Yesterday I had an email from Zero to let me know that there was an update to their mobile app, so I headed to the app store to ensure my phone had grabbed it.
The app update got me thinking that maybe there was an associated firmware update to the bike, so I turned the bike on and checked the firmware details on the dash.
This is of course very different to what the app reports.
But anyway my hunch was right, there were two firmware updates available for the Main Bike Board (MBB) and Battery Monitoring System (BMS). If you try to update the BMS before the MBB you'll get an error, which makes me wonder why the app doesn't grey out the BMS update button until the MBB firmware update is complete.
So when you start a MBB firmware update there's a readiness check first.
Then you get into the firmware update itself. There's a progress bar to keep you roughly updated, but no hard numbers on progress or time remaining. And when you get to the end the app appears to just hang.
In the mean time the bike appears to reboot; the dash goes off then comes back to life with the Zero splash screen. After waiting a while with no apparent progress from either bike or app I hit the abort button.
After power cycling the bike and my phone, I relaunched the app and checked the status of the firmware. It appeared that the firmware update had completed successfully, as the app no longer offered me the option to update the MBB firmware.
So I had a crack at updating the BMS firmware as well. This time I was more patient, and after a long time of 'WAITING FOR MOTORCYCLE' a dialog popped up to confirm the firmware update was complete.
Meanwhile the firmware version number in the dash has remained at 6V26, which makes me think it has nothing to do with the MBB or BMS. Also, the dash layout has stayed the same and has not been updated in line with the 2022 model year SR/S, as shown below.
So I went to the Zero website to see if I could find some information on what these firmware updates included. Which of course left me even more confused, as there are no entries for MBB v24 or BMS v20. Hopefully the bike still actually moves, I'll have to test that out!
Update: The Zero website now has some new information about MBB v24 and BMS v20:
