FUV Owner Experiences

[Rickb]

A thread started for early Owners to share their experiences after receiving delivery of their new FUVS.

[Rickb]

Please consider the idea of posting an owner photo along side your FUV for our FUV Club Wall of Fame.

[Rickb]

I did happen across this photo of a Forum members SS Series parked on the street, but he would have to post his photo with Mark and his FUV.  I am amped to see the FUN on all our hometown streets very soon.

[jimball]

So, have all the SS series been delivered or shipped to their owners? The idea of FUVs running free in the wilds of America thrills me.

[ricschug]

So, have all the SS series been delivered or shipped to their owners?  The idea of FUVs running free in the wilds of America thrills me.

I just saw,maybe on twitter, that the SS series has been completed. I guess Beta starts now, right on time or maybe a bit early. Anyone know the intent of Beta? Is it to finalize designs or is it production line focused?

[Rickb]

I just saw,maybe on twitter, that the SS series has been completed. I guess Beta starts now, right on time or maybe a bit early. Anyone know the intent of Beta? Is it to finalize designs or is it production line focused?

My understanding is that the 15 Betas are earmarked for testing facilities and experience centers. Tweaking and validation leading up to the 25 Pilot Vehicles earmarked for experience centers, early fleets, customers.

[CreativeGuy]

While we got the keys to our SS FUV last weekend (Fararri Yellow), we are actually picking it up this Friday to drive home to Newport, OR. PAX has been spending the week in Eugene while Arcimoto does some tweaking to their ride before driving it home to Washington.

[Kepesk]

My understanding is four have been delivered (Mark, Nathan Fillion, PAX, and CreativeGuy), and the other two customer Signature Series vehicles will be delivered imminently.

[jimball]

My understanding is that the 15 Betas are earmarked for testing facilities and experience centers. Tweaking and validation leading up to the 25 Pilot Vehicles earmarked for experience centers, early fleets, customers.

So, then the next 15 are not for customers, per se.  It'll be interesting to see how quickly they get built, and even more so to see how fast the 25 Pilot vehicles are built.  That will be a clue as to how fast they'll be able to run their production line.  I hope Arcimoto keeps us (the public) informed of progress.  It's going to be maddening if the updates on progress drop back to once a week or so.  I suppose we can ask Kepesk to make a 'pesk'  out of himself at the factory and keep us informed and updated.

[PAX]

Hey folks,
It has been a busy and hectic few days and between that and the fact that using my iPad to post is a pain, I haven't put much out here yet. Here is what is going on
We received our red FUV Saturday morning after share holder meeting. Susan and I drove it around a bit band decided to go by our air B&B to get some warmer clothes. While there a small rain storm moved through so we just hunkered down. We had been thinking about putting some miles on but then we received a text that we should head back to the AMP as our battery pack was down to 15%. We went back and put it on production line charger which is level one. Shortly after that it was decided to do the outside photo of all 8 SS ones. The rains had cleared for that. It was then decided to use our red and CG's ( Creativeguy) yellow on the stand next to the podium, so they were moved there. Eventually, when the music became too loud I went in the factory and talked to some of the head designers. I asked to get red on a fast charger so we could get it to our B$B and put some driving in. It was but was not fully charged so Susan and I decided to walk back to the B&B and come back Sunday to get red. We had gone a few blocks when our host texted that we could park in the driveway and charge there. We did that and on Sunday went off to put some miles on it. Long story short the battery soc meter ( gives % of usable battery charge)started dropping rather quickly and we headed back to our B&B . I charged it up and took kWh and % of charge every hour. I only had 10A available but after the first two hours the readings were 60% and 2.35 kWh which seemed weird to me. I also was not happy with the power steering as it seemed rather hard to steer. On Monday we met with the heads of engineering, electrical, computering and some others. I shared our experience and they said that they wanted to balance the battery cells and check out other things. In the mean time they let us use a couple of the other ones. We used orange all day Monday and then switched to a blue one and drove it to Corvalis which is about 43 miles from Eugene. My daughter lives there and we got a cheap hotel room that allowed us to charge the FUV. Interesting that the hotel had four Tesla chargers there that the hotel folks said we could use if we had an adapter ($238). When we got there the battery percentage was at 47%. We drove about 43 miles and our EVSE read 9.63 KWH. This is not as good as mileage as I had hoped. One thing I did notice during this trip is the amount of wind that hits the back seat passenger. This has to be a fair amount of drag particularly as we had an imitation tail box on it. See below. My left arm was also sunburnt. We drove back to Eugene today and went to pick up red. They had balanced the batteries and also adjusted the steering (which is really awesome now) but the big thing they found was that the brakes were dragging a bit. When the master cylinder was installed the pedal adjustment rod was over tightened and they fixed that. They also modified the regen profile. They have a number of profiles for different things like the power steering and the regen and the motor controller. The power steering is set so that at slow speeds it gives a lot of assist and at higher speeds it drops down to users preference. At slow speeds is where we were lacking at first but now we can easily turn lock to lock which makes it great in tight places. The FUV does turn pretty tight radius. In my test run today the SOC meter behaved much better and the vehicle felt goodand responded nicely. Tomorrow we are doing a medium drive and then Arcimoto wants to do some photo opt things and we get it back on Friday and start back to Olympia.

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It is a pain to edit a long write up on this site, at least with my iPad. Sorry about misspellings and lack of clarity at times in previous post. I want to write up more on the driving experience we have had but it will have to wait for a bit