I noticed this on my way in to work this morning. December was a very busy month for me, and with the ebike having heavy use, I nonetheless had very little time to give it the TLC it deserved. In particular, I fed it no CRC across about 7 weeks and at the end of it the ebike was squeaking like a baby mouse.
My standard trip into work during this period consumed around 35% of the battery charge. This would leave me enough charge to get home and enough to pop down to the shops if I needed to.
Last night I applied CRC for the first time in a while. The result this morning was that the bike rode incredibly freely, with far less squeak, and in addition to that, only took me a 26% charge to get to work!
That is an improvement in battery efficiency (for the same ride, on the same settings) of just under 35%.
While this won’t make much practical difference in how I use the bike, the implications are massive.
It means I could go an extra 10 kms to and from with a well maintained bike for each recharge.
It also means that problems I attribute to the battery may in fact just be not enough oil on the chains.
I’ve always applied CRC in the past more as a chore, rather than something that could actually help me. I didn’t realise that by failing to apply CRC I was making my bike ride a third harder!
But now with ebike batteries, these sorts of minor things are much easier to quantify.
