Originally published at: Generic e-bike chargers deemed dangerous - Boing Boing
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Yeah, finding replacement (or supplemental) chargers for ebikes can be frustrating. My spouse’s Voya E+ 3 eBike is a (relatively) inexpensive option (~ $1000), but finding a spare charger for it was a frustrating process. Eventually our bike store was able to order a compatible one from the manufacturer, but the charger alone (not including the battery or the bike) ran us an additional $250.
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I thought this was common sense for things with large batteries? This is why you don’t just use whatever charger for laptops and other power hungry devices, unless you like fires i guess.
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Unless this finding by the CPSC is BS, it implies that the charging protection circuit for these things is in the charger and not on the eBike itself where the battery is. If so, that would be a design feature that makes no sense to me.
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1000% this.
Somewhere someone is saving, like, $1, tops by not making the battery smart enough to safely charge itself, or not, when plugged in. How many laptops do you see catching fire when left plugged in overnight? Zero, almost. Why should bike batteries be different?
Should be mandatory on from the UL type organizations of the world and idk why it’s not. The tech is certainly there.
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In laptops, the battery charger is in the laptop itself. Not only that but nearly all laptops have run on 19 - 20V for over two decades now. For a bike battery it is something of a hybrid as to the charging. You have a cheap “battery management system” (BMS) in the battery itself and this handles some of the charging functions but the “charger” is more than just a simple power supply like you use for a laptop (although still somewhat simple, in that it is generally only a constant current power supply with a low amperage cutoff, while you can get much more complex chargers but need more access to the individual cells). On top of that there are lots of different battery voltages used in ebikes so you must have a charger with an appropriate voltage for your battery otherwise, yes, you can start fires. Ideally the BMS will disconnect the battery from the charger if you use the wrong voltage but it’s not guaranteed and I don’t really want to put a 58.8V charger (one of the most common voltages for ebikes) on a battery that requires 25.2V and hope that the BMS deals with it properly.
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I have a friend with a VanMoof ebike and they (the manufacturer) don’t recommend leaving it on its own charger overnight. Not any rando charger but the one that ships with the bike. Same goes for a tennis ball machine another friend owns. Inexcusable.
Consumer grade tech needs to be idiot-proof.
“Overnight” is only one workflow that is a subset of, “left unattended for x hours” If a product cannot be left safely, then it should have some automatic shut-off to stay within parameters.
“Don’t leave the e-bike charging overnight” is just not a usable design constraint given consumer behavior. Something like “don’t leave your car running in the garage overnight” is reasonable, but this is not that.
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