Battery/Monolith

Monolith technical rendering published in 2016

The term "monolith" refers to Zero's standard Z-Force Power Pack sealed battery assembly with specific, fixed dimensions and a single BMS with fixed communication and power interface.

A monolith is designed to package up to 4 parallel bricks, described as "4-brick" or "28s4p", referring to 4 parallel stacks of 28 cells in series.

The 4p arrangement is a "full" arrangement: the monolith is split into 4 equal quadrants each fitting a brick.

A "3-brick" arrangement was available for 2013-2016 S and DS bikes, leaving the forward upper quadrant empty (presumably filled with lightweight but load-absorbing material).

Interconnects

An interconnect wiring system electrically connects each cell across bricks that is in the same position in the series.

• Interconnects minimize the complexity of cell balancing by ensuring that only 28 conductive connections are needed from the single BMS to keep cells balanced.
• Interconnects also ensure that a set of 3 or 4 cells are electrically able to balance a certain amount of load, reducing stress from imbalanced load variations while running.

Interconnects do seem to embody some specialized emergency fuse safeguards.

Components and Weight

32 lb/brick ⨉ 4 brick = 128 lb

The 4-brick monolith weight of 140 lb implies 12 lb for the base plate, BMS, dog house with contactor, current sensor, fuse, and connectors.

Casing features

• The front face has two holes for accessing the BMS indicators, I/O port, and reset buttons.
• The front face is also removable for servicing the BMS; within, the interconnects to the cells are on the left edge (as seen while facing the battery from the front); on the top edge are connections to CANBus communications and the external power bus.
• The trailing edge of the left side of the monolith casing features an arc cutout with two holes.

  This cutout accommodates/mounts a CHAdeMO charging inlet (and can adapt to a Type 1 or Type 2 J1772 inlet with some fabrication).

  Threaded inserts are included for the inlet mounting, sized for M5 bolts at 80mm distance from each other (center to center).

  Refer to Yazaki's CHAdeMO connector manual for details.

• The top rear module called the doghouse contains the contactor and sensors for operating the safety limits.