Tips for Maintaining your Electric Scooter
When’s the last time you check your brakes on your electric scooter? Do you leave the battery discharged for weeks at a time? Electric scooters need maintenance and we’ve seen our fair share of electric scooters in our electric scooter repair centre that have been neglected leading to expensive repairs.
Proper maintenance of your electric scooter and its parts are key for a prolonging your scooters life cycle. Simple things like never leaving your battery dead for long periods of time and keeping your tyres inflated can save you costs on replacements. In this article we provide some useful information on how to maintain your electric scooter, and some simple tips to make sure your e-scooter is performing at its best.
Battery
The lithium Ion (Li-ion) batteries in electric scooters have great energy density, meaning they can store energy for long periods of time, however, if mismanaged their charging capacity can diminish.
Want to learn how lithium ion batteries work? Click here.
Leaving your electric scooter fully discharged (zero battery) for sustained periods will degrade your batteries. When fully discharged for long periods of time the battery management system (BMS) can prevent energy from reaching battery cells as it believes they are defective. In these instances you may not be able to charge them at all and will require either a reconfigured BMS or a new battery.
When you leave a battery plugged in for too long past a full charge it can have similar negative effects. Charging cycles over time burn out the battery, and the longer you have a charger plugged in, the more time comes off its life. Most branded chargers provide overcharge protection which cuts off the power to the electric scooter when at the required levels.
The ideal way to manage charging your electric scooter battery is to charge it to full capacity and remove the charger when full if you use your scooter regularly. If you’re going to leave your scooter in storage for a while let your battery run down to 50%. This leaves ample energy in the battery so the cells don’t become defective. Proper maintenance should allow the battery to last for 500+ charging cycles or close to 2 years before it diminishes (depending on the spec of your battery).
Tyres
The maintenance of your tyres is an important part of owning an electric scooter. Poor management of your tyres can lead to punctures and/or damage to secondary parts such as electronic components and associated connections.
Pneumatic (air filled) tyres provide shock absorption on uneven surfaces and ensure a smooth enjoyable ride. Correctly inflated tyres also allow for optimum performance of your battery and motor, and provide effective grip on all types of road surfaces. A good set of tyres correctly inflated to 50 PSI (pounds per square inch) not only optimises performance but can also prevent punctures from debris such as glass. The PSI can drop from day to day use or by leaving your scooter idle for long periods of time. To combat this ensure that you are routinely maintaining tyre pressure with a bicycle pump or Xiaomi Mi Portable Air Pump which inflates your tyres at a click of a button.
Even with the best maintenance routines, punctures are part of an e-scooter user’s life. There will be instances where out of sheer misfortune a tyre will be punctured by some debris. If you rely heavily on your electric scooter and are worried about getting punctures, semi-solid honeycomb tyres are puncture-proof and the honeycomb design gives more flexibility than a fully solid tyre. They don’t provide as smooth a ride as the pneumatic tyres but they do insure against punctures forever more.
General Cleaning
In our experience keeping your electric scooter clean can avoid problems with brake systems, wheel bearings, screws and bolts. Dust and debris can cease up the brake pads on an electric scooter which can be dangerous. The performance of your wheel bearings can be diminished with rust. Even basic tasks such as removing the base of the electric scooter can become a task if the screws are rusted and become lodged in the base of the e-scooter. Clean your electric scooter with a cloth and try not to let debris build up under your e-scooter.
Final Notes
Whether you’re thinking about buying an electric scooter or already have one, these tips can better prepare you for maintaining your electric scooter. At LOCO Scooters we value your electric scooter experience, as such we provide a two year warranty on all our electric scooters and carry out warranty repairs in our dedicated repair centre. We keep stock of spare parts on a number of models which allows us to carry out repairs at quick turnaround times.
If you’re looking for an electric scooter that requires very little maintenance, has a 65km battery and is one of the best electric scooters Ireland has to offer at the moment, check out the Segway Ninebot Max G30 P. It’s truly an excellent electric scooter.
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