The range anxiety on my e-bike is worse than my phone

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xbikester@reddit

Well if you check the battery when you don’t need to that means the anxiety will fade away… i have a ebike that can do 70 km in normal mode (or around 120 i eco) use and after one week im not even questioning if battery will run out. At the end of the day it is a electric bicycle i can pedal. Don’t know where you live but if i imagine USA… the infrastructure is the reason of you anxiety not the bike.

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Legitimate_Guava3206@reddit

Not flat here. Battery assist is almost necessary to get home. I mean I could walk it and coast down the hills which is what I would do.

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xbikester@reddit

Oh i see that ive not described in my comment… i live in norway live in a valley on a mountain between the city and home i have 700m of elevation. Ain’t nothing flat here. And wherever i bike, 30-40% of cycling is uphill. But also i have good European health and socialised healthcare so if i need to bike uphill without battery assistance ill be fine. Or ill take public transportation.🤷🏼‍♀️

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lFightForTheUsers@reddit

https://komaki.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Voltage-Percentage-Chart-for-36v-48v52v-60v-and-72v-escooter-Batteries-1536x1024-1-1024x683.jpg

Charts like these are pretty dang accurate, and I trust checking the voltage more so than the actual reported battery percentage.

52-54v on mine it's basically g2g. 49-52v starting to drain down but still pretty good. 46-49 is uh oh starting to really lose battery start turning around if you haven't already. 43-46 is ah shit getting really low take it down to pas1 and pedal slowly the rest of the way. 40.5 is the absolute lowest that I've seen it go before shutting off completely (and thankfully only about a half mile from home!)

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Russbud@reddit

Ride it more . Learn it . Save up for a second battery . People need to learn to solve their problems .

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Sszaj@reddit

Range anxiety on a bike?

Is it not fitted with pedals?

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Slight_Nobody5343@reddit

one time i ran outta juice halfway through a 17~ mile ride and like an idiot tried to pedal my heavy ass sondors fatbike home. I couldnt walk or lift for months(be careful with your back) it sucked.

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hezuschristos@reddit

Then it’s not really a bike

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Slight_Nobody5343@reddit

maybe we can call them E-bikes?

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hezuschristos@reddit

We already have those. You can still pedal them. Pretend pedals don’t make it a bike

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CavalierPumpkin@reddit

Tbf my range anxiety dropped sharply when I moved from the mountains to the coast. Pedalling an 80 lb. bike unaided can be a very different proposition depending on whether the road you're on is a 20% grade or a 1% grade.

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slow_marathon@reddit

I get it, I only really need the ebike's help at the end of the day when I need to cycle up a very steep hill for a mile, and it is not just the battery; voltage sag is another worry.

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Slight_Nobody5343@reddit

run it to empty not far from home to get a better understanding of the capacity. Remeber to air up your tires!

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jah_red@reddit

So NOT follow this advice! Running these batteries to empty does long term damage.

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Slight_Nobody5343@reddit

draining to zero volts sure or leaving a battery at shut off charge for long peirods is bad. using your battery to its designed paramaters isnt bad. the bms stops drawing charge below the nominal voltage .

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iH8MotherTeresa@reddit

People act like batteries are some mysterious wizard who lives in the woods and you have to do some very exact thing or he blows up the whole town.

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Heifzilla@reddit

Well, I mean, they do occasionally blow up and stuff.

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Legitimate_Guava3206@reddit

It won't but if you want your battery to age slowly, you won't abuse it too much. My battery is still doing great at 6-7 years old now.

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Legitimate_Guava3206@reddit

Your BMS will stop the motor before the battery is actually at zero which is likely still 30V or more.

Just don't let the battery sit around at 100% or 0%. Figure out what is \~50% and store it at that.

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Vicorinox@reddit

Nonsense, bms don't allow draining battery to 0.

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precocious_necrosis@reddit

This is correct. The manufacturers allow the batteries to discharge to recklessly low voltages in order to boost their advertised range/capacity. My e-bike will let it's 48v battery drain down to 38v under load, which is insanely outside of spec.

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MrTonyMan@reddit

Have you ever tried cycling without power?
I tried on my Ebike, and while it was heavy, it was do-able..

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PuzzledActuator1@reddit

This is more of a problem when people buy ebikes that are rubbish to pedal. Ebikes that are based on normal bike geometry while yes are heavier and have some motor drag generally aren't horrible to pedal.

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potatosouperman@reddit

I’ve pedaled a 112 pound cargo e-bike without motor assistance back home (the urban arrow family). It should be doable unless your whole trip is big hills.

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JeremyFromKenosha@reddit

I didn't like it either, with a fat tire eBike. Get an eBike that is realistically pedal-able and you won't need to worry any more.

Once you get some more miles in, you won't worry any more. You'll have a feel for it. If you're not sure if you're going to make it, go slower and do more of the work yourself.

In the winter, count on about half the range, if you live in a cold climate.

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chrispark70@reddit

Sounds like a you thing.

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TheFlightlessDragon@reddit

Just be aware of where the coffee shops are and other places that typically have available outlets. Worse comes to worse, you pull off for an hour or two and get a latte.

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Arm-Complex@reddit

This is great advice, never even thought of that. I should bring my charger with me. Removable battery means you can take it into a coffee shop which should have outlets for computers.

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Trellaine201@reddit

Or charging EV charging stations if you have any around. You would just need to purchase some type of adapter.

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Legitimate_Guava3206@reddit

Or call for a ride home. I've done that exactly once when I had a flat tire but no kit to repair it with.

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Trellaine201@reddit

I can so relate to you OP! I wish my display gave me an estimate in mileage not bars. :( I am assuming there are bikes and displays that will show approximate mileage left?

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ATVY@reddit

Get a 32ah or 40ah. Last super long.

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Fair-Discipline-1005@reddit

You probably just need more time to get used to the battery level and range, it should pass with time,like with phone...👍

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Fetz-@reddit

Why though?

Can you not just pedal home when the battery runs out?

The battery is nice to have but not necessary.

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AMC879@reddit

If i could just pedal home on a 65 pound bike with 30 pounds of gear and my 185 pound body then I wouldn't need an ebike in the first place. I can maybe do a mile at most in the easiest gear. I got an ebike because a regular bike hurt too much after my hip replacement that never healed right and causes chronic pain.

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Leading_Hamster5903@reddit

this, plus home is uphill for me

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Arm-Complex@reddit

E-bikes are heavy and most are limited in gears. I'm not sure why. My $2k bike only has 7 gears and it sucks, both at the top end for speed and the bottom end because the bike is so heavy.

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Fetz-@reddit

My 500€ ebike has a good gear range and I can pedal it home no problem. Why did you spend so much money on something that sucks so much?

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PleaseAndThankuu@reddit

Because their metric for if an ebike sucks isnt whether or not it pedals like a normal bike, most people i see on any style ebike arent pedalling without power

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Tarvonae@reddit

same here constantly glancing at that percentage like its gonna vanish

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Revolutionary-Half-3@reddit

Especially with no real BMS communication for proper SoC tracking, so it's just using voltage.

Sustained drop from a big hill and the percentage displayed tanks hard, even if it recovers once I'm over the hill.

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elementarydeardata@reddit

This is why I just watch my actual battery voltage instead of the percentage. I fly RC planes and they experience battery voltage sag in a similar way so I was already familiar with it when I got an ebike. It looks worse than it really is under heavy throttle usage, but looks better than it really is when you're off the power completely.

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Fun_General_6159@reddit

You can always make a makeshift circuit for that. Arduino it, pretty easy imo.

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TedsFaustianBargain@reddit

Buy a second battery and your range will double.

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Revolutionary-Half-3@reddit

I got a second and put them in parallel, range more than doubled since I'm not pushing the limits of the cells as much.

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derping1234@reddit

Get a worse phone.

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iH8MotherTeresa@reddit

I love a solution-driven person.

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FuzzyCarpenter7927@reddit

Ahhhh Stop stealing people's posts you bot!

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KentGoldings68@reddit

This is common. Battery capacity is often specified to match motor power. A bike with a 750 Watt motor will come stock with e 750 Watt-hour battery.

This usually means that you will want to go longer than a single charge will take you.

I have two solutions.

Carry a second battery.
Plan your route to maximize a single battery.

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ResponsibleLead4492@reddit

lol yeah that’s real. I used to do that too, checking the battery every few minutes for no reason. After a while you kinda get a feel for it though, like you just know if you’re good or not. Once I stopped babying it and actually rode it a bit harder, the anxiety just went away.

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JG-at-Prime@reddit

It might help to understand the discharge curve of lithium batteries.

This diagram is fairly accurate. It’s pretty close to my own testing. (the tester has a graphing feature so I get to see the discharge curves as it tests) https://www.bonnenbatteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Lithium-Battery-Discharge-Curve.webp

They will drop the first few volts pretty quickly. After that it levels off through the bulk of the discharge phase.

Towards about 20% or so they drop quickly until either the controller or the BMS cuts the output off.

On top of this behavior you have to deal with voltage sag. Voltage sag will look like a dip in the chart above. The more energy that is drawn from the pack the deeper the dip will become. As the load decreases the dip will decrease as the voltage rebounds.

If you are worried about the voltage, the best thing to do is to slow down some. Overcoming wind resistance takes a lot of energy.

If you can slow to the point where you stop hearing the wind you can get significantly better mileage. The average urban commuting e-bike speed is only about 15mph anyway.

Check to see if your bike might have a cruise control feature. Cruise control is great for extending range because it smooths out the discharge curve or some such. I know it works at any rate.

If you don’t want to mess with any of that nonsense, then it sounds like you might benefit from a dual battery adapter and a second battery.

Rear rack, tank or seat post style batteries are available. They don’t need to match the capacity of the current battery but they do need to match the nominal voltage.

The dual or triple battery adapter will preferentially switch the battery with the higher voltage. You can use them one at a time or drain them all down together.

If none of this sounds right then it might be possible that your battery actually is degrading. Keep an eye on the temperature of the pack. It shouldn’t be more than just warm. If it’s hot then let it cool down before bringing it inside.

If it’s hot, let it cool completely before charging it again. Monitor it closely when charging. And by monitor it, I mean - touch the case regularly while it’s charging. If it’s getting more than warm while charging then it’s probably time to either replace it or rebuild it.

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