Charging Your Electric City Cycle

Charging Electric Bicycles

All electric bicycles come with an off-board charger that resembles the charger that comes with a laptop computer. The charger plugs into any regular household outlet (110V) and converts the electric current to the voltage appropriate for the battery supplied with the vehicle. Charging times vary, but 3 - 4 hours should be sufficient to charge the lithium batteries with which most e-bikes are equipped. 

Most, but not all, electric bicycles are equipped with removable batteries. In this case, simply remove the battery from the vehicle and move it to a convenient location for recharging.  If you own an electric bicycle that has batteries that can't be easily removed, you will need to bring the whole vehicle to within 8 feet or so of an electrical outlet. A garage is a particularly good option in this case because you can keep the charger out of the weather.

Charging Scooters

The EVT scooters come with a smart, off-board battery-charging system. This lightweight device converts regular 110V household current to the low-voltage DC current needed to charge the batteries. For scooters with standard lead-acid batteries, charge times are substantial, roughly 6 - 8 hours. The charging system conveniently turns itself off when the batteries are fully charged, although the cooling fans will continue to operate. Scooters equipped with lithium batteries recharge much faster, expect 3 - 4 hours to re-charge.

Charging Low-Speed Electric Cars and Trucks

The Miles cars and trucks sold by Electric City Cars come with on-board charging systems that accept standard 110V household current. Charge time will depend on how much the charge in the battery has been depleted. But lead acid batteries are relatively slow to recharge. Miles Electric Vehicles estimates that if your ZX40S batteries are 50% depleted, returning to a full charge will take 4 – 6 hours. Of course, overnight charging is the best option for the environment, because the electric grid has excess power capacity at night and the marginal cost to the system of additional load is close to zero.

Fast Charging

Electric City Cars offers a fast charging system that can substantially reduce charge times by increasing the charger power output from the standard 1 kW of the on-board systems to 10 kW, reducing the total charging time to 30 minutes. The system includes a commercial grade charging station that will require 240 Volt service. Each vehicle using the charging station must be equipped with a special 100 Amp receptacle.

Solar Charging

For pure, zero-emission transportation, Electric City Cars offers a solar charging system. Alpha Energy, an affiliate of Bravo Electric Vehicles, offers an inverter to that will allow scooter batteries to be charged with electricity from photovoltaic panels. Solar panel kits are also available from Alpha Energy.