How is your battery health?

[pmcdonald]

Just curious how others are faring? If your bike reports it feel free to share your battery capacity, age and health, distance, cycles and your charging regime.

Manufacturer: Giant
Capacity: 500W
Age: 38 months
Health: 93%
Distance: 8250 km
Cycles: 112
Charging regime: generally 80-20 rule, with a top up to 100% every few cycles. I'm not convinced it's worth the effort.

Edit: thanks @DaveMatthews, added age to the list. And @Rome for the brand prompt

 

[DaveMatthews]

My battery is 21 months old.
500wh
Health 96%
Distance 3000km
Not sure about the cycles right now

 

[Stefan Mikes]

It is hard to report on my 7 batteries

• Three batteries for my full power Vado
• The main battery on my Vado SL
• Three Range Extenders for my Vado SL.

I ride a lot and hard. I rotate the batteries as often as I can. Some of my batteries are already at 92% health.
I will take my time to diagnose all my batteries though Later!

 

[m@Robertson]

I have a 17ah 52v pack that was my daily-driver battery across three bikes and five years. I was more like 80-40 and I did once-monthly balance charges. I also charged twice daily, once at work and once at home (hence being able to get away with 80-40) and I charged at very low amperage (from one amp to as little as 0.20 amps, depending on how much layover time I had to play with). This kept the number one enemy of li ion cells (heat) at bay. Everyone wants fast charging but if you go there, you'll pay for it over time.

This battery doesn't report health, but you can manually tell how healthy a battery is by seeing how fast, if its charged to 100%, that its voltage flashes off. I have a substandard battery (made by UPP no less) that - if it is at 58.8v at the top of the driveway, drops to 56.5v by the time I get to the street, and thats not a temporary sag. Thats what you can expect when a battery pack ages. It will still charge up to its max voltage but it will flash down to whatever its real capacity is almost immediately.

Anyway, that 2015 battery that I babied for years is still going strong and does not appear to have suffered *any* capacity loss. A couple weeks ago I pulled it out of retirement and its now powering my Stormtrooper, giving that bike a range boost over the 11ah pack it once had on the downtube.

For what its worth, this pack was also made with really strong Samsung 25R cells that are known to be able to take a beating that essentially no other cell can. So if any pack was going to live large for seven years and keep on ticking...

 

[Prairie Dog]

Below are the stats relating to the batteries in all three of my bikes. The Trance has not been ridden for several months.

Creo
Capacity: 320 watts
Age: 24 months
Health: 100%
Distance: 2800 km before motor was replaced
912 km with new motor, 17 charge cycles
Levo
Capacity: 700 watts
Age: 4 months, 5 charge cycles
Health 100%
Distance 267 km

Giant Trance X E
Capacity: 625 watts
Age: 17 months
Health: 100%
Distance: 3100 km, 41 charge cycles

 

[Dave Rocks]

How do you measure battery health?

 

[Dave Rocks]

By the full charge chart?

 

[DaveMatthews]

How do you measure battery health?

On my Giant app I can see it.

 

[Solarcabin]

Just curious how others are faring? If your bike reports it feel free to share your battery capacity, age and health, distance, cycles and your charging regime.

Capacity: 500W
Age: 30 months
Health: 95%, but varies from 93 - 96%
Distance: 6400 km
Cycles: 88
Charging regime: generally 80-20 rule, with a top up to 100% every few cycles. I'm not convinced it's worth the effort.

Edit: thanks @DaveMatthews, added age to the list

The 20-80 rule is really not applicable to ebikes and is a left over from LIFePo4 and deep cycle batts like I use for power storage for solar at the cabin to extend the life of the batteries.

Yes, you will get a longer life if you stick to 20 discharge and 80 recharge but even that is debatable because you probably end up recharging more often doing that on an ebike if you ride any distance at all.

If you only charge to 80% besides reducing your range you are maybe saving 1 cycle for every 5 recharges and if you don't do a long full charge to rebalance the cells occasionally (I see you do) then your battery will start showing a capacity loss and may not take a charge above 80% if a cell gets stuck at that charge.

Short cycle charges are the bane of all LI batteries.

My Ariel X52 volt is only about a year old with 1200+ miles and has actually improved in capacity, speed and range as I generally ride a route that uses about 70-80% of my battery and recharge to full each ride and then I do a deep drain ride and long charge rebalance about once a month.

I would rather have a full healthy battery for range and give up a few cycles at the end of life and I calculate I should get 10 years on that battery and who knows if I will even still be riding it in another 9 years?

Good post pmcdonald!

 

[fooferdoggie]

all my Bosch batteries show 100% when I charge them. even the one 14,000 miles on it in 3 years. so not sure if it will show less then 100% if it has less capacity. it would maybe just show less range but I use it now onto different bikes and sometimes with another battery so its hard to know.

 

[indianajo]

Battery age 47 months
Capacity 840 WH 48 v nominal
Vendor lunacycle
Tech LiIon
Charge history 90-30% first 18 months, 90-40 next 2 years., 95-50 last 6 months. Twice a year I charge to 100%. Fastest charge 2 amps with a switcher supply at summer camp end. In town I have a transformer charger I built that charges 4 amps to about 80% then trickles off to 2% at 95%. I've forgotten charger twice and it went to 55+ volts at 1/10 amp, but it didn't hurt it. I store battery in garage under a heat pad November to April.
Cycles, about 300.
Health great. Mostly stop charge at 52.8 to 53.2. Will hold 52 volts or higher for first 15 flatter miles. First two motors would draw 25 amps, newest 2 motors draw only 10 amps. (****y controller).
Battery is wrapped in 1/2" white foam Luna shipped it in. Overwrapped in a PVC bag to keep off rain. A PVC shopping bag bottom on top to shield off the sun. Wrapped in 3/4" angle aluminum to prevent theft and hold it to the frame holes. You can see it on front of the bike in the avatar picture.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Okay. I have three Bosch 500wh batteries and two are four years old and one is three years old. All told there is about 14000 miles on these batteries, more or less uniformly distributed (I rotate the batteries and probably do 50-60 full charges per year on each battery).

At this point I can't reasonably quantify a measurable drop in capacity or range. I've ran a few experiments and would estimate the upper bound on the capacity loss at around five percent. But that is an upper bound and I suspect the actual capacity loss is much less than that.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Below are the stats relating to the batteries in all three of my bikes. The Trance has not been ridden for several months.

Creo
Capacity: 320 watts
Age: 24 months
Health: 100%
Distance: 2800 km before motor was replaced
912 km with new motor, 17 charge cycles
Levo
Capacity: 700 watts
Age: 4 months, 5 charge cycles
Health 100%
Distance 267 km

Are you getting the Health data from Mission Control?

 

[Prairie Dog]

Are you getting the Health data from Mission Control?

Yes. That's correct.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Yes. That's correct.

Mission Control will tell you your battery is 100% healthy even if it is almost dead Try BLEvo. (Of course with your few recharge cycles that won't be as unpleasant experience as mine...)
Going outdoor soon to document all my batteries!

 

[Stefan Mikes]

DETAILED REPORT ON THE STATUS OF SEVEN SPECIALIZED BATTERIES

U1-600 Batteries (nominal capacity of 604 Wh)

1. The Gray battery. Manufactured in 2017, activated on Nov 1st, 2019.
   Health: 92%. Recharges: 107. Actual capacity: 547 Wh.
2. The Black battery. Purchased in April 2020.
   Health: 94%. Recharges: 107. Actual capacity: 501 Wh.
3. The Blue battery. Purchased in October 2021.
   Health: 100%. Recharges: 12. Actual capacity: 533 Wh.

The first battery was used exclusively for the first months of my Vado 5.0 ownership. The number of recharges might be wrong as the e-bike was equipped with the obsolete BLOKS system by May 2020, so nothing is certain. Since the purchase of the first spare battery, I have rotated them to get the Gray and Black batteries at the same number of recharges. What is very depressing is the fact that none of these batteries was ever even close to the nominal 604 Wh, even the new battery bought in 2021. With these three batteries, my installed battery capacity is 1581 Wh.

Note: The Vado 5.0 odometer reads 13,333 km.

SL Main Battery (nominal capacity of 320 Wh)
Originally, the battery indeed was at 320 Wh full capacity.
Health: 94%. Recharges: 73. Actual capacity: 302 Wh.

SL Range Extenders (nominal capacity 160 Wh)

1. Battery labelled "chemical": Health: 99%. Recharges: 32. Actual capacity: 158 Wh.
2. Battery labelled "engineer": Health: 99%. Recharges: 28. Actual capacity: 158 Wh.
3. Battery labelled "hero": Health: 98%. Recharges: 58. Actual capacity: 157 Wh.

With my Vado SL, I set the "Discharge the Range Extender first" option for everyday rides, hoping to equalize the number of recharges for all SL batteries. On long rides, I discharge the main battery and the Range Extender in parallel.

The Vado SL odometer reads 6,524 km.

My Batteries' Usage
If I followed the 80-20% charge/discharge plan, I would ride nowhere. My batteries are regularly charged to 100% and discharged even down to 5% when necessary if the ride is to be a long one. I need significant assistance to help my ailing legs, and think the life is too short to waste it for meticulously maintaining the batteries

P.S. All data for Specialized batteries have been obtained by BLEvo, an independent app from Paolo Diozzo. The latest Mastermind e-bikes killed BLEvo, and I think I know why... Because Specialized Mission Control will never tell you the truth about your battery status.

 

[tomjasz]

How do you measure battery health?

With my Grinspecter

 

[RabH]

My original battery is now 53 months old and showing 90% from 277 cycles! This battery is still going strong and shows a distance of 83 miles from a full charge in eco (set at 75%), only 4 miles less than my other 2 batteries!

I bought a second battery in Oct 2020 and it is showing 94% from 70 cycles! I thought this would have been higher as it has been treated very well, very sledom below a 20% charge!

I recently bought a 3rd battery which has only been used twice so no need to report on that!

All of my batteries are 500wh!

Overall distance 21,805 miles!

 

[m@Robertson]

The 20-80 rule is really not applicable to ebikes and is a left over from LIFePo4 and deep cycle batts like I use for power storage for solar at the cabin to extend the life of the batteries.

...

Short cycle charges are the bane of all LI batteries.

Your information is incorrect.

In 2013, researchers found LiFePo4 batteries evidenced a memory effect. Here is the study that announced it:

Memory effect in a lithium-ion battery - Nature Materials

Nickel–cadmium and nickel–metal hydride batteries exhibit memory effects but lithium-ion batteries are widely believed to have none. Now, a memory effect for LiFePO4 positive electrodes that appears after only one cycle of partial charge and discharge is reported. This observation is important...

www.nature.com

and they also noted expressly that the effect was limited to LiFePo4.

That research paper is behind a $32 paywall (and its not something an internet expert is likely to be able to stick with for long and understand). But here is a short, sweet summation of the LiFePo4 'memory' effect, written in 2021.

Charging lithium-ion batteries | Jungheinrich PROFISHOP

All you need to know about charging lithium-ion batteries: ✓ Increase service life ✓ Maintain capacity ✓ What is memory effect? ▶ Info and tips from the pros!

www.jungheinrich-profishop.co.uk

A notable excerpt:

In addition, tests done on the memory effect in lithium-ion batteries showed that the effect is only temporary and can be reversed with a waiting period between partial charging and complete discharging.
...
In this way, vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries ... do not have to be used until the battery is completely empty, but can be partially recharged during breaks in work or after the end of use. Furthermore, the service life of both nickel-cadmium and lithium-ion batteries can be extended with frequent partial discharges. It is recommended that the batteries are fully discharged once after approximately 50 partial discharge cycles.

Li-NMC like the cells we all have in our packs have a nearly-nonexistent memory effect. Partial charging is desirable, as anyone can tell by googling how to preserve li-ion batteries.

how to extend the life of a li ion battery - Google Search

 

[m@Robertson]

So once again you are spamming the forum with a post you have duplicated countless times in many other threads, that is essentially meaningless. Especially since we weren't even talking about balancing batteries.

how to extend the life of a li ion battery - Google Search