Here are a few tips for dealing with your lithium-ion batteries in the cold whatever it’s an electric scooter , electric unicycle, electric skateboard or even just an electric bicycle, these batteries you’re gonna treat all of them the same when it comes to cold-weather stuff and here are our tips for you.
Charging
You should never charge a lithium-ion battery below zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Always wait for the battery to get warm at room temperature, the issue with charging a battery when it’s too cold is that you’ll cause irreversible damage on what’s called lithium plating inside the battery, you shouldn’t really charge fast either, you want to charge as slow as you can always above about 5 degrees C or 41 F.
Discharging
You don’t want to discharge your battery below about negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 20 degrees Celsius and the best way to avoid this if is to start with your battery inside again if I have my battery for my scooter here inside and it’s minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside I can bring it out and I can usually ride around just fine because even though it’s cold outside the battery is starting at a higher temperature and because of the battery’s internal resistance it’s unlikely that the battery’s temperature is actually going to drop below the dangerous level, anytime you’re using a lithium-ion battery it’s going to be creating some of its own heat so it’s okay to use it in those colder temperatures if the battery itself is staying above the bottom cut off and if you’re at all unsure of whether your battery’s staying there you can test it out and use like a laser thermometer or an infrared thermometer and just check your battery temperature through the ride and make sure it’s staying above the bottom cut off.
Charge your battery 100%
This might sound counterintuitive because a lot of people don’t like to charge above 90% or even 80% because they think it can help lengthen the lifetime of their battery and that’s true, the problem is that in the winter when your battery is cold you’re not going to get as good performance and your voltage is going to be dropping below what it normally does so if you start out with an already lower charged battery you’re going to get extra low performance and so it might be worth your while if you need that performance to actually charge up to 100% in winter and if you’re worried about the longevity of your battery you can just try to charge up right before you go out so you’re not leaving your battery at full charge all the time.
Don’t store the battery charged at 100%
A lot of people do this without realising and then they forget about it and they leave it all winter, this is really bad for the battery because it means that the battery’s sitting at full charge for a long time and that’s gonna degrade its lifecycle capacity if you can even discharge it to like 90% full you know just run it around for a few minutes and take that top and a charge off that’s a lot better but ideally you’d want to store it at about 50% charge because 50% charge is an excellent storage voltage and it’s not going to cause long-term damage.
Don’t push it too hard
Don’t put yourself at risk, if it’s icy out there or the conditions aren’t great, consider slowing down or even leaving one of these vehicles at home and finding another way, it’s never worth pushing it if the conditions aren’t safe to ride and make sure you’re there to ride another day!
⚡️Team PET
PET Guide To Electric Scooter Maintenance
Winter Care for Electric Scooters: Storing and Using
