When choosing an E-bike, the most important thing you must verify is the range of your ebike as a lot of companies list very high range but real life range is very low. With simple mathematics calculations, range can be easily calculated using the power in watt-hour consumed by motor and power supplied by your battery in Watt hour.
Complete guide: How to calculate range of your ebike and Buy best E-bike for you in India
OMO BikesPower of battery in an E bike / Electric cycle :
Battery is an assembly of lithium ion cells arranged in series and parallel connections to give a desired voltage and current.
It is in fact the most important thing to notice while purchasing an e-bike. A lot of e-bike company just rate there batteries in Watt hour which can be misleading. You need to know the voltage and Ah reading as well.
The power of battery = Voltage rating of battery(volt) x current rating (Ah)
A high voltage battery and low Ah will not run long but will give better power to your motor. On other hand a low voltage and high Ah will provide lower power but last for longer time.
Let's see 3 variation of batteries
A) 36 V 10 mah = 360 watt hour
B) 48 V. 7.5 mah. = 360 watt hour
C) 24 v. 7.5 mah. = 180 watt hours consumed
A and B will perform in similar fashion but B will have higher acceleration but that also means more energy will be consumed during acceleration as the controller transfer different current during acceleration before stabilizing.
One other hand battery C will be slow and won't take you far.
Not only watt hour reading but the brand of lithium ion cells also play a major role in deciding the range of your e bike. With companies like Samsung, LG and Panasonic lithium ion cell, you get higher range and more life cycle as compared to in branded Chinese lithium ion cell.
A lithium ion cell from LG company would be better and have more life as compared to Chinese cell but it will be more expensive as compared to local Chinese unbranded lithium ion cell.
Motor of Electric cycle or Ebike :
While purchasing an Ebike you must know the nominal power rating of your motor. This is actually the energy consumed by your motor in 1 hour. If you need good range, we advice minimum of 250 watt hour motor but if you need more power you can choose higher watt hour motor like 500 Watt hour or 700 Watt hour (as per govt of India rules, only motors upto 250 watt power rating are allowed to be ridden without license & don't need registration. Any motor above 250 needs RTO registration & license).
Now let's calculate the range on OMO E-bike
OMO Electric cycle Battery 36 volt , 13 amp = 36 x 13 = 468 watt hour.
The motor is a 250 watt Brushless DC motor, which means it consumes 250 watt hour energy per hour.
This means this motor can consume energy from battery for 1 hour 53.32 minutes.
If we rotate the wheel on stand using throttle on high mode( consuming maximum energy from battery), the maximum speed of wheel on speedometer can be seen as 33 km/ hour.
So the wheel can rotate at speed of 33 km/hour for 1.872 hours which makes the theoretical range of motor to be almost( 33 x 1.872) 62 kilometers (which most companies claim for their E-bikes).
But this is not the actual range of Ebike. It just denotes how long your motor can run. But we at OMO Bikes don't claim this false range, as we prefer to give you accurate details .
We claim our Ebike range from 40-45 km. Let's see why how.
When this assembly of motor, controller and battery is put on a bicycle and average man/woman of weight upto 80 kg is riding. The maximum speed is 25 km/hour. For which the controller is passing 7 mah stabilized current through a 36 volt battery making it 252 watt hour power supplied to motor.
Now with battery, controller and motor setup in your ebike, the motor can run for almost two house with speed of 25 kmph making range almost 47 km (25 km x 1.872 hours).
This 47 km range is laboratory range(assume constant 25 kmph speed) which again is not the real life range as range of Ebike also depends on a lot more factors like
1) Direction of wind
2) size of tyre and air inside tire
3) riding position
4) how healthy your battery is
5) Weight of rider
6) Road condition
7) how many times you brake & accelerate
8) Going on a flyover or uphill
Considering a lower average speed of 20 kmph instead of 25 kmph means you are riding in cities across India at speed of 20 km average for almost 2 hours making your range to be >40 km which we actually claim
We have tested our bikes in cities with traffic and they have given range upto 36 km while on highway from karnal city Kurukshetra (42 km on highway), rode without any problem and found we still have battery left at the end. That's why we claim out E bike range from 40-45 km.
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