chrisjunlee]

== Explosion Quick Update II ==

Spent the rest of he day riding the 16X with the Seattle crew, and got back late after midnight. Too exhausted at the moment to write everything out. This is going to take me at least 2-3 hours to write out a post with supporting data (logs, footage, etc).

But for now, a quick juicy bit: I was just in bed watching the GoPro footage of the spill: there wasn’t much physical impact to the wheel! The wheel just slid down at most one flat step. 

I’m hoping the wheel was still sending out Bluetooth logging, so we can time sync everything.

I’ll end tonight with this statement: any disappointment I have in the loss of my $2,700 Nikola is overshadowed by my excitement to be able to contribute a rich datapoint for Gotway to improve upon 

[fred8569]

Wow, sadly amazing !

You don't think of fixing it in a near future ? 

[Marty Backe]

27 minutes ago, chrisjunlee said:

== Explosion Quick Update II ==

Spent the rest of he day riding the 16X with the Seattle crew, and got back late after midnight. Too exhausted at the moment to write everything out. This is going to take me at least 2-3 hours to write out a post with supporting data (logs, footage, etc).

But for now, a quick juicy bit: I was just in bed watching the GoPro footage of the spill: there wasn’t much physical impact to the wheel! The wheel just slid down at most one flat step. 

I’m hoping the wheel was still sending out Bluetooth logging, so we can time sync everything.

I’ll end tonight with this statement: any disappointment I have in the loss of my $2,700 Nikola is overshadowed by my excitement to be able to contribute a rich datapoint for Gotway to improve upon 

Do me (and maybe a few others) a favor. If you're going to spend 3-hours writing a post, please write an abstract to the post for those of use who just want the highlights 

Did you really destroy the entire Nikola? I only saw a puff. The entire thing burned, not just one battery pack? That's sad, and you're taking it rather calmly 

[Rainu]

On 9/15/2019 at 12:40 AM, chrisjunlee said:

It's been raining hard lately, and I've been riding through that heavy rain. We're talking about socks completely drenched within a minute of riding heavy rain. The Nikola is holding up fine, but I do worry.

And now your Nikola exploded.. 🙄 What when some water was inside and then shortenet something when the wheel was in that position on the ground?

Edited September 24, 2019 by Rainu

[fryman]

1 hour ago, Rainu said:

And now your Nikola exploded.. 🙄 What when some water was inside and then shortenet something ehen the wheel was in that position on the ground?

Not a good idea to ride any wheel in the rain.

[atdlzpae]

That explosion was weird.

It's almost like H2 was created and then it went kaboom... Normal li-ion explosion would look way different.

[Chriull]

50 minutes ago, atdlzpae said:

That explosion was weird.

It's almost like H2 was created and then it went kaboom... Normal li-ion explosion would look way different.

Yes, or just some capacitor or mosfet blowing up - liion would have eliminated the wheel. But let's wait and see what gets reported - details are on their way...

[atdlzpae]

Not really. A capacitor/mosfet would be audible, but invisible. The flames require a flammable gas.

Strange. Can't wait for a report.

[Gustesta]

@Marty Backe has a master degree, I mean, doctorate degree, on gotway dissections

Edited September 22, 2019 by Gustesta
Updated

[chrisjunlee]

== Explosive Day💥, Saturday 9/22/2019 ==

Went out to ride with the elusive underground Seattle E-riders and those guys are insane. We're talking about riding backwards down flights of stairs on one leg, and doing jumps over people insane. In contrast, I don't even roll off curbs - I'm a controlled condition, high speed track guy; these guys are grassroots motorcross RedBull x-fighters. 

Seeing things like that in person, is bound to inspire a 🐢rider like me. At one point, we change locations, and the entire crew just rolls down a set of tame flat steps.

There's 8 steps, each step is  3" high and 16" wide - yes, these are easy flat steps.

I follow - and fall at the 6th step. The wheel slides down maybe half a step. I'll repeat that for emphasis: the wheel slides half a step. That is the extent of the impact. Here's the video (crank up the volume, sound is low):

Here's the extent of the scratches - you see worse learner scratches.

Looking through the log [2019_09_21_13_01_42.csv], we can gain some interesting insights:

At first glance, you would think to look for max current spikes or temperature - but remember these are readouts from sensors. Each sensor readout corresponds to just *one* point in the overall system. 

This was the first thing that jumped out to me: 

In other words, our failure happened before the current sensor. A short that dropped the battery a whopping 49%! Then short-ly afterwards, we're drawing 205A!

Also interesting is the temperature sensor: they're reading normal - nothing has happened.

Now let's jump to the moment of explosion. This is the point where the deflagration/explosion heat wave has reached our temperature sensors.

For those in the states: 89°C = 192°F! 

Also note the battery voltage before and after. We've somehow lost enough Wh to drop the battery by ~10%.

That's all I have for now folks. Just took me 4 hours to gather and track everything down - those working with wheelog logs and gopro will understand

I don't have a place to disassemble and work on the wheel - so I'm storing it in a work garage. At some point I'll get around to opening and taking pics. Not sure what would be interesting to examine and take pics of.

Here's an initial look:

@Ben Kimhas an interesting hypothesis of what happened.

Edited September 23, 2019 by chrisjunlee

[Ben Kim]

30 minutes ago, chrisjunlee said:

== Explosive Day💥, Saturday 9/22/2019 ==

Went out to ride with the elusive underground Seattle E-riders and those guys are insane. We're talking about riding backwards down flights of stairs on one leg, and doing jumps over people insane. In contrast, I don't even roll off curbs - I'm a controlled condition, high speed track guy; these guys are grassroots motorcross RedBull x-fighters. 

Seeing things like that in person, is bound to inspire a 🐢rider like me. At one point, we change locations, and the entire crew just rolls down a set of tame flat steps.

There's 8 steps, each step is  3" high and 16" wide - yes, these are easy flat steps.

I follow - and fall at the 6th step. The wheel slides down maybe half a step. I'll repeat that for emphasis: the wheel slides half a step. That is the extent of the impact. Here's the video (crank up the volume, sound is low):

Here's the extent of the scratches - again, you see worse learner scratches.

Looking through the log [2019_09_21_13_01_42.csv], we can gain some interesting insights:

At first glance, you would think to look for max current spikes or temperature - but remember these are readouts from sensors. Each sensor readout corresponds to just *one* point in the overall system. 

This was the first thing that jumped out to me: 

In other words, our failure happened before the current sensor. A short that dropped the battery a whopping 49%! Then short-ly afterwards, we're drawing 205A!

Also interesting is the temperature sensor: they're reading normal - nothing has happened.

Now let's jump to the moment of explosion. This is the point where the deflagration/explosion heat wave has reached our temperature sensors.

For those in the states: 89°C = 192°F! 

Also note the battery voltage before and after. We've somehow lost enough Wh to drop the battery by ~10%.

That's all I have for now folks. Just took me 4 hours to gather and track everything down - those working with wheelog logs and gopro will understand

I don't have a place to disassemble and work on the wheel - so I'm storing it in a work garage. At some point I'll get around to opening and taking pics. Not sure what would be interesting to examine and take pics of.

Here's an initial look:

@Ben Kimhas an interesting hypothesis of what happened.

hypothesis is that you had an overcurrent condition when you dropped the wheel down the stairs (wheel does not recognize load against the pedals, it recognizes angle). If anything based on your wheellog data, that’s precisely what happened when your wheel fell face first down the stairs.  

Hopefully a new board will get you squared away (check voltages of each pack individually just incase) 

[Marty Backe]

32 minutes ago, chrisjunlee said:

== Explosive Day💥, Saturday 9/22/2019 ==

Went out to ride with the elusive underground Seattle E-riders and those guys are insane. We're talking about riding backwards down flights of stairs on one leg, and doing jumps over people insane. In contrast, I don't even roll off curbs - I'm a controlled condition, high speed track guy; these guys are grassroots motorcross RedBull x-fighters. 

Seeing things like that in person, is bound to inspire a 🐢rider like me. At one point, we change locations, and the entire crew just rolls down a set of tame flat steps.

There's 8 steps, each step is  3" high and 16" wide - yes, these are easy flat steps.

I follow - and fall at the 6th step. The wheel slides down maybe half a step. I'll repeat that for emphasis: the wheel slides half a step. That is the extent of the impact. Here's the video (crank up the volume, sound is low):

Here's the extent of the scratches - again, you see worse learner scratches.

 

Looking through the log [2019_09_21_13_01_42.csv], we can gain some interesting insights:

At first glance, you would think to look for max current spikes or temperature - but remember these are readouts from sensors. Each sensor readout corresponds to just *one* point in the overall system. 

This was the first thing that jumped out to me: 

In other words, our failure happened before the current sensor. A short that dropped the battery a whopping 49%! Then short-ly afterwards, we're drawing 205A!

Also interesting is the temperature sensor: they're reading normal - nothing has happened.

Now let's jump to the moment of explosion. This is the point where the deflagration/explosion heat wave has reached our temperature sensors.

For those in the states: 89°C = 192°F! 

Also note the battery voltage before and after. We've somehow lost enough Wh to drop the battery by ~10%.

That's all I have for now folks. Just took me 4 hours to gather and track everything down - those working with wheelog logs and gopro will understand

I don't have a place to disassemble and work on the wheel - so I'm storing it in a work garage. At some point I'll get around to opening and taking pics. Not sure what would be interesting to examine and take pics of.

Here's an initial look:

@Ben Kimhas an interesting hypothesis of what happened.

I've heard that before. I saw a MSX do that and it sounded like popcorn popping.

I have to believe there was a bad component(s) on your control board that was semi-working and something triggered it to go critical. Definitely a fluke failure.

[Ben Kim]

do you happen to know if you have a v1 or v2 board @chrisjunlee

 

edit: it’s a v1 board. i can tell by the power/buzzer plug location on your video. 

Edited September 23, 2019 by Ben Kim

[Gustesta]

11 minutes ago, Ben Kim said:

do you happen to know if you have a v1 or v2 board @chrisjunlee

 

edit: it’s a v1 board. i can tell by the power/buzzer plug location on your video. 

Is that good or bad?

[meepmeepmayer]

If you had an overcurrent condition aka too much current, the board would have fried right away. That doesn't explain the delay.

Also you don't lose 10% of your Wh capacity just from a crash. I think it means a battery cell has been damaged and some cells (like a 24 block) are offline. That must have been from the crash which (mechanically? electrically?) impacted the (presumably top) battery pack. I guess that also caused the power surge that made the board go boom. I wonder why it was delayed. Maybe something was connected when moving the wheel around? Or the problem started right at the crash and you had a huge current through the electronics until they finally fried? [Can't really figure out what those fast beeps were.]

I fully expect at least one of your batteries to have damage, too. That short and capacity loss must have come from somewhere.

So far for my guesses

Edited September 23, 2019 by meepmeepmayer

[Patton250]

 So what does he do with this wheel now? Some of you guys could fix it yourself I guess. I doubt any of this would be under warranty right? Jason’s guys could probably fix it but at a significant cost right? 

 

 Wow  Chris I’m sorry this happened to you. You sure were geared up though so it looks like you fared the face plant pretty well. How are you? 

[meepmeepmayer]

You fall was exemplary btw. Not on the hands, just with stretched out arms, with the impact nicely distributed it seems.

The video is also a good argument against the "Oh I can easily run off a fall at lower speed" people.

[Marty Backe]

19 minutes ago, Patton250 said:

 So what does he do with this wheel now? Some of you guys could fix it yourself I guess. I doubt any of this would be under warranty right? Jason’s guys could probably fix it but at a significant cost right? 

 

 Wow  Chris I’m sorry this happened to you. You sure were geared up though so it looks like you fared the face plant pretty well. How are you? 

Didn't Chris buy this from EWheels? Why wouldn't it be covered by warranty? The video shows everything and clearly the wheel experience very little stress relative to what most of us put our wheels through.

I think fixing it entails some cleaning and a new control board. Easy enough to do. A couple of hours and he'll be running like new again.

[Darrell Wesh]

3 minutes ago, meepmeepmayer said:

You fall was exemplary btw. Not on the hands, just with stretched out arms, with the impact nicely distributed it seems.

The video is also a good argument against the "Oh I can easily run off a fall at lower speed" people.

When you have full face and other gear on you can trust that gear and faceplant knowing you’ll come out alright. 

Everyone else has to learn how to pre-tense the muscles before going down in order to react quick enough to run something like this off. 

I don’t go down stairs because it’s downright dangerous (and harmful to the wheel!)

It was weird to see him fall straight forward instead of on his back like most people do on stairs. 

[Darrell Wesh]

Just now, Marty Backe said:

Didn't Chris buy this from EWheels? Why wouldn't it be covered by warranty? The video shows everything and clearly the wheel experience very little stress relative to what most of us put our wheels through.

I think fixing it entails some cleaning and a new control board. Easy enough to do. A couple of hours and he'll be running like new again.

Hmmm damage from accidents isn’t covered in warranty though. But you’re right that such a fall shouldn’t have caused this much damage 

[chrisjunlee]

15 hours ago, fred8569 said:

Wow, sadly amazing! You don't think of fixing it in a near future ? 

I don't know much about burnt wheels, and not sure if I can trust a self refurbished 60+ kmh wheel. We'll see .

15 hours ago, Marty Backe said:

That's sad, and you're taking it rather calmly 

I've thought about that comment all day, and it's puzzling. I got really worked up when my 16X vibrated too much. I don't know why I'm so chill about the Nikola blowing up.

18 minutes ago, Patton250 said:

Wow  Chris I’m sorry this happened to you. You sure were geared up though so it looks like you fared the face plant pretty well. How are you? 

Aww, thanks for asking <3 

I went down at ~2pm. Lyfted back to work to drop the wheel off, and was back with the crew by 4pm. It was hilarious, their jaws dropped when I rolled back in: "You really came back?! And wtf, you have a 16X just lying around?! CAN WE TRY?" We stayed out and rode till midnightish

I was wearing the e-wheels wrist guards + leatte dual axis knee braces. It was kind of fun sliding. Only 'injury' is this denim abrasion (inside of jeans rubbing my knee) - that's a first for me:

Parakeet for scale 🦜.

7 minutes ago, meepmeepmayer said:

You fall was exemplary btw. Not on the hands, just with stretched out arms, with the impact nicely distributed it seems.

The video is also a good argument against the "Oh I can easily run off a fall at lower speed" people.

You guys are so nice XD

I know @Marty Backe's sitting back grinning "how you like em wrist guards now"? Yeah yeah, whatever :p 

I'll say that although I wouldn't have broken any bones, without any gear, the scrapes and bruises alone would've killed my entire day of riding. Instead, I was out within an hour, without *any* sore spots, as if nothing had happened. 

[meepmeepmayer]

3 minutes ago, chrisjunlee said:

I went down at ~2pm. Lyfted back to work to drop the wheel off, and was back with the crew by 4pm. It was hilarious, their jaws dropped when I rolled back in: "You really came back?! And wtf, you have a 16X just lying around?! CAN WE TRY?" We stayed out and rode till midnightish

wheel lyfe^TM

3 minutes ago, chrisjunlee said:

Parakeet for scale 🦜.

You should take the parakeet riding with you. Fashion a little perch on your shoulder or helmet. Maybe it will like it, sitting in the wind and enjoying the sense of the world zipping by. You can call it "Speedbird^TM"

[Marty Backe]

4 minutes ago, chrisjunlee said:

I don't know much about burnt wheels, and not sure if I can trust a self refurbished 60+ kmh wheel. We'll see .

I've thought about that comment all day, and it's puzzling. I got really worked up when my 16X vibrated too much. I don't know why I'm so chill about the Nikola blowing up.

Aww, thanks for asking <3 

I went down at ~2pm. Lyfted back to work to drop the wheel off, and was back with the crew by 4pm. It was hilarious, their jaws dropped when I rolled back in: "You really came back?! And wtf, you have a 16X just lying around?! CAN WE TRY?" We stayed out and rode till midnightish

I was wearing the e-wheels wrist guards + leatte dual axis knee braces. It was kind of fun sliding. Only 'injury' is this denim abrasion (inside of jeans rubbing my knee) - that's a first for me:

 

Parakeet for scale 🦜.

You guys are so nice XD

I know @Marty Backe's sitting back grinning "how you like em wrist guards now"? Yeah yeah, whatever :p 

I'll say that although I wouldn't have broken any bones, without any gear, the scrapes and bruises alone would've killed my entire day of riding. Instead, I was out within an hour, without *any* sore spots, as if nothing had happened. 

If you really don't want your wheel, I buy it from you so you at least get a little money out of it 

I certainly hope you send the video to Jason and tell him you'll need a new control board. He'll either offer to send you one gratis or give you a price.