Battery conditioning

[CeeGee]

Yet again we have a thread due to concerns over battery life. If the damned things were priced reasonably, no-one would pay too much attention to their lifespan. At the first sign of deterioration, the battery would be replaced.
Indalo

What a very environmentally friendly way to behave - not.
You are going to replace your battery every 50 cycles are you when the first sign of deterioration occurs? That will be six batteries you will use instead of one. For your ridiculous idea to make economic sense that means a £500 battery would have to magically reduce in price to £75 for you to benefit.
By the way, in your inane little rant you missed out Governments in your tatty little conspiracy theory on everybody being ripped of.

I would be a little more inclined to show respect to your ideas if you provided facts and figures to back your ideas, rather than rubbish the figures given by people on this forum who are a lot more knowledgeable than you.

Colin

 

[indalo]

Oh Colin, you really do make me laugh.

I hope you feel much better now you've got that off your chest.

Indalo

 

[tillson]

Oh Colin, you really do make me laugh.

I hope you feel much better now you've got that off your chest.

Indalo

It's probably best if we don't indulge inaldo for a while, I think that he is trying to be deliberately provocative with his posting. This forum is likely to be the only place in his life where people react to his existence.

He's shown himself to be a bit of a cunning stunt.

 

[Grumpyoldgit]

Battery cost

The lithium polymer 36v 10ah battery on my bike currently costs £270.00. If it only lasts the basic two years it works out at about £0.37/day. I didn't think that was too bad considering the savings I make not using my car so often. Am I missing something here?

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I agree in principle with what Indalo is saying: Some replacement batteries seem to cost more than a complete bike with battery from other suppliers. I think you're being unfair criticising his opinions, which to me are valid.

If you are handy with a screwdriver and soldering iron, it shouldn't be beyond the realms of most DIYers to re-pack their battery. Even if they don't use a pack that's exactly the same, as long as it fits in the box, it should still be OK. It would be even cheaper if you could use the existing BMS - just replacing the cells. I think there's a business opportunity here that's already starting to be exploited by some enterprising individuals. Also, at some point in the system are two wires that feed the controller with the power - normally 24, 26 or 36 volts. If your battery is duff, there's a fair chance that you can chuck everything upstream and connect a different suitable battery pack into this supply point - as long as you can find a suitable location. This is especially useful if you want to upgrade from NiMHs or lead batteries. These are only ideas to help cash-strapped individuals in these times of austerity. Please don't attempt, if you're not competent.

 

[tillson]

I too agree that battery prices seem to be artificially inflated in some instances and the point made about some batteries costing more than a complete bike, plus battery is a good illustration. There is also a lot of promising, without much substance, regarding batteries.

There are some on here who argue that battery prices are not inflated and that they adequately reflect the cost of bringing them to market. Whilst I am not convinced by the points that they make, I have no evidence or reason to believe that these people are, "in the pocket" of manufacturers. They are simply expressing their point of view. If time is taken to look at the historical posts made by the people who are supposedly in cahoots with the manufacturers, it can be seen that they have also been critical where they have deemed it to be necessary.

 

[overlander]

Like i said before welcome to the world of niece hobbies, prices for consumables are inflated. In away they are really shooting themselves in the foot as people will discard the bike and move to another brand if the battery is too expensive. Personally i feel they are too expensive and too fragile with too many ways out for the manufacturer to wriggle out of warranty claims. But like all other areas the more competition the lower prices will become.

 

[flecc]

High end brands fetch high end prices, a fact of life. A manufacturer chooses which market sector he wants to be in, low end mass market with small margins or high end restricted market wit high margins. The latter is not a rip-off, it's a simple commercial choice.

Does anyone really think the BMW based Rolls Royce is really a quarter million pounds value, or the Audi 8 based Bentley worth it's price? Or a Rolex worth tens of thousands? Or further down, was a Mondeo based Jaguar X type worth so much more than the Mondeo? Of course not, we just appreciate if we want the best at any market level, it costs dear.

If you don't like this Indalo, do what Old Timer does and buy at the budget end. He's has had to tweak his range of e-bikes to suit him, but is happy with them, showing that you can be suited with e-bikes just as you can with cars without buying a Jaguar, Rolls or Bentley.

I'm one of those who has strongly supported the main manufacturers offering top end batteries at top end prices. But on the other hand I'm on record in the early days of this forum as savagely criticising one of them for poor battery performance so much that they refused to communicate with me at all for well over a year and abandoned this forum for a long time.

So when criticism is deserved I don't hesitate to cut up rough, but high margins in high end products is not an area for criticism. I'm happy to explain why this is to those who can understand, but won't waste my time explaining to those determined not to understand by reason of bigotry.
.

 

[Alex728]

It would be even cheaper if you could use the existing BMS - just replacing the cells. I think there's a business opportunity here that's already starting to be exploited by some enterprising individuals.

I agree - but consider that most of us would want them to be a proper business rather than a combination of boffins tinkering away in a shed and del-boys selling stuff cheap and avoiding wider obligations (sometimes a combination of both in the same "entrepreneur" )..

so they need

• enough cashflow to deal with RMA's and duff stock due to replacements due to "rude shipping" (in the words of the venerable Mr Ping) i.e raw materials getting busted up enroute from China
• a contract with a WEEE disposal company to dispose of the e-waste that reconditioning batteries will inevitably generate
• customer service staff who will respond quickly to queries and sort out problems, including being able to pick up a telephone and take ownership of a problem rather than pushing the admin work back to the customer via the Internet.
• appropriate health and safety procedures and liability insurance as these batteries can set quite a blaze if they are to malfunction
• extremely good standards of workmanship and attention to detail across all the staff to avoid rework and expensive and dangerous mistakes (I'm sorry to say that I fear a lot of younger peoples workmanship in the UK, might not even be able to match that of the Chinese

if not, one batch of duff batteries will put them out of business very quickly.

Also there is every chance the big companies which have a stake in the manufacture of e-bike batteries will use legal action by their European subsidiaries claiming breach of intellectual property rights and also notify regulators about any perceived safety risks from aftermarket products

TBH I suspect by the time all this has been costed out the price of "aftermarket" batteries might not be that much below that of new ones!

 

[Scimitar]

TBH I suspect by the time all this has been costed out the price of "aftermarket" batteries might not be that much below that of new ones!

Quite possibly - I recall the cost of recelling a power tool battery from a decent refurbisher with a reputation to uphold. Now of course, there's a flood of Chinese made power tool batteries that make recelling nearly not worthwhile.

 

[jbond]

What a very environmentally friendly way to behave - not.

Recycling lead acid batteries is well understood and there's an infrastructure to deal with it. What happens to old Li-On (and NiMh) batteries?

 

[flecc]

What happens to old Li-On (and NiMh) batteries?

Nothing worthwhile really. NiMh don't have much worthwhile recoverable material at the end of life, the complex mix of rare earths probably almost impossible to separate and probably largely beyond usefulness. The rare metals they originally used were abandoned very early on when the cells failed within about 100 charges.

Rechargeable lithium batteries are too new a technology so the cathode materials very variable, and complex on later ones. This makes recycling of the chemical content very difficult due to all the many variations. Some later cathodes have six or more elements in their construction. Also there's no lithium content in metallic form to recover. Earlier ones had steel cell casings, but polymer ones now use cheap plastic bag cell casings so little worthwhile to recover. The newest lithium iron phosphate types have virtually no value in the retained content at end of life, so limited future prospect for recycling.

Lead acid is very different of course, all that worthwhile lead incredibly easy to recycle and only third world technology needed to do it
.

 

[jbond]

So they end up as land fill?

 

[flecc]

That seems to be the situation at present, though any owner adding one to the hard plastics recycling skip might get the case recycled and content thrown away if the material is suitable. Likewise one of the few alloy sleeved ones.

Personally I've clearly safety labelled my scrap li-ions and added them to the household battery recycling skip in the hope that someone might be triggered to follow up on the situation, but I suspect that's a vain hope.
.

 

[Alex728]

In October 2003, AEA Technology (AEAT) launched a £2 million research and development facility in Sutherland, north Scotland, for Li-Ion battery recycling. This new process employs a series of separation technologies to disassemble the battery systematically and focuses on maximising the recovery of cobalt and other metals such as copper from the battery for resale. All types of lithium-ion and lithium -ion polymer batteries will be treated.

Recycling batteries

however little has been said about progress 7 years later, I expect at present there is no commercial market due to what flecc says.

However even with lead acid, one complaint from the Chinese authorities in some areas against e-bikes was that the smaller batteries used in e-bikes got "dumped in the street" as due to market forces there are sometimes gluts of recycled materials in China and price drops, so these batteries aren't deemed worth getting the lead from... and the economic depression makes this worse as it reduces demand for raw materials..

I know Wisper recover the case and offer a discount on new batteries for the old one being returned...

 

[flecc]

Yes, that recycling info was old, cobalt largely disappeared from these batteries due to the fires caused.

Recently some of the compound cathodes now include cobalt again, but in much reduced quantities and part of a multi-element mix which changes frequently as advances are made.

Trying to set up recycling for these constantly changing batteries is a nightmare, and I doubt the content commercially worthwhile anyway. About the only constant is the carbon based anode, commercially worthless.
.

 

[Laxey Clive]

Hi Folks, and thanks to all who responded.
Sorry about the long delay, but this has been due to the very reason that I asked the question in the first place - my use will be infrequent and restricted to 'as and when I can'!
Anyroadup I think I've got the picture:-
1) I don't need to condition the battery itself, in fact
2) I'm better off recharging it as and when I've used the bike, especially when
3) In my useage the led 'fuel gauge' accuracy is not going to be particularly important to me and that appears to be all that I will be 'conditioning'.
Thanks again to you all, I feel much more at ease to know that I will not be causing myself long term battery problems!
Clive.

 

[blackrat]

Whilst talking about batteries and charging, I read somewhere that you should never flatten the battery completely and never charge it to maximum (conditioning excepted). I have a Kalkhoff bike with the Panasonic system, does this mean that the hardware takes care of all of this for me? Or should I not be running the battery down till the red light flashes and charging it till all 5 lights are lit and then go out (as per the manual)?

My guess is that the hardware would prevent me discharging the battery too far and would charge to an optimum charge level rather than full, but does anyone know the facts?

Just as an aside, I am aware that the rather larger battery in the Toyota Prius will show flat when down to 20% charge and full at 80% charge. Any lower and the engine cuts in to charge the battery any higher and the engine is driven by the battery without fuel and ignition to help drain the battery down (as a consequence of generating charge from the braking system)

Blackrat

 

[NRG]

The Panasonic battery has a sophisticated BMS so no fear of over charge or discharge, just charge it as and when you need it. Curtailing the full charge and discharge points greatly increases battery life hence the extended warranties available with the Toyota.

 

[blackrat]

Thanks for the reply NRG, but does the hardware do this already with the Panasonic system? ie when charging, the 5 lights light up and then go out = 80% charge (like the Toyota system), or do I need to turn it off manually at 4 lights or 5 lights before they go out to equal 80% charge?

The Panasonic battery has a sophisticated BMS so no fear of over charge or discharge, just charge it as and when you need it. Curtailing the full charge and discharge points greatly increases battery life hence the extended warranties available with the Toyota.