5 Steps to Preserve Your Ebike Battery

How you store your battery is important to preserving the life of your battery.  Follow these 5 steps to help extend the life of the battery and keep it well maintained.

Storing your Ebike battery

 Lithium-ion batteries self-discharge, so storing the battery between 40%-50% (approximately 3.8 volts per cell) for long periods of time is critical to the battery. Over discharging the battery while in storage causes irreversible capacity loss or copper shunts to form on your anodes.

Don't store fully charged

Contrary to what many people believe, do NOT store the battery at a full charge over the winter! This can be very hard on the lithium-ion and will more than likely result in issues when it's brought back out. Overcharging your battery will cause your cathodes to decompose over time.

Battery reaches 3 bars

A Lithium-Ion battery will self-discharge about 5% in the first 24 hours after being charged and then an additional 1-2% per month. Once your battery has reached 3 bars on the display (in its resting state, not under motor load) we recommend riding around another, 5 miles or so, to drain the battery a little more before storing it. This should put you in about the ideal voltage per cell for the winter.

Check your battery

It's always good to check on your battery every month while in long-term storage. If possible, slide it into your bike and make sure it still powers on and the battery percentage is where it should be. This can proactively help catch problems on the battery before anything gets any worse!

Long Term Storage

If you're storing your battery for a long time, you will need to top off the cells occasionally if you see the "number of bars" gets too low! Temperatures outside of the ideal range of ~42°F~69°F (5°C-20°C) will reduce the battery storage life as the battery self-discharges. This means you will get fewer miles per ride out of your bike per charge. Lithium-ion batteries can be stored for up to 10 years without having their capacity significantly impacted if properly taken care of!

Remember, if you treat your battery well, it will treat you well in return.  We hope these tips will help you extend the life of your battery.