Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

Question for the ev enlightened.
If i need to go to a trial competition with a full charge, but my battery is at 50%.i am told that i shouldn't top up unless it's below approx 30% because it's bad for the battery.
Other than riding around the neighborhood, is there a way to discharge it? Maybe put it on a stand with the rear wheel up and let it run for a while? I dunno.
 
Wingboy said:
Question for the ev enlightened.
If i need to go to a trial competition with a full charge, but my battery is at 50%.i am told that i shouldn't top up unless it's below approx 30% because it's bad for the battery.
Other than riding around the neighborhood, is there a way to discharge it? Maybe put it on a stand with the rear wheel up and let it run for a while? I dunno.
Click to expand...
If you’re only doing that once or twice it shouldn’t be much of an issue. If you’re doing it on the regular you can degrade your battery quicker.
 
Wingboy said:
Question for the ev enlightened.
If i need to go to a trial competition with a full charge, but my battery is at 50%.i am told that i shouldn't top up unless it's below approx 30% because it's bad for the battery.
Other than riding around the neighborhood, is there a way to discharge it? Maybe put it on a stand with the rear wheel up and let it run for a while? I dunno.
Click to expand...
Hmm. I'm surprised they want you to go down to 30% before charging. Normally, if you keep a li-ion battery between 20 and 80% it's really hard to affect its life.

You could put it in a stand but obviously be careful as a fall off the stand could go very poorly. Put the bottom of the rear tire in a container of water to up the windage and power loss and speed up the process (or use the brakes but they may not appreciate a long run).

If you need to do this often, I would be looking for a solution that interfaces with the battery directly. Basically dump power into a heater. Ideally with an auto cutoff at a certain voltage but that makes things harder.

Slightly unrelated. How did they deal with engine braking? I assume that is has none and therefore no regen? Or can you select that too?
 
GreyGhost said:
Hmm. I'm surprised they want you to go down to 30% before charging. Normally, if you keep a li-ion battery between 20 and 80% it's really hard to affect its life.

You could put it in a stand but obviously be careful as a fall off the stand could go very poorly. Put the bottom of the rear tire in a container of water to up the windage and power loss and speed up the process (or use the brakes but they may not appreciate a long run).

If you need to do this often, I would be looking for a solution that interfaces with the battery directly. Basically dump power into a heater. Ideally with an auto cutoff at a certain voltage but that makes things harder.

Slightly unrelated. How did they deal with engine braking? I assume that is has none and therefore no regen? Or can you select that too?
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No Regen. The controller has "inertia" programmed in it. It replicates a heavy flywheel very well. It also has anti rollback programmed as well. Very important in trials. Pulling in the clutch allows it to roll back when needed.
Lots to learn about the battery! Was told not to wash the bike with the battery in it. It takes 30sec to remove it.
 
Wingboy said:
Question for the ev enlightened.
If i need to go to a trial competition with a full charge, but my battery is at 50%.i am told that i shouldn't top up unless it's below approx 30% because it's bad for the battery.
Other than riding around the neighborhood, is there a way to discharge it? Maybe put it on a stand with the rear wheel up and let it run for a while? I dunno.
Click to expand...
Should make no difference charge anytime don't go below 20% and it will last a very long time.

Sent from the future
 
Removable battery, how much is a replacement/spare?

Personally I would just use it within reason and worry about replacing the battery if and only if at some future point it needs to be replaced--and IF you are still riding it at that point--assuming a second battery is expensive. If not overly expensive I would have two now, also potentially helps to solve your charging on site problem....

From an EE perspective. How many of these bikes have been sold and how much data is there from real world draining and charging vs an engineer just tossing in a educated best guess number with safety margins into the manual? Discharging to x before charging makes little real world sense to me vs don't discharge below y.... Usually other makers recommend 20% to 80% range day to day...
 
Interesting attempt to profit from fear-mongering. $420 USD for adaptor that lets you put EV in drive while charging so you can escape attackers. I'm not saying that situation never occurs but that's a steep price for something so exceedingly rare. In the US, a gun is far far cheaper.

evject.com

EVject Escape Connector

THE SAFEST WAY TO CHARGE YOUR EV. Experience a safer charging experience with EVject. In an emergency, you no longer have to worry about leaving your vehicle, disconnecting the charger, and rushing back to safety. Simply attach the EVject connector to the charger's head each time you plug in. In...
evject.com evject.com

EDIT:
If you subtract the charging fires caused by this thing from the car jackings it thwarted, I would be shocked if you ended up with a positive number.

95% of them will probably be left at a charger along the road when you forget to remove the stupid adaptor from the cable. I wonder if the finder can use it or if it is locked to a single user somehow? Does it screw up charging for the next person that tries to use the charger with the device still attached?
 
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Wingboy said:
Question for the ev enlightened.
If i need to go to a trial competition with a full charge, but my battery is at 50%.i am told that i shouldn't top up unless it's below approx 30% because it's bad for the battery.
Other than riding around the neighborhood, is there a way to discharge it? Maybe put it on a stand with the rear wheel up and let it run for a while? I dunno.
Click to expand...
That is odd. Is it a lithium-ion or LiFePO battery, or is it an older NiCad (no lithium or sodium involved)?

There are some older chemistries that supposedly have a "memory" for the discharge and charge levels and you're supposed to completely discharge before completely charging, but I wouldn't expect a modern vehicle to use those.

LiFePO batteries don't mind being 100% charged, don't like being fully discharged, do whatever you want between those. Li-ion (NMC) like being "somewhere near half", 20% to 80% is close enough, charge to 100% or discharge to near zero occasionally if needed but avoid long storage periods near fully charged or discharged.
 
Thoughts on Tesla laying off 10+% of their workforce (appears worldwide), eliminating discounts on in-stock vehicles, canceling a planned lower-priced vehicle, and supposedly focusing on self-driving taxis (Lol)?

1Q earnings coming up soon. Can't be good.

If their self-driving nonsense still isn't ready for prime time after 10 years of messing around with it, it isn't going to be fixed in 4 months.

Musk is flailing.

Bumpers are still attached to my humble Chevy.
 
A gas station that is normally expensive in the gta was at 1.80 when I passed by today. When I drove by an hour later, they had the signs turned off but pumps were still open. They were probably pretty bored but once people pull in they either don't pay attention or just accept it as they are already stopped.
 
GreyGhost said:
Slightly unrelated. How did they deal with engine braking? I assume that is has none and therefore no regen? Or can you select that too?
Click to expand...

It could be done the same way braking is done with slot cars by controlled reversing of the polarity.
 
FullMotoJacket said:
It could be done the same way braking is done with slot cars by controlled reversing of the polarity.
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It's relatively simple to do, i just wondered how they had implemented it. It is a very specific use case and I doubt they would care about regen (although maybe they would to take another few pounds out of the battery). I was more interested in the dynamics and different feel between ice and ev in this application.
 
Brian P said:
That is odd. Is it a lithium-ion or LiFePO battery, or is it an older NiCad (no lithium or sodium involved)?

There are some older chemistries that supposedly have a "memory" for the discharge and charge levels and you're supposed to completely discharge before completely charging, but I wouldn't expect a modern vehicle to use those.

LiFePO batteries don't mind being 100% charged, don't like being fully discharged, do whatever you want between those. Li-ion (NMC) like being "somewhere near half", 20% to 80% is close enough, charge to 100% or discharge to near zero occasionally if needed but avoid long storage periods near fully charged or discharged.
Click to expand...
Lithium ion
 

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Brian P said:
Thoughts on Tesla laying off 10+% of their workforce (appears worldwide), eliminating discounts on in-stock vehicles, canceling a planned lower-priced vehicle, and supposedly focusing on self-driving taxis (Lol)?

1Q earnings coming up soon. Can't be good.

If their self-driving nonsense still isn't ready for prime time after 10 years of messing around with it, it isn't going to be fixed in 4 months.

Musk is flailing.

Bumpers are still attached to my humble Chevy.
Click to expand...
First thing you do before a bad earnings report is fire a whole lot of staff to make the numbers look better.

Tesla hasn’t come out with much in close to 5-7 years since the 3 came out, besides the minor update. The competition has gotten leaps and bounds better, and daddy Elon is a walking timebomb about to go off.

No wonder the stock is tanking and customers are bailing for better options.

I personally feel the early adopters are done, and now the EV industry will see that it’s not that easy to sell $50k EVs to the general public.

I expect prices to fall further. Surprised Tesla hasn’t come down yet. If they drop to the mid 30s I’d buy one, Elmo or not.

That Bolt is looking mighty good with the 14c/L increase coming…it equals about $8/fillup more per week in the GTI.
 
Wingboy said:
Lithium ion
Click to expand...

Then don't concern yourself with the "run it down to 30%" bit. Once you get a feel for how much of a charge you'll use in an event, if it has the capability to set an upper charge limit, set the upper charge limit to something that works for you (ideally 80% but if you need more, so be it). Plug it in to charge overnight before your event and forget about it after the event until it's time for the next one.

As an indication of how relatively non-critical this is ... early Bolts didn't have the ability to set an upper charge limit to whatever you want it to be in 5% increments (which is how mine is). They either charged to 100% or you could set a "hilltop reserve" that charged to 88% with the intent that this gave you some regenerative-braking capability (which you lose when the battery is at 100% or very close ... can't have regenerative braking if there's nowhere for the juice to go). Lots of people have put mega mileage on those cars despite probably charging to 88% every time ... If your new toy doesn't have the ability to change the charge limit, don't worry about it.
 
The only logic I can see for "don't charge to 100% unless it's below 30%" is if there's some logic in the battery that only balances cells when it's below 30%, which is typically the opposite of what's normal - balancing happens on the higher end of things.

I suspect that this is just bad advice they were given from an overseas manufacturer, or a lost in translation from chinese to english thing, and now they're repeating it because they don't know better. Anyone who understands lithium batteries knows that the 30 to 80% window is the "happy spot", but there are no memory issues or anything like the old days of nickel cadmium etc that require "full cycles" anymore.

If it were me, I'd put it on a timer of some sort to time it to complete the charge to 100% a few hours before your planned departure time (to give it time for any balancing to happen), and then unplug, and go and enjoy your day. If it's above 30% at the end of your day, then just park it until next time, and repeat. Yeah, in a perfect world you only charge to 80%, but if you haven't got a lot of experience on this particular machine yet, you don't want to find out the hard way that that 20% was the 20% that got you through your entire day vs running out of juice early, and it's easier on a lithium battery to spend a few hours at 100% and then get depleted then it is for you to come up short and end up in a super-deep discharge situation.

Without doubt there will be cutoff circuitry in there to ensure the battery doesn't damage itself even if/when you do get down towards "empty", so dont overthink that either in the grand scheme of things, but still, if we're talking what's easier for the lifespan of the battery, 100% for a few hours and then a shallower discharge vs deep bottom discharge is preferential.
 
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