I thought I would start a thread about peoples experiences with different batteries. I'm going to post my experience and any other person's experience I think would be informative.
Me, I started off with lead and went to a set of PingPings.
1) Everyone knows about lead. Very heavy, likely to be dead and worthless when you come across a used one, short lived and not so cheap if you are more then a casual bike user. The only use I see (for us serious bike users) is if you are going to sell the bike. Put some cheap lead batteries in the bike to sell it, keep the better batteries for another bike.
2) I installed some Ping's in my bike five months ago. Ping is a excellent shop to deal with, the batteries are a better deal then lead do to the longer life, half the weight of lead, more power then lead. The only downside I see is the low C (low discharge rate). This required me to buy more Ah's then I needed, but then again it's nice to have the extra reserve and not drawing the batteries way down should make them last longer.
Deron.
Here is a thread that I found that talks about lead, Ping's and then goes into BMI's.
I definately noticed a speed improvement in several ways. I was at 48V 12AH SLAs and I was averaging about 20mph for my 13.9 mile commute. My top (fresh off the charger speed) was about 25mph but I could only do that for a few miles. I also have this huge hill near the end of my commute and I could barely do 7mph up that hill. This made my commute about 40minutes. The biggest issue was I had to really throttle back to avoid zapping the batteries completely before I got to work. I had to walk the bike up the hill several times pushing >40lbs of lead. That really sucked.
When I went to Ping LIFEPO4, my average speed went up to around 23mph. I could really hold the top end speed of 25-27 with no problem (about 400watts of continous power), but I did get some really warm batteries doing that. I was using about 5.6-6.0AH to get to work each day. Climbing that big hill was done at about 9-10mph. My commutes regularly took about 35minutes. Sometime I'd hit the LVC while climbing the big hill.
Finally, I upgraded to a 48V 10AH BMI pack. That battery is insanely more powerful. Now, I really do hold the throttle wide open all the way and never worry about voltage sag or overheating. The packs a couple pounds heavier than the ping pack (about 22lbs) much much lighther than lead. I average more than 27mph on my commutes now and can make it in 30minutes! My top speed on the flats is about 30mph. Climbing the big hill is now done at full throttle (the controller limits me to 20amps) and at a speed of > 12mph. I've actually seen locals gasp as I fly up the hill :lol: I'm thinking about upgrading to a faster motor because now I use only about 50% of the batteries capacity on my commute. I figure a faster motor could use more power and add even more speed. BTW, anyone got suggestions on a faster more power motor and controller than my currend WE BL-36 that could give more speed at a cost of more current?
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6215&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Deron.
I also went from sla to duct tape lifepo4. Like a lot of folks, I bought an Ebike with a limited use in mind. Soon I wanted to do everything with it, but was stymied by a steep hill and work being 15 miles away. I tried adding another sla, and then carried some nimh drill batteries too, and ended up carrying so much weight that my range got shorter instead of longer.
Lifepo4 opened a new world to me, with it's light weight the bike felt better instantly, and travel time went down since I didn't slow down a bit more every couple miles. With a range of 20 miles, I can get all the way to work, or to about half the town and back. With good timing I can go anywhere since the bus systems severe limitations are easily overcome by the ebike. Hoisting the bike onto the bus bike rack is a whole lot easier with the lifepo4 weighing 25 pounds less than the sla's.
It's very nice to not have to sweat charging up immediately all the time, though mostly I still do anyway. The one drawback I have experienced, is in my climate, I can easily run a motor to death, since the battery goes on and on and on. This is not a problem till it is 100 F or more. Below 85 F, i think the motor could go infinitely without smoking. I am running a 36v 20 ah duct tape battery from Li Ping.
Be the pack leader.
36 volt sla schwinn beach cruiser
36 volt lifepo4 mongoose mtb
24 volt sla + nicad EV Global
anyone has experence wiht Hipower lifepo4 battery?
Hipower lifepo4 battery. www.chinabatteries.net cs2@chinabatteries.net
Here is my experience with LiFe in general.
Anytime I have ever bought something used with a lead acid battery, I was pretty much guaranteed that the battery would be lifeless unable to revive it. I recently bought a used GPS, the owner said that they had not used it for quite some time. It has a internal rechargeable LiFe battery. I expected I would have to replace the battery, but to my surprise, I have been able to recharge the battery and it works fine. The battery had been left in the uncharged state for who knows how long. The GPS was a couple of years old.
Chalk another one up for LiFe, a lead acid battery in the hands of most people is sure to neglected and no good in short amount of time.
Deron.
yeah, life's self discharging rage is extremely low, some good ones are less than 1% per month, this is the reason.
Hipower lifepo4 battery. www.chinabatteries.net cs2@chinabatteries.net
I know an electric motorcycle shop that is using their 30AH, 50AH, and 100AH batteries. They are completely satisfied with what they have gotten so far-not even 1 bad cell yet. They were using Thundersky before and had a lot of problems with dead cells. I am going to eventually build a small electric sports car and will be using the Hipower 100Ah cells to make a battery pack-probably 84 to 96 volts.