Wouldn't this be nice....

[IOM]

The battery on the Ebike I use in China started to fail after two years regular use. So yesterday I set off to see if I could get a replacement.

First stop was a local un-powered bike shop to get my tyres inflated (They freely let you use the air line). While there my Chinese friend asked the owner if he could replace the battery. ‘Yes no problem, he will replace the batteries inside the casing for the princely sum of £55’.

Decided to leave it and ask the same of the Ebike shop I bought the bike from. They had closed, so went to one a little further down the road. ‘Yes, we can change it, £11.50 per cell, there are five within the casing’.
Opened it up, checked each one, said two needed replacing, £23 with a 12 month guarantee.
In out, job done and back on the road within twenty minutes.

Now granted, this is a SLA battery, but you can see from this example the level of service and support available. Following a conversation with the owner, he claimed that they are capable of almost any repair to the bike, with the spares necessary to get you back on the road within the day.

Who knows, in the future as Ebike popularity grows, this level of service may become mainstream in the UK. Wouldn’t this be nice……..

 

[morphix]

The battery on the Ebike I use in China started to fail after two years regular use. So yesterday I set off to see if I could get a replacement.

First stop was a local un-powered bike shop to get my tyres inflated (They freely let you use the air line). While there my Chinese friend asked the owner if he could replace the battery. ‘Yes no problem, he will replace the batteries inside the casing for the princely sum of £55’.

Decided to leave it and ask the same of the Ebike shop I bought the bike from. They had closed, so went to one a little further down the road. ‘Yes, we can change it, £11.50 per cell, there are five within the casing’.
Opened it up, checked each one, said two needed replacing, £23 with a 12 month guarantee.
In out, job done and back on the road within twenty minutes.

Now granted, this is a SLA battery, but you can see from this example the level of service and support available. Following a conversation with the owner, he claimed that they are capable of almost any repair to the bike, with the spares necessary to get you back on the road within the day.

Who knows, in the future as Ebike popularity grows, this level of service may become mainstream in the UK. Wouldn’t this be nice……..

Incredible, quite a contrast to here in the UK isn't it! I bet if you go into many bike shops you would get a strange look and headshake if you asked. And those that do sell ebikes often won't touch other brands.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

The same can be done for nearly every type of battery. You only need the right know-how to dismantle it and replace the cells - whether they're NiMHs or Lithium. A lot of the cost is in the casing and BMS, so if you can get it apart and find out what cells are in it, it should be possible to find them somewhere and replace them at a fraction of the price of a new battery.