Recharging during the day on tour

[Mr. Coffee]

Here's a thought...I have a spare battery, and will of course be bringing it along for longer tours.

How about a cross route, leaving off the low battery (used to get from home to the cross) and charger...using the second battery for the loop (about the same usage/distance), coming back to the cross, picking up the charged battery and using it to get home?

That works fine until you are on a multi-day tour between two geographic points and not a loop tour or side trip.

 

[Chancelucky2]

Here's a thought...I have a spare battery, and will of course be bringing it along for longer tours.

How about a cross route, leaving off the low battery (used to get from home to the cross) and charger...using the second battery for the loop (about the same usage/distance), coming back to the cross, picking up the charged battery and using it to get home?

Makes sense to me. Are you just talking theoretically or do you live somewhere between Knoxville and Durham?

 

[larry-new]

You plan your tours...one of the best motorbike mags (and least read, with no naked girls) proposed CLOVERLEAF tours...you get to an area, and loop in various directions on different days.

I'm on the Niagara Frontier, but have maxiscootered the amazing Blue Ridge Parkway. I'd try it on my Rad City.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

You plan your tours...one of the best motorbike mags (and least read, with no naked girls) proposed CLOVERLEAF tours...you get to an area, and loop in various directions on different days.

I'm on the Niagara Frontier, but have maxiscootered the amazing Blue Ridge Parkway. I'd try it on my Rad City.

That's like saying you are going to go through life eating nothing but tacos. Tacos are great but there are lots of other great foods out there.

There are an infinite number of inspiring, beautiful adventures you can do on your bike. Why limit yourself?

 

[DaveMatthews]

My only e-bike friend in the area is a she and she bought a Cannondale with a Shimano Steps system. I suspect there are a fair number of people with Bosch e-bikes and batteries though. Maybe there'll be someone on this board who lives in the Triangle.

Craiglist?

 

[larry-new]

That's like saying you are going to go through life eating nothing but tacos. Tacos are great but there are lots of other great foods out there.

There are an infinite number of inspiring, beautiful adventures you can do on your bike. Why limit yourself?

Limit? I'm for expanding ebike capability!

We're too early in this new technology...standardization, interchangeability are years away.

 

[slowguy]

I thought I would never use it but the 12v plug-in car charger works well when traveling. Came with my POLARIS now PIM bike. I think,( I am away right now), that the 110v charger outputs 4 amps at 12v?? I charged well over a 5 mile addition in just over an hour of driving. I guess we all have different charging setups and this might not work for anyone else.

 

[rich c]

I thought I would never use it but the 12v plug-in car charger works well when traveling. Came with my POLARIS now PIM bike. I think,( I am away right now), that the 110v charger outputs 4 amps at 12v?? I charged well over a 5 mile addition in just over an hour of driving. I guess we all have different charging setups and this might not work for anyone else.

I get 50 miles on my battery pack. So a 5 mile addition would be 10%. That means 10 hours for a full charge. Not an option I would prefer. Very crude calculation method though.

 

[6zfshdb]

Like my wife and I, my brother and his wife travel frequently with their ebikes. Sometimes, to break the boredom, they'll get off the highway and "shadow ride" on some scenic back road. One drives the vehicle and follows the other on one of the ebikes. They swap batteries and charge the dead one with the built in vehicle inverter as slowguy does. Charging the battery during a 2 - 3 hour ride only puts back about 20% but it's a help. They enjoy the shadow riding so much, they plan to get a third battery.

 

[Chancelucky2]

Like my wife and I, my brother and his wife travel frequently with their ebikes. Sometimes, to break the boredom, they'll get off the highway and "shadow ride" on some scenic back road. One drives the vehicle and follows the other on one of the ebikes. They swap batteries and charge the dead one with the built in vehicle inverter as slowguy does. Charging the battery during a 2 - 3 hour ride only puts back about 20% but it's a help. They enjoy the shadow riding so much, they plan to get a third battery.

It sounds fun, though I don't think it works with a single battery. When I moved East from California and drove east with my bikes on the car, I would spend an hour in the morning riding around whatever place I happened to be. It definitely helped to break up the trip.

 

[Skypilot]

Does it really lengthen the life of the battery to alternate? My understanding was that cycles are cycles with lithium ion batteries. The only reason they'd last twice as long is that one would be using them half as often.
I've seen batteries improve a lot during my adult life. I think working well in a wide range of temperatures, recharge speed, and number of cycles (though 400 or so isn't bad) for the cost of the battery are the biggest issues. In the laptop world, 6 hours of continuous use or enough to get through a full day of work without recharging was sort of a benchmark. With cars it's about 200 miles, though 100 miles e-range was once considered the magic barrier. I guess there are e-bikes that will do 100 miles, the distance one can reasonably cover in a single day. I just didn't happen to buy one of them :}

While merely alternating batteries probably doesn’t increase the number of recharging cycles possible, alternating in a way that drains each battery less can certainly do so.

 

[harryS]

Many chargers are only about 2 amps. An hour of charging gets you 2 AH. I easily can go 10 miles on 2AH in the summer. Others might only get less. Anyway, that's how the math works.

A bigger charger helps. Most of the large batteries can take 3-4A for charging. It's typically about 1A amp max per cell and it depends on how many cells you have in parallel.

 

[Alaskan]

Bosch makes both a 2 amp charger and a 4 amp charger. The two amp weighs less and is smaller but takes twice as long to achieve the same charge. Double check to see which one came with your bike. You can pick up a 4 amp charger on ebay for $100 maybe less

 

[Chancelucky2]

Bosch makes both a 2 amp charger and a 4 amp charger. The two amp weighs less and is smaller but takes twice as long to achieve the same charge. Double check to see which one came with your bike. You can pick up a 4 amp charger on ebay for $100 maybe less

I have the 4 amp charger. It's kind of crazy; the bike was 1399 and a spare battery (if I go for a 500) is 750. As a BMW e-bike, I guess that puts it in the brand tradition. Price can be reasonable, but maintenance and parts can be on the expensive side.

 

[Alaskan]

I have the 4 amp charger. It's kind of crazy; the bike was 1399 and a spare battery (if I go for a 500) is 750. As a BMW e-bike, I guess that puts it in the brand tradition. Price can be reasonable, but maintenance and parts can be on the expensive side.

4, 700 miles on a Bosch equipped ebike and I've had to buy no bosch parts and spent less than $100 on service. The only other money spent has been changing a chain ring and doing a Nyon upgrade.