Wolf King Eco vs Turbo and Dual vs Single discussion

soji

I jumped straight in the deep end by going from never touching an electric scooter to buying a Wolf King. I’ve put over 300 miles on it in only 9 rides and have some questions/observations and would like to get other people’s feedback on eco vs turbo mode and dual motor vs single motor.

Fully equipped I’m probably 165lbs when riding the scooter. I’ve been doing all my riding (other than a couple expirements) in dual motor, eco mode, gear 2 for first 5 rides, then gear 3 for the last 4, with all power P settings maxed. Lowest regen braking, no cruise control.

The roads around town are; about 30% very rough/patched, about 50% ok riding with some slight bumps, dips, and about 20% nice and smooth.

Due to the variety of roads condition around town, my speeds can vary from 5mph while almost having a death grip on the handlebars, up to 30-35mph on smooth higher speed/traffic roads. Most of my riding averages around 20mph.

The town is in a valley so we have some big hills (up to 1,000 feet in elevation change) around the edge of town and the Wolf King just eats them up. This leads to my questions/discussion.

When first going out riding, I was getting 29-30mph in eco mode, gear 2, dual motor on flat ground, so I was amazed the scooter could go up the hills at 28mph with the same settings.

I tried going up these same hills in single motor and it was also able to sustain 28mph up them. I did notice my battery usage while moving dropped a lot more than dual motor mode. Which leads to my first question.

1. Is dual motor mode more efficient than single motor mode?

2. If it is, why would you want to use single motor?

I did notice if I put it in single motor mode on flat land, the initial take off from a dead-stop was smoother than dual motor, but I didn’t like the feel when the front wheel hit a bump and lifted off the ground for a split second. It just felt weird. I actually like the way the dual motor feels like it’s grabbing road if the front wheel hits a bump and clears the ground for an instant.

I used Turbo mode in gear 2 one time and hit 40 and even though the road was really smooth, it wasn’t really fun lol.

3. Does Turbo mode use more power or just raise the limit of what can be achieved by each gear? Ie; if you are in turbo mode in dual motor gear 3 going 20mph, does that use the same/less/more battery than dual motor eco mode in gear 3 going 20mph?

4. Does ability to climb hills directly relate to how fast a scooter can go? I ask this in terms of say a law gets implemented where a scooter speed is capped at 20mph and that’s implemented in the scooter firmware. So you have a scooter like the Wolf King with it’s powerful motors, if the top speed is capped at 20mph, would it still be able to go up a steep hill at 20mph?

justin

soji Congrats on the purchase and not worrying about buying too much scooter. Sometimes you just know you need the most powerful thing on the market (or at least one of them).

My thoughts on some of your question:

Single motor mode is generally less efficient than dual motor mode.

The true utility of single motor mode is simply to make the scooter more tame and not for any energy-saving reason. You should always run in dual motor mode, unless you are getting used to a new scooter, want less power, or trying to do tricks (as @MichaelKelley mentioned) where you want only a single motor. If you take a look at the sample graph (from here) below for DC motor, you’ll see that that increasing torque (in Oz. In. on the X-axis) basically kills efficiency (brown line). For a given condition (hill climb, acceleration, maintaining speed) a single motor is going to have to cough up twice the torque of two motors. If you do a quick comparison and consider a single motor putting out 0.5 Oz. In. of torque @ 0.2 efficiency with two motors at 0.25 Oz. In. of torque @ 0.6 efficiency, you’ll see that the 2X motors is about ~50% more efficient overall (effective efficiency for 2X motors is 0.6/2 b/c you have 2).

Hill climb performance, top speed, and acceleration are all related to motor power output.

There are some caveats here, but in general all these are related to each other. Scooters with higher motor power output will climb hills faster, have higher top speeds, and faster acceleration. If there is a speed limiter enabled (e.g. “Gear” setting) that will limit max motor RPM, but a powerful scooter should still be able to have a quick hill climb up to the limited top speed.

GritRed

soji Can I just comment about the law getting changed. laws have to be defined well and be equally applied. in Az the speed limit is defined for a 170lb person which is ridiculous lol. Also the speed limit only applies on flat ground (up to a 1 or 2% grade maybe)? So you can see this across the US people making these rules these laws are not very good at good definitions and certainly the laws can not be enforced very easily. Another funny one is the definition of a “scooter” ha in my town, Phx, it requires it to be 78lbs or less so my king is not a scooter and falls to the state definition of “equal to a bike.” it would be fun to test that phoenix definition.

I cannot qualify the application but just leave for consideration that two motors use more current there are two controllers and each one has its own efficiency so double the controller loss approx and additionally, two motors have their efficiency so each it’s own power loss (heat loss). One thing that comes to mind with regard to hills is the motors are more efficient when they are not luging or straining. example might make this clear a bike with a midmotor and a large sprocket on single track (lots of stop go stop throttle on off) this large sprocket means the motor is really spinning compared to a small sprocket. in the case of the large sprocket(real word experience) it used 30% less battery in a race on single track than the previous smaller rear sprocket. this because of the high consumption when the motor spun slower accelerating staining the motor more.

MichaelKelley

Hey Soji, I am like you and jumped into the Electric kick scooter world with the King. My guess is that the single mode is not more efficient. That it is pretty much is a wash. I feel like if you were in single mode going down hill it would be more efficient but less efficient if going up hill. I have read where people have stated that you are also trying to overcome the resistance or drag caused by the front motor when in single mode. I stay in Dual most of the time. When I am in areas around people or want the scooter to be less jerky I switch to single. I also like single when I go off road or want to pop a wheelie. I feel like the Eco / Turbo only limits the top speed. If you are doing 20mph in Dual\turbo mode I imagine the motor is drawing the same amount of amps of power as the Dual\Eco mode.

justin

GritRed Wow … crazy! Lawmakers need to get with it or just stay out of it. The annoying thing is that even if you are in the right, if you get a ticket will still have to go through quite a bit of hassle to deal with it. Hopefully things will sort themselves out as this technology becomes more prevalent and lawmakers start to “get it”

Also, very interesting. Your experience meshes exactly with the chart above: More torque = more current = less efficient.