CrossCurrent S2 battery problem

wings02

Active Member
I am having a frustrating battery issue with the 52 volt, 15 amp battery that came with my CrossCurrent S2 bike I purchased in August 2021. Due to illness and some family problems, I have not been able to ride the bike too often. The bike only has 75 miles on it. I live in a mild climate and make sure I maintain a good charge on the battery when not in use. I started noticing problems with the battery when I went to ride the bike a couple of weeks ago. The green light would not turn on. I charged the battery for 6-8 hours and all seemed well. I went for a ride only to have the battery turn off around 3 miles into my ride. I could not turn it back on. Before the battery turned off, the battery charge indicator on my displayed showed it was fully charged. When I got home I called Juice and was able to reach tech support with less than a one minute wait. Excellent!!! They had me hook up a multi tester to the battery leads to see the voltage. It was reading around 1 volt. I charged the battery for one hour as per their instructions and it read 52 volts. I fully charged the battery and went for a ride the next day. The battery quit in less than a mile riding on eco setting. I was heading home and the battery light went on again. I turned on the display and was able to ride for only a short distance before the battery cut out again, This time, it would no t go back on.
As a test for the bike itself, I used my wife's battery in my bike. She has the same battery in her CrossCurrent X which I bought her one month ago. It performed great for my 10 mile ride. I called Juiced again and they said the battery monitor system (BMS?) is probably bad and there isn't really anything to do except buy a new battery. Having the bike for a little over a year with only 75 miles on it and maintaining the battery like I've been doing seems odd to have that happen. The tech is going to talk to a supervisor to see what they can do.
Has anyone experienced this with their battery? If so, is there a fix?
 
I am having a frustrating battery issue with the 52 volt, 15 amp battery that came with my CrossCurrent S2 bike I purchased in August 2021. Due to illness and some family problems, I have not been able to ride the bike too often. The bike only has 75 miles on it. I live in a mild climate and make sure I maintain a good charge on the battery when not in use. I started noticing problems with the battery when I went to ride the bike a couple of weeks ago. The green light would not turn on. I charged the battery for 6-8 hours and all seemed well. I went for a ride only to have the battery turn off around 3 miles into my ride. I could not turn it back on. Before the battery turned off, the battery charge indicator on my displayed showed it was fully charged. When I got home I called Juice and was able to reach tech support with less than a one minute wait. Excellent!!! They had me hook up a multi tester to the battery leads to see the voltage. It was reading around 1 volt. I charged the battery for one hour as per their instructions and it read 52 volts. I fully charged the battery and went for a ride the next day. The battery quit in less than a mile riding on eco setting. I was heading home and the battery light went on again. I turned on the display and was able to ride for only a short distance before the battery cut out again, This time, it would no t go back on.
As a test for the bike itself, I used my wife's battery in my bike. She has the same battery in her CrossCurrent X which I bought her one month ago. It performed great for my 10 mile ride. I called Juiced again and they said the battery monitor system (BMS?) is probably bad and there isn't really anything to do except buy a new battery. Having the bike for a little over a year with only 75 miles on it and maintaining the battery like I've been doing seems odd to have that happen. The tech is going to talk to a supervisor to see what they can do.
Has anyone experienced this with their battery? If so, is there a fix?
Hello wings02, I've got a 2019 RipCurrent S with the 52v, 19Ah battery. It was beginning to underperform at around 15,000 miles or 600+ charge cycles. Though I never ran the Original Batt below 51v, I'd always charged to the full 58.8v between rides. These batteries are loaded with 14 banks of 3.7v 18650's Lithium Cells. The "banks are wired in parallel which is how the AmpHour rating is brought up, you wire the banks in series to get the 52v nominal voltage rating. These individual 3.7v 18650's will range in their Ah ratings from 2400mah to well over 3000mah, which determines how many are soldered in parallel, per bank, to get your 15Ah or 19Ah ratting.
You said you "maintain" a full charge on these Lithium's between rides. I've used Rechargeable Lithium High Performance packs, in All substrates, from the early & dangerous Lithium Metal packs which liked to ignite if charged or discharged too quickly, to the Cobalt and Manganese Cathode materials which traded energy density for safety. I also know a friend at our R/C Flying Club who develops and tests Lithium Charging systems at the Tektronix Campus in Ore. So, Lithium's will last 4 x longer if you only charge them to 80% capacity (around 51v) and discharge them to 20% capacity (around 44.5v on a 52v pack). Also, Storing Lithium's at a Full Charge and maintaining that full charge WILL shorten their useful number of "Charge Cycles". Lithium's like to be stored at around 40 to 60% of a Full Charge, or around 46.0v to 49.0v on these batteries. The average number of useful Full Charge Cycles for Lithium Batteries is around 400 cycles, about 3.2v to 4.2 volts per cell. If you were to always charge them to 80% and discharge to 20%, a good quality Lithium Cell can go to 1600 charge cycles.
I don't think that maintaining a Full Charge on your Battery between rides has caused your voltage dropout problems, but it's definitely shortening their number of available charge cycles. The fact that another battery works 100% as expected says it's an internal issue with your original Battery. The CrossCurrent sounds as if its pratically new if itt has been taken care of, 75 miles is barely approaching "broken In" for this bike, I've got over 16K miles on mine now in 3 seasons of riding so your bike should be doing well for some time before needing some shop time. I've heard of several cases within this forum where a Major Component on a Juiced Bike has failed with very little use, but with an out of date on Warranty, and Juiced has compensated with a Good discount on a replacement. I'd either suck-up to Juiced a little bit or seek an aftermarket repair station for these Juiced Batteries. I can recommend an outfit in Colorado if you choose to get it repaired.
Best of Luck and Happy Trails !
bw
 
Uuzd4S, Thank you for your reply and helpful information. I am hoping to hear from a supervisor next week on their decision. I would appreciate the outfit you spoke about in Clolrado.

Thank you again!
 
Uuzd4S, Thank you for your reply and helpful information. I am hoping to hear from a supervisor next week on their decision. I would appreciate the outfit you spoke about in Clolrado.

Thank you again!
wings02, got a link to a E-Bike Battery rebuild service for ya; https://www.hicbattery.com/Juiced-Bikes_c_29.html
One thing I forgot to mention in my original reply was that because my RipCurrent S original battery had around 600+ cycles on it and was showing some signs of decreased performance, I'd purchased Juiced New Gen 2 19Ah Battery as a backup. When I'd purchased my RCS during their Black Friday Sale in Nov 2019 a replacement 19Ah battery was $600 bucks which I thought was kinda spendy and so I didn't buy a spare at the time. I really had no Idea how many miles I had totaled on this RCS until late summer of 2021 when I looked at the total miles accumulated in my riding app "Bikeometer", is was 12K+miles. Seeing that total prompted a re-check of my math, which was correct, and then I'd realized I never recorded a single mile for my first two months of riding, so there was close to 1000 miles that wasn't tallied. I switched to slightly more user-friendly riding app called "Ride with GPS". Both these apps are loaded on my Android Cell Phone and have minimal "Social" network sharing features, but very good display features. Ride with GPS does take specific parts of all known & common Bike Trails and gives you a "time elapsed" comparison to others who have ridden along that same section of Trail or road. You can choose how much info you want to share on this App.
Anyways, it was after my first season of riding I looked into buying a replacement Batt from Juiced because I wanted to keep the number of charge/discharge cycles down on my Original Batt and just swap out Batteries between rides. This also meant I could have a fully charged battery available when returning and not having to "Fast Charge" the original batt between rides. Well, the same battery had jumped in price from $600 dollars to over $1200 dollars in that one year period. The 18650 cells that Juiced and everybody else uses for these E-Bike Batteries had gone up in price by about 20%, but Juiced had more than Doubled their price in just one year, which is just plain Gouging imho. It wasn't until early 2022 that Juiced had updated their original battery by adding a handle and a lighted bar display. They decided to dump their inventory of original Batt's and reduced the price back to it's original $600 bucks. Well, they sold out before I could get my hands on one but their 2nd Gen version went on a "Pre-Order" sale for $700 bucks after shipping/taxes and so I bought one of those. What's interesting is that it's performance matched that exactly of my slightly underperforming Original Battery, so I have to assume juiced has used a lower quality 18650 in the 2nd Gen Batt.
None the less, I have a spare and am using it for my First & Third ride for any given day. My usual and fav ride is 24 miles, about 1.5 hours long, and takes me South form Vancouver WA, over the Interstate 5 Columbia River crossing, then East along the Columbia on the Oregon side and then back North into Vancouver on the 205 Bypass. It's about 85% dedicated Bike Trail & 15% road miles for that ride. During the Summer, when it's hot, the trail along the Columbia is almost always about 10 to 15 degrees cooler than in town, very scenic and Gr8 for people watching. My other two favorite and common bike trails range from 16 miles to 26 miles and I'll switch out to one of those if riding more than twice a day.
I guess lastly, I found this Hi-C Battery rebuilding service in Denver about two yrs ago when my original battery began to use just a little bit more voltage (amp hours) for the same ride after about Two Seasons of riding. My 24 mile Columbia River ride usually ended with 52v left in the battery after beginning from a fully charged 58.8v start. After around 450 cycles it was coming in at around 51v for the same ride given the usual variables like wind direction and temp. So, I don't know if Hi-C Battery Rebuild Svc can do just a repair, which is what I think all your battery needs. Call them and ask their opinion and see if they are willing to do a repair rather than upselling to a complete rebuild. It's Highly unlikely the 18650 cells in your 15Ah 52v Battery are all spent past their Duty Cycle life expectancy after only 75 miles. If you haven't done something drastically wrong with this Batt, it's likely there's just some bad solder joint or a failed component on the Charge Control board within the batt. Lithium's require very controlled Charge and Discharge monitoring or they will quickly become useless. If you discharge to cutt-off voltage every time, or go below, the battery won't recharge or even worse, begin to swell and deform. Lithium's in Cell Phones last so long because they only charge and discharge to that 80%/20% voltage. High performance Lithium's, like these in our E-Bikes or the ones we use when flying Electric Radio Control Planes must be charged/discharged with well matched equipment or there's gonna be trouble. There's a type of glider in R/C called a Hotliner. It uses an electric "Outrunner" motor (the Can rotates instead of the armature) installed in the nose with a folding Carbon Fiber Prop attached. Between the Motor, Speed Controller and LiPo Battery these systems are designed to deliver 300 Amps + to the motor, but only for a few seconds at a time otherwise somethings gonna burn up. You hand launch the glider, hit the Go Switch and point the nose straight up as it will climb to over 1200 ft altitude in about 3 seconds, that's about 300mph straight up. The wings are all carbon fiber and stressed to between 40 and 60 G's. So you fly up to altitude in 2-3 seconds, kill the motor, and just glide around for fifteen min + until the Batt, Motor and Speed Controller have cooled and do it again. A setup like this is possible with Lithium's because the "C" ratings on the more expensive high performance cells is up around 70, meaning you can discharge these batteries continuously at 70 x their Amp Hour rating. A typical 18650 cell is rated @ 3000mah, or 3Amp Hours of power at the rated voltage. 3 x 70 = 2100 Amps for One hour with a 70 C Battery. You will find this type of High Capacity Discharge in those New Compact car starting battery packs, or in an Electric R/C aerobatic plane, but it's not practical for an E-Bike that only needs 15 Amps or less to push it along.
From my R/C experiences I learned how important a good Lithium Charger is and so I bought the GRIN Technologies Cycle Satiator from Juiced, which is an Excellent LiPo Charger allowing for charge rate control. I never charge above a 4Ah rate and usually charge at 2-3Ah. I believe the Supplied Juiced Charger is a 2Ah charger, but I'm not sure how well it handles trickle charging which is why I'm a little suspect over it's use as a Maintenance Charger.
Sorry about goin on about stuff, it habit from my career in Commercial Aviation Maint QC, we're encouraged to document Everything. : /
Thx for gettin back to me and fill me in on what Juiced comes up with or if you go aftermarket for repairs.
Happy Trails ! bw
 
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A good outcome indeed! A supervisor from Juiced approved an exchange for my defective battery. They are including a return label for my battery via FedEx.
Juiced really stepped up to the plate! From excellent packaging of their bikes (completely encased in foam), excellent bikes, and easy to reach customer service/tech support, the Juiced bicycle company has been excellent!
 
A good outcome indeed! A supervisor from Juiced approved an exchange for my defective battery. They are including a return label for my battery via FedEx.
Juiced really stepped up to the plate! From excellent packaging of their bikes (completely encased in foam), excellent bikes, and easy to reach customer service/tech support, the Juiced bicycle company has been excellent!
Very Good News ! That's how it should be with these guys. They're selling E-Bikes like never before so it's nice to hear they gave this the attention it deserves.
Thx for gettin back to me !
Happy Trails ! bw
 
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