Good stuff Fred!

BTW, I find this a rather odd question from a pack supplier that supposedly targets the ebike market where you have already described your vehicle as a "scooter":

What is the discharge and charge current from your typical 48V E-bike ?

China and Taiwan are *lousy* with these sorts of vehicles, many of which share standard components, and I would have thought their discharge characteristics (and standard charge rates for SLA packs) would be well know already. Peculiar...

Regarding the possibility of any group buy (assuming interested parties have confirmed that their standard pack sizes DO FIT in existing battery compartments,) I'll suggest that if a group were to approach a local ebike dealer with expressions of interest and cash down payments in hand, the dealer might "bulk up" any order by adding additional units to the order for their own inventory if this could help reach any unstated threshold for minimum order quantity or price breaks (or at least help spread the shipping costs around, which otherwise can be pretty significant)...

Dealers will already have a list of clients that they sold SLA ebikes to a year or two ago and these clients will be looking to replace their tired SLA packs.

tks
Lock

I just realized I didn't keep you guys posted on my findings! Sorry about that! I did get a response back but it wasn't like I had read it should be.

The warranty is not 3 years and looks like 1 yr only. Also they weren't able to give me a guarantee on the batteries beyond a year so there we have it. Why does this technology have to be so unstable! Bah!

Anywho, sorry for the super late reply.

That link you posted at first... to ebay seller "pingping227"...

Mr.Ping has actually developed a pretty good reputation for his product. Or at least, responding to warranty concerns promptly. His non-ebay site here:
http://www.pingbatter...

While the LiFePO4 cells coming out of China have had diff. specs especially with "C rates" it's more often sloppy assembly and bad bms boards that have been causing grief.

At least Mr.Ping has been shipping replacement cells and bms boards promptly.

With regards to warranty period, as with most electronics I'll guess that any bad bits will fail promptly but that after things have "burned in" for a while and have been trouble-free they will remain so for the expected life (unusual "events" aside!)

I'm still waiting for my Headway cells coming from Texas... The cells themselves are on the shelf there, but the bms is being assembled for me. Headway is known to have used at least four diff. manufacturers for the bms they supply with their assembled packs, and their bms mfgrs have not been 100%...

So at this point the cells are of a known quality, and I am having a world-class bms hand-built for me in TX.

Ya can find cheaper packs w/bms eg Ping, but that's the tradeoff... more of a gamble with warranty problems down the road.

LoC

That link you posted at first... to ebay seller "pingping227"...

Mr.Ping has actually developed a pretty good reputation for his product. Or at least, responding to warranty concerns promptly. His non-ebay site here:
http://www.pingbatter...

While the LiFePO4 cells coming out of China have had diff. specs especially with "C rates" it's more often sloppy assembly and bad bms boards that have been causing grief.

At least Mr.Ping has been shipping replacement cells and bms boards promptly.

With regards to warranty period, as with most electronics I'll guess that any bad bits will fail promptly but that after things have "burned in" for a while and have been trouble-free they will remain so for the expected life (unusual "events" aside!)

I'm still waiting for my Headway cells coming from Texas... The cells themselves are on the shelf there, but the bms is being assembled for me. Headway is known to have used at least four diff. manufacturers for the bms they supply with their assembled packs, and their bms mfgrs have not been 100%...

So at this point the cells are of a known quality, and I am having a world-class bms hand-built for me in TX.

Ya can find cheaper packs w/bms eg Ping, but that's the tradeoff... more of a gamble with warranty problems down the road.

LoC

Anytime Loc. I found ping to be an excellent vendor as well. He def has a good reputation. Are you using Headway top construct the battery and BMS? How pricey is the BMS? Do you have a contact at Headway I could chat about building a battery for the new year? Thanks for the info, very informative.

Hi outkastland

Andy at rechargeablelithiumpower.com buys the bare boards then assembles for sale... here:
http://www.rechargeab...

Ya *can* buy the bare boards yerself direct from Gary plus the components... but this is beyond me (smile)

These boards are commonly referred to as the Gary-Fechter BMS after a couple of the brightest sparks on the Endless Sphere who really put these designs together, with lots of input from the ES community over the last couple of years...
Ya can read all about 2008-2009 design developments (I believe they are up to version 2.4 now) here:
http://endless-sphere...

And my facility with electronics are too rudimentary to assemble the pack for myself, so I have guys to do this for me, but I will be fwd'ing them links that illustrate how these packs are being built (tips and tricks), like this:

http://endless-sphere...

and here:
http://endless-sphere...

Lock

Well, Santa visited yesterday...twice! Once to drop off 16 Headway 10Ah cells and once to deliver the BMS.
Man I was beginning to think I would never get to hold one of these cells in my hands...

Lock

It's good to hear that you finally got your new Lithium batts. Please give us an update on how they perform for you.

Eric

Ken...can you use Lithium batteries in a scooter like your Condor (or my Veloteq SHO)??? I know come Spring time I will need a new battery, but I thought lead acid was the only option for our type of scooter...
angela

Angela you can use Lithium batteries on any E-Bike as long as you match the required voltage that the original Lead Acid battery pack was. So for my Condor or your Veloteq you would need a 48Volt Lithium battery pack of 10AH or higher. You would need to remove your old Lead Acid batteries out of the battery box and put the Lithium battery pack in their place and wire the Lithium battery pack to the battery boxes power outlet port. Then you would have to mount the Lithium battery packs charger port on the battery box. Your original Lead Acid battery charger would be useless to use on the Lithium battery pack. You would need a 48V Lithium battery charger to charge the Lithium battery pack up with. Also having a BMS (Battery Management System) installed between the Lithium battery pack and the battery boxes power outlet port would be recommended. Since Lithium battery packs are lighter and hold their voltage better during the discharge curve you will get better range then you did with you Lead Acid batteries. But do not rely on you battery gauge anymore, it will show almost full power till the last bit of power is used up in the Lithium battery then the power will drop very quickly with virtually no reserve power left, possibly leaving you stranded. Lead Acid batteries have their voltage drop as they are discharged so you pretty well can see when they are almost dead. and Lead Acid batteries have good limp home characteristics. Lithium gives good power to the last then drops its voltage at the end very fast with no real power left or limp home characteristics. So you have to know when to quit riding and charge up your Lithiums on your own without any instrument help.


Kenneth
Edward
Finch

Angela - Watt he said! All true. Ya CAN buy a "gas gauge" though... a little device that tracks your Whs consumed. For example, if you have a 48V 20Ah pack (so 960Wh), ya reset the device and it adds up how many Whs you have consumed on your trip so you can see as your Whs consumed are approaching your limit...

The absolute Gold Standard for these things is the Cycle Analyst, available here:
http://www.ebikes.ca/...

...and I see currently priced at $155 ea plus GST... It can do a whole lot more than just measure Whs consumed, including displaying speed based on wheel RPMs.


One cheaper solution that many use is a Watts Up meter... seen here:
http://www.rcmodels.c...

It doesn't "do" RPMs so doesn't display speed, and there are other fancy things the Cycle Analyst does that the Watts Up does not, but you can see it's priced at only $53.95US on that site, so much cheaper than the CA...

One fun thing about having instrumentation like this aboard is you can observe how your riding style affects consumption. The diff. between fast starts and slow, pedalling from stops, etc. You can learn how to get more distance out of every charge!

Cheers
Lock