kiltedcelt
100 W
When I bought my Bafang BBSHD for my cargo bike it came with the C965 display which I quickly learned does not register proper battery life for 52v batteries. I now have a Bafang DPC18 display which does in fact properly register the voltage. Since installing the new display with a fully 100 percent charged battery I've been riding around using the bike for work and generally keeping an eye on the battery level and mileage to try to get some sense of how much range I can get using this setup. Back when I used this battery on a different bike with a hub motor I was able to get over 90 miles of range with the battery starting out at a 100 percent charge (rather than an 80 percent charge). Now, with the BBSHD I'm having to readjust my assessment of what sort of range I can expect with this battery being used in a mid-drive setup. So far I have over 60 miles on the odometer and the battery is about 50-something percent right now. So a couple questions occurred to me -
1. Back when I had a Cycle Analyst you had to input the voltage of the battery, number of strings, and battery chemistry seemingly to get the most accurate information from the display on battery level, watt hours used, etc. On the Bafang display there doesn't seem to be any way to enter this info and the display basically sees "Oh, you have a 52v battery fully charged to 58v let's start there." Is it not necessary for the display to know anything more specific about the battery - simply the input voltage? I'm guessing that with a Bafang motor and display you don't need to know that extra stuff that the CA required, and you'll still get pretty accurate measurements of the battery's state of charge/discharge as long as the display is capable of recognizing a 52v battery, which the DPC18 can.
2. This goes back to that old - "How to get the most life from your battery" question. I've seen it hashed over many times in many different threads, and I think most of the time from here on out I'll be charging to 80 percent to make sure to get the most recharge cycles. However, I do need the bike occasionally for VERY long rides where I might have 60 or more miles, possibly even close to 100 miles round trip. In those instances where I anticipate a MUCH longer potential round trip distance I'll fully charge to 100 percent which I figure gets me maximum range and also ticks the box of occasionally fully charging the battery to make sure it gets properly balanced. My question though is should I just keep riding until I'm getting close to that 20 percent level before charging? I obviously don't want to run it right down to the low voltage cutoff where the system just cuts power to save the battery, but ideally I'd still like to run as low as possible before recharging just to make sure I'm getting the max amount of range before I actually NEED to recharge. Suggestions?
Anyway, so far I'm really liking this system. I think this huge EM3EV battery I bought a few years back is giving me the practical range I need, and the Bafang BBSHD seems to be a more efficient motor in terms of battery usage than the Mac geared hub motor I used to have. When I had the Mac motor on a Surly Troll I used as a commuter I think I was actually getting slightly less battery life than when I had the Mac motor installed on the Yuba Mundo I used to have. I'm sure there were some settings I could've played with in the CA to get a better economical power output, but for the most part it seemed like the Mac/CA was inherently less efficient somehow than the same battery but coupled with the BBSHD and the DPC18 display.
1. Back when I had a Cycle Analyst you had to input the voltage of the battery, number of strings, and battery chemistry seemingly to get the most accurate information from the display on battery level, watt hours used, etc. On the Bafang display there doesn't seem to be any way to enter this info and the display basically sees "Oh, you have a 52v battery fully charged to 58v let's start there." Is it not necessary for the display to know anything more specific about the battery - simply the input voltage? I'm guessing that with a Bafang motor and display you don't need to know that extra stuff that the CA required, and you'll still get pretty accurate measurements of the battery's state of charge/discharge as long as the display is capable of recognizing a 52v battery, which the DPC18 can.
2. This goes back to that old - "How to get the most life from your battery" question. I've seen it hashed over many times in many different threads, and I think most of the time from here on out I'll be charging to 80 percent to make sure to get the most recharge cycles. However, I do need the bike occasionally for VERY long rides where I might have 60 or more miles, possibly even close to 100 miles round trip. In those instances where I anticipate a MUCH longer potential round trip distance I'll fully charge to 100 percent which I figure gets me maximum range and also ticks the box of occasionally fully charging the battery to make sure it gets properly balanced. My question though is should I just keep riding until I'm getting close to that 20 percent level before charging? I obviously don't want to run it right down to the low voltage cutoff where the system just cuts power to save the battery, but ideally I'd still like to run as low as possible before recharging just to make sure I'm getting the max amount of range before I actually NEED to recharge. Suggestions?
Anyway, so far I'm really liking this system. I think this huge EM3EV battery I bought a few years back is giving me the practical range I need, and the Bafang BBSHD seems to be a more efficient motor in terms of battery usage than the Mac geared hub motor I used to have. When I had the Mac motor on a Surly Troll I used as a commuter I think I was actually getting slightly less battery life than when I had the Mac motor installed on the Yuba Mundo I used to have. I'm sure there were some settings I could've played with in the CA to get a better economical power output, but for the most part it seemed like the Mac/CA was inherently less efficient somehow than the same battery but coupled with the BBSHD and the DPC18 display.