Electric Scooter Battery – The Ultimate Guide

Electric scooter battery maintenance

Overview

Your Electric Scooter Battery is the most important part.

Electric scooters usually have lithium-ion batteries. Which are high-performance, low-weight, and much smaller than lead-acid batteries.

Battery technology means that it can provide better efficiency and longer-lasting power than ever before.

All batteries have a life cycle and gradually lose the ability to charge. This means your battery’s life is coming to an end.

You can maximize the life of your electric scooter battery:

Don’t let the battery charge fall to 0%, keep it topped up to at around 90%.

Prevent overcharging from KERS (the scooter’s Kinetic Energy Recovery System, which converts your forward momentum to battery charge under breaking).

For the longest lifespan store your scooter at around 90% charge.

Most Li-Batteries have a lifecycle of over 500 charge cycles. A charge cycle involves taking the battery from 100%-0%-100% full. Keeping it topped up reduces the number of full cycles. ​

The daily operating temperature of the scooter will have an effect on its life.  Extreme temperature conditions affect your battery health.

Use only the official charger that was supplied with your scooter. Electric scooters batteries can be different in size and type. Using chargers from other scooters may lead to overcharging or undercharging. This could then lead to permanent damage to your e-scooter.

Capacity Ratings

Electric Scooter Battery capacity is rated in units of watt-hours (Wh), a measure of energy.

For example, a battery with a 1 Wh rating stores enough energy to supply one watt of power for one hour.

More energy capacity means higher battery watt-hours which means a longer electric scooter range.

An average scooter will have a capacity of around 250 Wh and be able to travel about 10 miles at an average of 15 miles per hour. Extreme performance scooters can have a capacity reaching into the thousands of watt-hours and ranges of up to 60 miles.

C-rate

If you’re doing research on battery charging, you’re likely to encounter C-rate.  C-rate describes how fast the battery is fully charged or discharged. 

For example:

• A C-rate of 1C means the battery is charged in one hour,
• 2C would mean fully charged in 0.5 hours,
• 0.5C would mean fully charged in two hours.

If you fully charged a 100 A·h battery using 100 A current, it would take one hour and the C-rate would be 1C. 

Battery Brands

Individual Li-ion cells in an e-scooter battery pack are made by a handful of different companies.

The highest quality cells are made by LG, Samsung, Panasonic, and Sanyo. These types of cells tend to be found only in battery packs of higher-end scooters.

Budget and commuter electric scooters have battery packs made from Chinese-manufactured cells, which vary in quality.

The difference between scooters with branded cells and generic Chinese ones is a greater guarantee of quality control.

Make sure you are buying a scooter from a reputable manufacturer that is using quality parts and has good quality control measures in place.

Some examples of companies that are likely to have good QC are Pure, Xiaomi and Segway.

Battery Management System

Though Li-ion 18650 cells have amazing benefits, they are less forgiving than other battery technologies and can explode if used incorrectly.

It is for this reason that they are nearly always assembled into battery packs that have a battery management system.

The Electric Scooter Battery management system (BMS) monitors the battery pack and controls charging and discharging. Li-ion batteries are designed to operate between about 2.5 to 4.0 V.

Overcharging or completely discharging can shorten battery life or trigger dangerous thermal runaway conditions. The BMS should prevent overcharging. Many BMS also cut the power before the battery is fully discharged in order to prolong the battery life.       

Some battery management systems will monitor the temperature of the pack and cut off if overheating occurs.

Battery Life

A typical Li-ion battery will be able to handle 500 charge/discharge cycles before diminishing in capacity.  This could be 3000 to 10 000 miles.

Diminish means a noticeable drop of 10 to 20% that will continue to get worse.

Modern Electric Scooter Battery management systems help to prolong the life of the battery and you shouldn’t worry too much about it. 

To stretch the battery life as much as possible, there are some things you can do to exceed 500 cycles:

• Don’t store your scooter fully charged or with the charger plugged in for prolonged periods.

• Don’t store the electric scooter fully discharged. Li-ion batteries degrade when they drop below 2.5 V. store scooters with at least a 50% charge.

• Don’t operate the scooter battery in extreme temperatures below 0 C° / 32 F° or above 45 C° 113 F°.

• Charge your scooter at a lower C-rate, meaning charge the battery at a lower rate relative to its maximum capacity. Charging at a C-rate below 1 is optimal. Some of the high-speed chargers let you control this.

Summary

Look after the Electric Scooter Battery and it will last the useful life of the scooter. Problems are rarely related to batteries if they are looked after

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Frequently Asked Questions