Ping 36v 20 ah, 5000 mile review.

You Are An Inspiration To Us All!

Looking forward to the day when I have a eZee or NineContinents or Bafang or Aotema using a Ping 48 volt 20 amp hour or Ping 36 volt 20amp hour or [who knows what other type of battery as long as it has at least 20 amp hours] on the front wheel of my current recumbent or the front or back wheel of a recently purchased used recumbent or the front wheel of my old Peugeot mixte frame going 20 mph or 26 mph or 18 mph while pedaling for 20 miles one-way to work.

I'm so confused. But I am having fun thinking about all the permutations.
 
Or you could try my method, buy stuff with no idea if it's good or not, break it, buy more, break more stuff, eventually ending up with three ebikes on three chemistries. And a severe ebike addiction. Along the way, the stuff that didn't break, does my commute to work. The only thing that worked from the start without problems was the pingbattery. 8) Pretty funny, that a $100 price difference in brushed or brushless motors led me down a $1000 blind alley. Dooh ! I coulda got a brushless motor from the start, and still be riding it. :roll: Soon I'll be riding a cost free battery, but I'll never catch up with what I've spent on motors. Still, even with todays gas prices, I love passing the gas station at sams club on the way home thinking, a few more weeks and I'll need another 10 gallons.
 
dogman said:
Or you could try my method, buy stuff with no idea if it's good or not, break it, buy more, break more stuff, eventually ending up with three ebikes on three chemistries.
Click to expand...
It's a good idea for someone who is handy. I am not handy. I am happy to learn from those who are. And I am more than willing to spend extra on quality products that I believe will be the most trouble free and last a good long time. To me, the reputation of the Ping batteries is worth the extra $100 or $200. A well-designed, well-built electric motor should last for a long, long time. Some last for decades! I'm leaning toward either the eZee or the Nine Continents. Both seem to have more than enough power and seem well built. They both should last a good long time. I like the facts that the geared eZee has a free wheel, does not induce any drag, has plenty of torque, and is lighter than the direct drive motors. The downside is that if and when the planetary gears need to be replaced, it may or may not be easy to find replacements. The Nine Continents is cheaper and comes with the Cycle Analyst which is very cool. The entire web page on ebikes.ca dedicated to the shortcomings of the Crystalyte motors have convinced me that, however popular they may be, a Crystalyte motor is not what I want on my bike.

This is such a great forum. I am deeply indebted to you all for your experience and information.
 
I thought that comment was obviously sarcastic enough to be seen as a joke. When I bought that first kit, all the info I had was the,,, er, optomistic shall we say, statements of the seller. I actually thought the thing would go 20 miles on slas! :lol: :lol: :lol: Later on, I found the forums, and learned about pingbattery. That allowed me to make an informed decision that time. 8) I think the more info we have the better. Ebikes-ca is very unique in thier honest evluation of what the shortcomings of their product is. High Tech Bikes is following the same path, and is emerging as the best source for aotema motors as a result. Since you mention a stable of bikes, and seriously this time, nothing wrong with having a direct drive motor on one, and a gear motor on another eventually. kinda like having a 4 door sedan and a suv in the driveway. Each has it's own niche. Great to have it all when you can afford to. One cool thing is a battery can hop from bike to bike.
 
dogman said:
I thought that comment was obviously sarcastic enough to be seen as a joke.
Click to expand...
No sarcasm was intended, I assure you. Remember, everything is relative. When confronted with the simplest of mechanical tasks on my bike, I become Chief Fumble Thumbs. (Let's see if any Baby Boomers can pinpoint that obscure reference!) Sometimes, it takes me up to an hour just to fix a flat. My bike mechanic pulls off and puts on tires with his bare hands. It drives me insane when I watch him do it! And then, a few times getting the back wheel back onto the bike has driven me to the point of distraction! That's why I want something that will work the first time and be relatively trouble-free. I rely on my bike to get me to work and back.
 
Yeah, exactly how I feel with the electonic parts of the ebike. To me it's boxes with magic inside. Relying on my bike to commute like I do, is one of the reasons I have three now. One is a fun bike, but either of the other two will make the trip. The biggest reliablilty issues with most of the stuff for sale this year is two things. One is the tendency of china to let the customer be the quality controll tester. So with 4 components in them , many kits have something wrong with at least one. So right there is where a superior vendor like ebikes-ca comes in. Some vendors just send a ship to such and such address order out and never see the product, like many ebay vendors do with lots of products. But even good controllers can go poof, so having spares of things can be good if it fits your budget. The other issue is ourselves. We read, such and such 36v controller can handle 48v too, but when we try it, maybe not. So I don't experiment much with my commuter bike, and it has been pretty reliable as long as I treat it reasonably. Last summer I rode in too hot weather for too long a time non stop. Now I know better, and can tell when a motor needs a rest. Also in the category of unreliable because of us, is letting the thing get wet. If you ride in the rain, a sensorless controller(pedal first) is the way to go, and try like heck to keep the throttle and controller dry, all connectors dry, etc.

Nothing is totally reliable, but ho hum setups like my commuter are as close as you get. 36v controller on 36v battery, medium size motor and 20 amp controller that is easy on the battery. It's a set up that is designed to last, and that may be more important than the actual brand. Once you start going to higher voltage for more speed, soldering shunts for more amps, pulling trailers, etc, that is where things get a lot more unreliable.
 
Hello all, I am new to posting here. I have a goldenmotor 500W kit that I have been running for 2 years. I have 12AH SLA batteries, and am very close to buying a ping battery. I bought a cycleanalist this spring and found that my battery is draining to 32 volts under load after about 5 or 6 amp hours. I am using about .5 to .6 amphours per mile. My questions are : Do the numbers sound reasonable? Does a 15 AH ping give 15AH before reaching cutout voltage? I am hoping to use the bike for a 15 mile ride to work, recharge and ride home. Will 15 AH be a big enough battery? Thanks for your comments.
 
I would go for a 20Ah pack instead.
 
When a ping battery is working properly, you should be able to draw more than 14.5 ah out of a 15 ah battery. Some of the other round cell packs would stop sooner.

Most days I use about .8 ah per mile, and need a little less than 15 ah to get home. Other days, with 15 miles of headwind, I barely make it home.
I found my ping version 1 battery a bit sensitive to cold, so this winter I had more than the usual amount of days that I ran out of juice. I have a 36v 20 ah and a 15 mile ride.

If you are buying a 48v 15 ah, then you would have a big enough reserve most of the time. But if you are going for 36v, you'd be better off getting the 20 ah size. The main reason for this is not so much a question of can you make it, as will the battery like it. Any battery that is bigger will have a lower average discharge rate, and lighter depth of discharge. This simply makes the battery last longer. At the prices of lifepo4, for me that is the most important thing.
 
The only issue with the 20, is in the 48v size is does make a rather large package, and carrying it high on a rear rack can be a bit of weight up there. If I ever get a 48v battery I'll ask ping to split it into two pieces. I forgot to mention that my reason for using .8 ah per mile is I ride full throttle all the way, and it's uphill all the way. So when I get to ride uphill , into 30 mph wind, I can use double the amps and maybe run out. Your amp rate may be fine for the 15 ah. But having said that, nothing wrong with having a lot of range, and being able to take the 25 mile route home, or go for long rides on the weekend for fun. In the 36v battery, I'd say go for the 20 for sure, mine is a pretty small light package that fits perfect in a bag made for 3 12 ah sla's.
 
+1 on the 20ah. Sometimes the unexpected happens and It's good to have enough backup power to run limp-home where you practically rely on the battery to get you home (severe rain, broken chain, really strong wind, flat tire you couldn't fix, etc.) Plus with a 20ah, when you hit the magic 1000+ cycles and have 85% of the capacity left, well that puts you right at 17ah, which is still more than that 15ah number your where contemplating just 1000 cycles ago. :p
 
Dogman, the ah number you gave gives me confidence in the numbers I'm seeing with the cycle analyst. I was a little unsure of my figures, I didn't realize just how poorly my sla batteries were performing. I am convinced that the 20 ah is the way to go. Having extra battery to limp home is very appealing, as well as just not stressing the larger battery as much. The idea of having to work very hard to get home (with the old battery) is really keeping me from using the bike as much as I want to. Thanks everyone for the replies.
 
I too am hoping two years from now when I hit the 1000 cycle mark, I still have a 15 ah battery left, with plenty of cycles in it for 10 mile rides on the weekend. But it might get retired sooner, the way the ebikes pile up in my garage. But I'm sooo close to the 3000 mile mark where I figure the battery has paid for itself. Anything past 3000 miles is pure gravy, riding for .33 cents a mile. Once I'm into the free riding, the cost of the ride drops to just the cost of electricity.
 
You say, range-wise, that 48v & 15ah is preferred to 36 v & 20 ah lifepo. that's intersting. I think you got a good deal
with Ping. I'm considering a purchase while the economy is still down, but buying from Asia is risky and buying f/
U.S. is pricey. I have researched lithium generally. The price has skyrocketed since 2003, and Boliva holds alot of the World's reserves. I wonder whether it will be the EV battery of the future because of scarcity. A good technology but scarce.
 
lifepo4 is gonna be the battery of the future, if their is a future after the republicans grind everything to a dead halt and stop treasury from getting us outa this hole that bush put us in.

the thing that is different about the ping battery is the way he uses mylar pouches to hang the electrodes in, whereas with cylindrical cells and prismatic cells the electrodes and separators and cathodic material are wound into a cylinder similar to a jelly roll, and then encased in a solid case. it is not clear yet if these cells need the pressure of being encapsulated in a sealed case to survive for long periods, or if they might have early failure from separation of the electrode/separator and cathodic materials because they are more 'loosely' enclosed. that is why the ping packs are bound up so tight in the duct tape, more than just to protect them from damage.

ping is very reliable and used to be super cheap, headway offers competitive prices and large cylindrical cells capable of 3C output. the last price i saw for 48V20Ah headway pack was $630, 66 cents/Wh.
 
an ebay vendor, volgood, has lifepo's in duct tape, too. My point is that lithium , though it is excellent, is scarce even if recycled. Elec vehicles are still in the minority. Wait till everybody and their mother has an EV. Will there be enough lithium then? This is plain old supply & demand-- Whether it's a neato battery is another issue.
 
I may have written less clearly than I want to . The number of cells in a 15 ah 48v ping and a 20 ah 36v ping is the same. So the range would be similar with either, if ridden at the same speed. A 48v 20 ah battery, would have four more cells in it, and therefore, go furthest. I have found 36v fast enough, but I am a minority, at least on this forum. I do wish I'd bought a 48v 20 ah, simply for the extra range.
 
ok. I understand. The weight is about the same, too. So are prices. 48v 12ah is priced close to 36 & 15. 48 &15 is priced like 36 & 20. How do you measure amps consumed? I have 2 multimeters and have never assumed it was possible. The only way I can tell on my SLA is to use my 36 V 2 amp bulk charger and time it and take note of miles traveled. 2 amps for every hour on my bulk charger.
 
I don't have a meter either, but I do have a killawatt that can measure the power that goes into the battery. Running my ping to the lvc, and then recharging gives me a number to use to calculate with. But there is an assumption that I am getting all 20 ah out of the battery. I calculate using the figure 19 ah for the entire pack. So I could be off some, but not by too much. I get 23 miles out of a full charge, full throttle, some brisk pedaling, and the route includes 500 veritcal feet of climb and descent. So I can't be drawing any more than 1 c or range would be much less, and I belive I get the full amount out of the pack since I don't run out in less than 20 miles. Some of my assumptions are backed up by posts from others with the same stuff who do have a wattsup or cycleanalyst. Most pingbattery users report getting about .5 ah less than the stated ah size. That .5 ah is the amount left in to prevent cell reversal. Others with my motor report amp draw is usually between 15 and 25 amps depending on terrain. Since my calculated rate is right in that zone, I assume I am assuming pretty close to reality. It was interesting to see my calculated kwh based on the charger specs was pretty right on when I put the killawatt on it. So most likely yours is pretty close to it too.

All this stuff is pretty variable anyway, your weight, gearing, how much you pedal, hills, wind,.... Everybody should be sizing thier battery with a pretty big reserve for the windy days. I lost some range when it got cold, and then the seasonal winds turn and blow in my face all the way home when it's cold. Suddenly my big reserve of extra ah was gone baby gone. Now that it's warm and I have a tailwind, I get home on 11 ah some days.
 
There is some odd formula for going into a headwind. It suggests if you try to go faster and faster into the wind, the energy consumption increases exponentionally. It would be wise to go slower and pedal assist. drivers of regular cars
have so much extra power that it goes unnotice, but I'm sure it requires more gas. No doubt headwind biking can be frustrating. It feels like somethings wrong with the bike (eg flat tire, brake pads rubbing, bad motor). Still, your Ping fares much better against wind than SLA
 
Yeah, slowing down would keep the efficiency up, but I hate it below 15 mph. I fixed the problem another way, and got a more efficient motor, and have enough reserve in the winter since then.
 
I've made some posts on your Aotema hightek. My Aotema only use 1 1/2 hrs recharge time to go 4.3 miles. It takes 2 full hrs to recharge on my BD-36. A 1 amp difference? Of course, it's harder to measure amps consumed with my other pulsating/conditioning charger. If you drain a Ping all the way, it will damage lifespan? Or is there a circuit board to prevent
overcharge and overdischarge?
 
On the motors, the same ride that I get 20 miles on with the bd36, I get 23 on the brushless aotema. Speeds are almost identical, the bd a tad faster on the flat, but the brushless more than a tad faster on a hill.

It allways puts more wear on any chemistry battery to discharge more, compared to less, but lifepo4 is very forgiving about that compared to sla, ... UNTILL, you discharge below 2.0 volts per cell. So that is a lot of what the bms does. Each paralell group of cells will have it's own lvc, and if any of them get low, usually set at 2.5v or higher, then the whole pack will shut down. So theoretically you can run the thing down to cutoff frequently without any problems.

But in the real world, sometimes there is a runt cell in the pack somewhere, or one becomes a runt. Then that cell group gets discharged more deeply than the others, and eventually may start to shut off the bms much earlier than normal. So it is allways good to leave some, not stress the pack too hard on every ride, etc. It's just commonsense that anything used moderately lasts longer than something that is run hard.

The other thing the bms does is help balance the pack. I'm still a bit vague about exactly how it does it, but basicly the cells with a high charge will stop charging and let the slow ones catch up. This balancing thing is helpfull to keep the pack from developing runt cells.
 
dogman said:
The other thing the bms does is help balance the pack. I'm still a bit vague about exactly how it does it, but basicly the cells with a high charge will stop charging and let the slow ones catch up. This balancing thing is helpfull to keep the pack from developing runt cells.
Click to expand...

Simply put on a ping BMS the whole battery charges equally until the highest cell reaches a voltage set point where a resistor is switched across that high cell to burn off some of the charging current to just that cell. Since the charger charges faster than the resistor burns off the power, the highest cells voltage continues to rise but at a slower rate. At a second (higher) voltage set point the charger is disconnected from the battery. Meanwhile the resistor(s) is/are still burning off power from the highest cell(s) lowering thier voltage. Once all the high cell voltages drop below a third set point the charger circuit is switched back on by the bms to charge the pack again. This dance continues indefinitely. Since the lower cells are getting full charging current while the BMS has the charger connected and the high cells get lower current (some being diverted to thier companion resistors) the low cells eventually catch up and start heating their resistors too. The closer to balanced the pack becomes the longer the off cycles for the charge current are and the more even the temperatures of all the resistors becomes.

It's a very slow and fairly inefficient way to balance the cells. Slow and ineficient as it is, it is simple and effective at protecting the cells and keeping them well balanced under normal conditions.

Aerowhatt
 
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