I've now ridden my new Vectrix around enough to get down to four bars and the bike's top speed dropped to something like 10 mph. I tooled around for a little while longer, but since I live on some reasonably steep hills wanted to make sure I didn't wind up having to push the bike uphill. I went ahead and recharged it after it got to something like 3 bars.
My question is how low do I need to take the battery to qualify as one of the deep charges, and are there significant advantages to taking it down to one or two bars? Basically, how much should be be draining the battery during this break-in period?
Thanks,
-Rontivo
It depends, If you top speed truly drops so low to 10mph then you might be discharging the battery too qquickly.
Personally I found taking the battery down to atleast zero bars, and then more so until the battery light comes on for five seconds.
However it seems that each bike has its own battery qwerks caused by,perhaps riding style, load, terrian, and even battery quality differences.
Luckily, there are about three different forums that will go over these questions.
SEE 'how to best break in a Vectrix' and 'Part 3 Vectux' -the saga, near bottom of page.
I'm onto my second 'deep discharge' cycle (I'm not doing them sequentially). and in addition to 0 bars, I look for the red warning -battery fault- tell-tale when the bike is either moving, or accelerating. Having used and initialised many NiMh batteries in the past (usually mobiles) this conditioning process is VITAL to be done correctly to ensure the capacity is maximised. On delivery, I was lucky to get 30 miles from it, these are REAL miles, not the software estimates. Each deep discharge seems to bring the 'gift' of a further 10 miles or so. I'm using the ideal of 1 DD per week, with normal top ups on the other 6 days. Yes, I've had to 'push' the bike home, but the trick is to be under a mile from it, and whilst walking alongside use the throttle as this means the bike is propelling itself and all you do is steer, this really takes it down to zero, and ready for a refreshing belter of 240v!
- Raymond