I purchased an Ezee Liv last February and up to the middle of September was attaining about 8-10 miles before the battery indicator turned orange from green, today it is only about 2 miles. Can anyone suggest what approximate distances between the green, orange and red indicators are, or a percentage of battery charge between the 3 colours please.

 

I have of course emailed this question to both 50 Cycles and Cyclepoint 2 weeks ago but have yet to recieve a reply.

measured between the LEDs on my ezee unreliable special for you.... i think about 5mm? if you batterys cr*pped out then you wont even get 5mm, maybe 2mm at a push...

These batteries lose capacity over time staffsfc, and as they do the interval between the LED changeovers reduces considerably. The steps are in fact rather inaccurate since they are determined by tiny changes in voltage, there being no way to find out a battery's content instantaneously, so only the crude voltage method is possible.

 

It's best not to worry about this, when the battery does start giving out you will experience cutting out under load, when you'll need to switch off and then on again to restart. Eventually that gets frequent enough for the battery to no longer be of use.

 

You can read more about this in my battery meters article in the technical section.

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Edited November 10, 200817 yr by flecc

Ezee power indicators

 

Flecc explained in an earlier thread that it is best not to think of the indicator lights as being a direct constant measure of remaining battery life. There is a link between the condition of a battery (a mixture of age, and use and charging patterns) and the indication from the lights during a journey but it is more helpful to regard the first appearance of the amber light as an indication of power drain at that time (probably when travelling up a slope or accelerating).

 

The amber light comes on under two conditions; when the demand rises (then, once demand lessens the green light come back on) and then constantly to demonstrate that the battery is has reached a particular discharge level (80%?). The red indicator light works under the same, but more extreme conditions.

 

I am using two batteries each day: one is 13 months old, the other I bought in September 2008. Under the same conditions the amber light now starts to show consistently earlier on the older battery (about six miles compared with about eight) and I get slightly less use from it. The amber light comes on permanently one or two miles earlier on the older battery, as does the red light, and I get one or two miles less range. I expect the older battery to continue to deteriorate slowly.

 

I have found I get the best use out of the batteries if, when the amber light first comes on which can be at the first climb, I lower the assist lever (normally from about 6 to 5) and drop a gear so that my leg speed rises. The amber light sometimes goes out but normally stay on until I reach the top of the climb. If the slope becomes more severe the red light comes on. By dropping through the gears and increasing my leg speed I lose a little speed but I extend my range on that particular journey.

 

As a rough guide, at power assist level 6 with moderate hills on a mostly flat journey, I get 12-14 miles out of each battery in the hilly area, and 17-20 on the flatter part of the route. The amber indicator comes on permanently with about four miles left but this does vary as sometimes I try to conserve power.

 

Whe the red light becomes constant I know I have about 1 mile left on the flat (hardly anything left if I make any real demand) but normally swap batteries as soon as I get a constant red indicator.

 

Hope this helps

Edited November 10, 200817 yr by Conal

Thank You

 

Thank you for your advice, mst helpful.

 

Clive

 

staffsfc

Thanks Conal for helping out Clive.

I spoke with Rhys today and he tells me that an email reply to the original query was sent at the start of November. Not sure what happened there, but apologies for the inconvenience.

 

Cheers,

Paul.