How to Keep Your Ebike Battery Healthy

Keeping your electric bike battery in good health and ready to go is essential for safe, enjoyable riding. A quality ebike battery can power the bike for 10+ miles, so it’s important to give your battery some TLC and optimize its lifespan. In this article, I’ll cover the most important ways to keep your ebike battery healthy on a day-to-day basis. 

How to Keep Your Ebike Battery Healthy

Even after short trips of a few kilometers, lithium batteries are best maintained fully charged. Discharging a lithium battery completely on a frequent basis will drastically impair its ability to store a charge, reducing its capacity. If you "flatten" your battery, make sure to fully recharge it as soon as possible.

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A wet battery poses little risk, and ours are built to withstand riding in the rain, however, it is not recommended. To minimize oxidation and corrosion, contact points on the battery should be dried. This will reduce the battery's capacity to power the bike. Every few months, inspect the contacts and clean them as needed. NEVER install a battery with wet or damp terminals. Serious injury is likely.

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As the lithium powder inside the battery cells warms up, it reduces its electrical resistance. This implies that in hotter weather, your battery will deplete faster and require more frequent charging.

You may notice that your bike travels less distance on cold days, which is due to the same attribute of lithium powder - its resistance increases in colder temperatures. This means that on hotter days, you'll be able to travel further.

A lithium battery is best stored at cooler conditions, where its internal resistance is lowest, and will stay fully charged for the longest time. Keep your e-bike battery in a cool, dry place.

While batteries are best kept in cool places, they should be at room temperature before charging. Charging a frozen battery can cause damage.

You should take some extra precautions if you know you will not be using your battery for a few months. When a lithium battery is completely charged, the pace at which it self-discharges (goes flat) is fastest, and when it is nearly flat, the rate is slowest. So, if your battery is partially depleted for a long time, it will lose capacity. However, we all know that almost completely draining a battery is a bad idea.

Storing the battery at roughly 80 percent charge is a compromise that decreases capacity loss over time while still preserving the battery. You can get an approximation by riding your e-bike for about 20% of the time or distance it takes to fully charge.

It is then advisable to store the battery in the coldest convenient location feasible and then provide short charges every 5 to 10 weeks, if possible.

It is completely pointless to open the battery compartment of your e-bike in order to inspect and fix the contents. It would be extremely risky to attempt to open a lithium battery!

Lithium powder is extremely combustible and will explode when it comes into touch with oxygen!

You must return your battery for testing and possible repair if you feel it is damaged or has lost its capacity.

If you have any further questions or need clarifications about how to properly handle your battery, contact your manufacturer or consult your owners manual.