Battery conditioning
Jim Robinson
would take half a dozen deep discharge / recharge cycles before the
batteries hit their full stride. I rode home (about 6 miles) and
plugged it in, so no deep cycle there. I've started scootering the 14
mile round trip to work most days (leaving the bicycle in the garage.)
I forgot to set the trip odometer the first time, so I'll guess it
took 2 round trips or about 28 miles to bring the battery down to a
couple of bars. That night the recharge was compromised by a tripped
breaker (turns out the outlet I want to use in my garage is on a weird
circuit that runs all over the house, including an electric heater in
my room, oops.) That gave me only about about half charge so I
recharged again that night.
First full charge after deep discharge and trip odometer reset got me
33 miles and the battery was flat. The red battery light came on
intermittently and the scooter would move, but oh so slowly.
Fortunately I'd seen it coming so my last couple miles was all
downhill on slow traffic streets to my house.
Second full charge after deep discharge showed 52 mile range to start,
but that's also falling off faster than the trip odometer is climbing.
I'll follow up on this as the charge / discharge progesses.
Jim Robinson
27.3 miles on trip and 7 miles est remaining.
Third full charge started with 51 miles est.
Jim Robinson
(thanks, Luscious Garage!) so I've sort of lost track. I started this
morning with a full charge and reset the trip odo. I tried riding more
'gently' and so far I'm still around 50 (meaning that the trip meter
shows 7 miles and the estimated range shows 43 miles.) I'm going to
try to run the batter down as far as I can without getting stranded
before plugging in again.
Jim Robinson
with deep discharge and finding out what happens when you suck the
battery dry. The estimated range still seems optimistic, starts out at
51 and then falls a bit faster than the trip odometer goes up. I think
I'd probably get around 40 if I were to run it all the way out. This
works just fine for me, I don't have anything I'm scooting to that
would keep me out past 40 miles before I was home. I plan to add a
more convenient circuit in my garage and put a timer on it so I can
just park and plug and let the timer power up when PG&E is giving me
their best rate.
Jim Robinson
Sunday night I'd only tooled around about 10 miles when I plugged it
in. Seemed to charge normally and seemed to be done Monday morning.
But it only had about 80% charge, 41 mile estimated range and a couple
bars low.
Monday night I plugged in, again seemed to do the normal charge thing.
Unplugged it this morning (nothing was still running) and again had
about 42 mile est range and a couple bars low.
Waiting to hear back from BMC.
andrew.f.eaton
drain the battery until the battery light comes on for five second or
so, the range and battery life read zero, and your top speed is below
30 Km/Hr. it's a bit of a pain to sometimes have to push this heavy
thing back to the plug (especially if there is traffic around, believe
me, i've done it), but it's the only way to truly reset the gauges and
for the new software to work to its potential.
Also, to get back to you about your original e-mail, there's two
things i didn't address; the number next to the letters (in the
middle, when the ODO says: CC, CP, etc), that is the battery capacity,
and the number above the temperature (on the left) is the current
battery amount, when these two numbers match (usually at 150-153),
it's yet another way to see if the battery's fully charged.
Lastly, the charger is automatically on a 'timer' of sorts, whether
it's full or not, the bike will shut off after 5 hours. now, when it
was tested here in MA the estimated cost of charging was usually
between 50 and 80 cents per charge, roughly 1 to 2 cents per mile,
knowing how much more everything costs in CA (at least in SoCal, as my
experience has taught me) you can estimate it between 2 and 4 cents
per mile.
if you still have the problem of it charging to 80% please let me
know, and i will see if i can, personally, get out there and see
what's going on, that is, if BMC can't help you.
Jim Robinson
I'll try running it flat again. I had pretty good luck the first time
I did that taking advantage of San Francisco's famed topography to
more or less coast home. BMC suggests I bring it in next week when I
can leave it for a couple of days, so maybe this will save me that.
I've also added the additional info about charging to the
http://groups.google.com/group/vectrix/web/charging page. Feel free to
edit that page (if Google lets you) or send me any changes you'd like
made and I'll do it.
Jim Robinson
until it stayed on solid and then I got a bonus display:
"buSULt" on the trip odometer.
Overnight charge ended with all bars and est range of 52 miles. Lost a
mile to the headlight before going anywhere, and now I'm back to
looking like just under 40 miles before zeroing out est range. I'll
take it in to BMC and have them look at my software versions and
change out any tired bits that need changing.
Jim Robinson
charges not so much. 80% charge from about 50% overnight. Then 60%
from about 60% (!!). Dropped the scoot off at BMC (my dealer)
yesterday so they could have a look at it. I'll update with their
findings when I get them.
Jim Robinson
Saturday. Couple of partial charges and all seems to be working as
expected. Hurray! I notice that it now takes a bit longer to
calculate Est Range at startup; that number used to just pop right up.
Also, Est Range seems to be a bit less optimistic (or the range is
better, not sure yet) than before. By which I mean, the trip odo
clocks up more nearly as fast as Est Range clocks down than it did
before, I think.
Sure would be nice to have some sort of log browser so I wouldn't feel
so lame for not taking better notes.