Care & Feeding of your Battery
Your Lithium Battery is a tested & safe chemistry but please observe the following guidelines to get the maximum life, useful range & to ensure your safety over your Batteries expected 5 year lifetime.
Just as you wouldn’t place a can of gasoline close to where you were working with sparks or an open flame, some pre-cautions are also necessary with your battery. When charging your battery, it is quite common & normal for the battery & charger to become quite warm - almost hot to the touch. Sometimes it will & sometimes it won’t. Apparently, this is quite normal & a peculiarity of the Lithium Ion chemistry. It also happens when charging cell phones & computer batteries as well. For this reason, Please never leave your battery unattended while charging. A good practice is to charge your battery in a high traffic area of your home such as a hallway, kitchen or by a frequently used entrance. Some place where it is easy & convenient to keep an eye that everything is functioning normally. Your charger will usually have a red L.E.D. that lights while charging & a Green L.E.D. that lights once your battery is full. If you find your charger or battery has become quite hot while in use, you can unplug it for 5 minutes & then plug the charger in again. Usually, this stops the excess heat. Your battery has a built in thermal shut down in case of any problem that might cause a fire so these steps are just a secondary pre-caution. - Never go to sleep with your battery on charge - Never go out with your battery on charge. Your battery should be good for about 40 miles of assisted riding. Of course, if you are in an extremely hilly area or love to ride flat out with mostly battery power, your range will be less. A good practice is to use the assist as needed for help with climbing hills. This increases your range & extends the life of your battery. Used this way, we have customers getting over 60 miles out of a charge. Your battery has a useful lifetime which is estimated to be 5 years of average use or 1000 charge cycles. You can extend the life of your battery by charging it once you have 20% power remaining. Consider this your ‘Reserve Tank.’ This will be indicated on your L.C.D. dash display by the Power Bar. Once you get down to One Bar you have about 20% power remaining. Batteries are considered expired once they will not receive more than 70% of their maximum charge. However, if your trips are mostly under 20 miles you can still safely use your battery for a few more years. Once you get a feel for what kind of mileage you are getting from a charge remember to halve your range so you have enough juice for the return trip home.
Battery keys - If your battery came with 2 locking keys to prevent theft be sure to put the second key in a safe place such as your car glove box or on a hook in the garage. Some keys are removable once the battery is turned on. Please check that yours is or is not removable. If the keys are removable, don’t ride with them dangling from the battery.
How can I estimate my battery range? Fortunately this is easy. If you bought from us you will need to know the amps x the voltage which will give you the watts. Think of this as being a 500 hp Mustang & a Semi-Truck with the same engine & then wondering how fast/how far/how much can I carry, as an analogy. Riding using your Power Assist will be consuming watts (Fuel) so by knowing how much fuel you have to start (battery) & knowing how much fuel you use when riding, you can get a good estimate of your riding distance. A typical estimate works like this - Voltage 36 (your horsepower) x amps (size of your tank) = watts (what you burn) x 80% before reserve.
i.e - 36 v x 12 a = 432 (total watts) x 80% = 345 (available watts) before hitting your reserve. To determine your range you only need to divide 345 watts by your average fuel consumption. In most cases this averages out to 7 - 10 watts per km/mile so your estimated range to reserve would be (345 /8 watts) = 43 miles.
Using this formula will give you an idea of average consumption but please remember relying solely on your battery & motor, riding mostly uphill, carrying extra weight can all effect your range. This same formula will work regardless of whether you have a bike or trike, just remember to get an idea of how much fuel you are using on your first few rides & leave yourself the 20% reserve tank.
