Ezee and (Phylion) Battery

 

Hi Guys,

Not sure if this is the right thread to use but here goes...

 

To recap; I have an eZee Liv bought June2007 - 50 Cycles. First battery failed Sep 2008 - new one purchased, Cyclepoint

Charger then failed Mar 2009 - new one purchased, Cyclepoint.

Thus making running costs to date about £30 per month!

 

Now the second battery is deteriorating - yellow light showing after about 5 miles, which is exactly the way the first battery behaved as it began to fail.

What should I do? Can i easily fit a different 36v battery from a cheaper (than £415 delivered, now from Onbike) source?

Else I'm going to scrap the bike and buy a Powabyke - at least they seem to have dealer service

 

Regards to all

 

Mike

Hi mike,have you considered lifepo4,ping ping has a 36v 15ah lifepo4 at $460 = about£277 including delivery,the new powabykes do not seem very popular maybe the short range does not help with sales.

Thanks for this Paul

 

have you considered lifepo4,ping ping has a 36v 15ah lifepo4 at $460 = about£277 including delivery,the new powabykes do not seem very popular maybe the short range does not help with sales.

 

 

 

Now uncertain what to do. Have looked at the posts concerning these batteries - are they powerful enough to give the same sort of performance as the Phylion?

 

Regards

 

Mike

It's best to use the 20 Ah from Ping to give the same sort of performance on the eZee motors, smaller will work but will restrict the power to some degree and will not last quite as long since the smaller vells will be stressed more. None of the Ping types will fit inside the eZee case since lithium iron phosphate cells are larger for a given performance, so you'll have to rig another way to carry it and also arrange a new set of connections to the wires under the battery platform.

.

Chief eZee Operator

 

Hi,

 

eZee makes a very modest and humble margin on the bike and the battery, given the obligation we have to make with regard to warranty on an expandible item like battery it is at the very edge of keeping up with competition.

 

One have to know the cost of distributing products in any country like in UK or in USA and the margins the business have to keep to be viable business. Is it a rip-off, I don't really know, because I don't have the total costing for an importer , distributor, and retailer, and the import tax and GST or VAT. I know for sure the UK government make more money than me in each and every sale of eZee product in UK.

 

With regard to battery life, from my experience over the years, high amps output would definitely reduce the battery life more than low or moderate demand, therefore weaker power bikes would have a better battery life. Or else have a bigger battery pack. So :-

eZee is introducing now on our new shipments an extra secondary battery parallel connection. So people who have a battery say up to 60 or 70 % capacity and experience frequent cut-out due to the voltage drop when pulling a high load, could continue to use this battery together with a new one. In simple arithmetics old battery with 6 Ah + new battery with 10 Ah, you have 16 Ah on the bike. Having 2 batteries share the load would extend the life of the battery considerably. To support this we have now various accessories to hold the secondary battery, pannier bags or a special rear carrier. The connection for the secondary battery is made with Anderson pole connectors. Onbike Ltd would have a shipment arriving in DEC.

 

Next we have also launched LiFePO4 battery, which is 37V8Ah, with cylindrical 26650 cells. This now currrently available only in a new casing that goes into a specially design rear carrier ( flat box ) and primarily as a secondary battery in parallel. Not to worry about different voltages and battery chemistry, we have checked and worked out all the details, the BMS in each pack will take care of everything. These cells dimension could not be incorporated in to our current casing placed behind the seat tube. New casing would be made in 2010 for the same. Also the price of this is the same as the currently Li+polymer pack at 37V10Ah. In the same casing we have 37V14 Ah available now.

 

As a note, we have been testing LiFePO4 from many different sources for the past 3 years, the LiFePO4 we have now is made in China, but the Cathode material is from Phostec Canada one of the pioneers in this technology. Also LiFePO4 has the disadvantage of both lower energy gravimetic and volumetric density than Li+polymer.

 

Also I would like inform all here that we have terminated the distributorship with Cyclepoint and any purchase made with them from 6th Nov2009 would not be supported with manufacturer's warranty. Onbike Ltd is the sole UK distributor for eZee now.

 

W W Ching

Many thanks for all that interesting information Wai Won, particularly on the new battery developments.

 

The Phylion made Li-ion battery you supplied for testing nearly two years ago is still fine for normal use, but as you know I also use the eZee bike for towing a very large trailer with heavy loads in a hilly area and other difficult load carrying. In the toughest circumstances it can now cut out if used continuously on full throttle over a succession of hills, but its not the final cutout that the early batteries suffered. Just switching off and on again resets it and it happily completes a stiff climb with slight throttle reduction, so its still good for many more months of normal use.

 

To do some of the most difficult work I've now bought the 14 Ah battery in addition, but I'm not bothering with wiring it in parallel despite the benefits. I find it performs well as it it is and I need the carrier and pannier space left clear for load carrying.

.

Ezee and (Phylion) Battery

 

Thanks for that flecc, just slightly more reassuring. Like you I am in a hilly area and much of my regular return journey is predominately uphill.

 

My paranoia is that I've been here before re signs of battery deterioration so I still think I need another battery, supplementary if not in parallel. The principle issue is that I am not prepared to spend £400 every year on a new batteries. That makes a nonsense of the electric bike economics.

 

How do others view the economics or is it just 'electric love'?

I really do like my bike but the relationship is getting strained!

 

Mike

 

My paranoia is that I've been here before re signs of battery deterioration so I still think I need another battery, supplementary if not in parallel. The principle issue is that I am not prepared to spend £400 every year on a new batteries. That makes a nonsense of the electric bike economics.

 

It may depend on how many charges Mike. If your mileage means you charge every weekday when commuting, allowing for holidays etc you would probably do about 440 charges in two years. That Phylion battery that I've been testing isn't the current eZee one which is a polymer one from a different source. However, that test one has done 339 charges to date and I'd guess it will be good for perhaps 400. Hopefully the polymer one will be similar. As Wai Won says though, running two in parallel would extend the working life quite a lot, especially in a hilly area.

.

It may depend on how many charges Mike. If your mileage means you charge every weekday when commuting, allowing for holidays etc you would probably do about 440 charges in two years. That Phylion battery that I've been testing isn't the current eZee one which is a polymer one from a different source. However, that test one has done 339 charges to date and I'd guess it will be good for perhaps 400. Hopefully the polymer one will be similar. As Wai Won says though, running two in parallel would extend the working life quite a lot, especially in a hilly area.

 

 

Now you've got me wondering Flecc.

 

I was led to believe that these batteries could/should be charged after every journey and the frequency was not an issue. I hadn't considered the total number of charge cycles a battery might be expected to survive. If this is a problem should I change my charging pattern? For example, today I made two return journeys and charged the battery after each...are you saying that the battery should be discharged more and perhaps less frequently to extend it's life?

Would this be any different with a lead/acid battery?

Your thoughts and expertise apreciated.

Regards

Mike

Sorry, I might have mislead you Mike, the life rating is for full or near full charges.

 

Part charges count for less in a rough ratio to the amount of each charge, though it doesn't necessarily equate exactly. For example, the perfectly ordinary batteries installed in satellites like those which handle our phone and TV signals last 10 years of daily part charges from sunlight, over 3600 in all. Their secret is that they are hugely over specified for capacity and only one seventh of the content is used in each daily dark phase. You'd need a battery of at least 40 to 70 Ah to do the same, but you can see from the example how part charges do not have the same destructive effect as full charges.

 

Actually, the full secret of very long battery life is using only a fraction of the content in the centre of the charge content band, in other words only ever charging to 80% of capacity at most and never discharging below 20% of capacity, taking the daily bit or bits out of the middle. The Toyota Prius does that and it's battery is guaranteed for 8 years.

.

there have been 5 other shops selling ezee bikes in the uk now on bike are the sixth how long are on bike going to last as new distributor

 

jim

there have been 5 other shops selling ezee bikes in the uk now on bike are the sixth how long are on bike going to last as new distributor

 

jim

 

The other shops were only dealers Jim. Onbike are the UK agent as were Cyclepoint briefly and originally 50cycles. I'd expect it to remain stable with Onbike for a long time now.

.

My Ezee Torq battery (10ah) has 2200 miles and 6 months on it. It's showing the effects now. I'm not really sure how fast it's going to deteriorate at this point or when it will really be pointless to continue with it. At the moment it's not really affecting my rides, I just am noticing the capacity is less and it needs charging sooner for the same distances.

 

I have no idea how many charges it has taken. The NiMh on my Giant I made careful records, but then that one was almost always fully discharged and charged fully its whole life whereas this one rarely has experience full charges (maybe 12 times total).

 

Er, about $1 (U.S.) per 5 miles of usage so far. but that's not counting electricity.

 

This wouldn't put me off buying another, though i would like it all to be cheaper, for sure!

I suppose if I had to guess, I will likely not see another 1000 miles on it, unless I absolutely baby it. 500 hundred maybe, would probably be more like it, I'm betting. And maybe not that.

40% Charge for Long Life?

 

Hi All, new to this forum and was going to start a different thread, but do not have the privileges yet.

This web site and all the posts has been an excellent resource and

recently bought two second hand ezee bikes (one for me, one for the missus.) Having spent £500 on a new battery - wanting to ensure long battery life and my bike will be using around 2 times a week only.

Both have lithium ion batteries. In all the paperwork and on the Battery University web. I am told that for storage, batteries should be kept cool (in my garage currently) and at around 40% charge.

Question is this - how do you achieve/measure the 40% charge state? Does this correspond roughly to any of the lights on the ezee bikes? Tried testing voltage with a multimeter - but don't know where to start! Help!

Second question. If 0 degreed reduces battery ageing to near 2% per year - why not store the batteries in a fridge in the garage (in a sealed plastic bag?)

Hi Dave, The low temperature information is only valid for longer term storage, not for a battery that is going to be used weekly or even two weekly. The battery will not charge properly or fully when cold, so every time it's reduced to around zero degrees, it will have to be brought up to ambient temperature again and that will take several hours to ensure the cell content internally is thoroughly up to temperature.

 

The chemical stresses of doing that repeatedly won't do the cells much good and you could end up with a shorter life.

 

If you have a look again at the battery university chart which I'm showing below, you'll see that with a 40% charge there's only 2% difference between the battery being kept at 0 degrees or 25 degrees, so the coldness is far from vital. The 40 percent specified is only to allow for the gradual BMS discharge that occurs over time during storage, running the battery too low damaging it. Just having it below 40% charge is sufficient, some authorities specify 20 to 40%.

 

There's no way that capacity can be easily measured on the spot since batteries are chemical devices, not electrical, the current being stored as a change in chemical state which cannot be measured electrically. The crude meters we have on e-bikes just measure the slight decline in voltage as a battery empties, giving an inaccurate indication.

 

In your case if you are using it occasionally as you indicate, best not to charge immediately after you use the bike, thus ensuring the charge state is lowered, store anywhere convenient that's not very hot (garage is fine, no need for plastic bagging) then charge again shortly before you use it next.

 

Don't worry too much about this storage issue since the usage wears the battery far more. I've run eZee bikes with intermittent use since 2006, had a Torq and still run a Quando that uses the identical electrical side to the Torq 1. My storage has been in cool to cold conditions but that hasn't stopped the batteries packing up at around two years maximum. As well as one NiMh one, I've used 4 lithium ones and the latest one of those has had it now and needs replacing. The very latest batteries are now said to be good for longer, but only time will tell how long.

 

Finally, if you do have the battery completely out of use long term at any time, it's important to recharge it at least every three months maximum, preferably every two months, or it could fail completely. Here's that chart:

 

http://batteryuniversity.com/_img/content/parttwo-34.gif

Edited December 1, 201015 yr by flecc

Extreemly Helpful

 

Hi Flecc. Thats very helpful advice and exactly what I was after. Thank You.

Term Test Outcome - eZee battery

 

Tony, by what you say am i right in thinking that they would be best left in shed rather than brought indoors (took mine Sanyo off yesterday now indoors ) as cant see being used till later in new year sounds like done wrong ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

forza

Yes, out in the shed is much better as it will be out of use long term, but it can't have come to any harm in a few days. If it's already partly discharged, best left that way until you bring it back into use.

 

If it's almost completely discharged now, give it a part charge before putting out, about a quarter of the usual charge time will give over a third charge since the charge rate is higher initially.

 

In any event, make sure that you don't leave it more than two months without charging it.

.

Nice One Flecc, just what I wanted to know,

 

bike in back bedroom till the better weather,and battery in shed,

 

Cheers Rob!

I've got a couple of questions regarding the Ezee 10ah Phylion.

 

1: How long does one take to do a full charge from flat when new on a 1.8a charger?

 

2: What's the maximum charge input they can take?

Members aware that I've been conducting a confidential long term intensive test over the last six months have been variously guessing what I'm testing, and those who guessed battery have been right. When asked at the start of the year if I would be interested in doing this, the answer was obviously yes. Who would say no to free battery usage for half a year, but I trust no-one will think this a corrupt inducement.

 

Given the poor record of lithium bike batteries with regard to current delivery failure and short life, I was determined to give this one hell on earth, so I chose to test on the Q-bike, riding it Quando fashion all the time, resolutely refusing to pedal unless absolutely necessary just short of stalling. Every day included at least one 20% climb and at least one long climb over a minimum of three miles, and most days there were two rides, on the odd occasion three. A very few trips were short, but the many used all or most of the charge. There were half a dozen days when the weather was too bad for long rides, and for those I rigged up a two hour rate discharger, using it twice on those days, so the battery was never rested throughout the six months.

 

The total distance ridden was 3784 miles (5558 km) with 226 charges, similar to a years usage by a five day a week commuter doing over 15 miles a day.

 

Early in the test on a warm January day I did a range check on a carefully planned route that had it's final miles very flat to ensure battery cutout would be due to it's being empty rather than cut out by a sudden high loading, and the distance covered was 23.2 miles, including plenty of climbing and a 20% hill, no pedalling except just enough on that steep hill to prevent stalling.

 

I've now completed a repeat of the identical trip, the distance to cutout being 19.97 miles, indicating a capacity loss of 13.9%. For a year's equivalent usage on lithium this is excellent, especially given the very rough treatment it's received, including it being being smashed into two on it's trip from China and used ever since bandaged back together with duct tape. The original expert predictions for lithium were for a loss of 33% per annum. The range and charge time indicate the one I was testing is about 14 Ah, which if I'd been pedalling as well would normally get me 40 miles or more, since my 10 Ah one reaches over 30 miles normally

 

There are two types of this new generation battery, a 4.6 kilo Li-ion Manganese which I've been testing, made by Phylion, the company who made the failed early eZee batteries but who've clearly come on a long way since that 2006 design, and a 3.3 kilo Li-polymer made by another company being tested elsewhere in the same way, and the results have been as good on both types.

 

Some of the Phylion batteries appeared in prototypes for a tentative new manufacturer's e-bike, and over the last six months eZee have shipped around 1000 of these batteries worldwide as warranty replacements and in an order completion, and with both types performing as well, eZee will be adopting the lighter 3.3 kg polymer one in future. I'm told the interim Sanyo battery is to be discontinued since there have been difficulties in getting adequate supplies.

 

So at long last we can look forward to using the performance of these high powered bikes without the constant fear of battery cutouts and short life. I can't say at the moment when supplies will be available, but no doubt eZee or Cyclepoint will announce the arrival of the first stocks.

 

Footnote: Hardly pedalling for six months has been tedious, my fitness has suffered and I'm looking forward to spinning once again instead of being slumped on the saddle like a sack of spuds for hours every day.

.

Hello

June 2012 I posted re my purchase of two Erolling bikes; they continue to perform well but now require replacement 36v batteries. I am content to purchase from Erolling but wonder if I should upgrade to a product that will last longer. Does anyone have advice and or experience that will guide me? Electric Transport Shop quote 330 GBP each for Panasonic re-cell and BMS.

Best regards to you all.

Nick

Can you show us a picture of your bike and the battery. You should be able to get two good batteries for less than £200.

Can you show us a picture of your bike and the battery. You should be able to get two good batteries for less than £200.

Thank you for your reply,. Battery measures approx 39cm x 11 x 8.

Regards Nick