Buying the best electric scooter is exciting, but if you’re a beginner, you’ll have a lot to learn, besides how to ride an electric scooter. You’ll also need to learn how to charge electric scooter, and how to monitor the battery life level, and what to expect in terms of power consumption based on terrain type, your weight, and weather conditions.
Here, we’ll focus on the simple steps for charging your new scooter.
Charge It
With the Gotrax Glider electric scooter, charging is pretty straightforward, however, how to charge a scooter can vary from model to model and brand to brand. But here, we’ll cover the basic steps required to charge your battery and what you can expect regarding charge time and performance.
Some manufacturers don’t include the best instructions. In fact, many user’s manuals can be best described as vague.
There are some models that have built-in batteries, so you’ll plug the charger directly into the scooter. But most models these days feature removable batteries, which makes the entire process much easier.
To charge, you’ll remove the battery from the scooter, hook up the charger and plug it directly into the battery. Usually, newer models now come equipped with an LED indicator light. The light will turn red when the battery is very low or totally drained, yellow indicating a charge is needed soon, or green once the battery has been fully charged.
Charging Devices
The charging device styles tend to vary from make and manufacturer. They’re usually available as a two-pronged charger that requires the user to attach a red wire to a positive terminal and an additional black wire to the negative terminal, which should clearly be marked on the battery.
The other type of charging method involves a specific encased charger that’s a basic plug-in and charge device.
Monitoring the Charging Process
As you know by now, the charging light indicator is a multicolor LED that changes from red to green. We recommend keeping a close eye on the indicator light in order to ensure the battery is currently charging and that you unhook the charger promptly once the battery has achieved a full charge.
So, how long does it take to charge an electric scooter’s battery?
On average, charge time can range from three to six hours, however, there are some models out there that require a charge time of up to twelve hours.
Voltmeter
You can also check a battery’s charge status using a twelve-volt voltmeter. However, since most new models of electric scooters now come with an LED light indicator, this may be overkill. Yet, if you’ve charged the battery for several hours and the LED light has not changed from red to yellow or yellow to green there may be an issue with the charger or battery. In cases such as these, you can use a voltmeter to check the battery’s voltage.
Installing the Battery
Once your battery is fully charged you can unhook it from the charger and place it back inside the scooter.
Charging Tips
- Charging a scooter’s battery isn’t the same thing as charging a phone’s battery. With phones, most manufacturers recommend charging the phone only once the battery is completely drained. But with electric scooters, manufacturers recommend charging the battery at every opportunity you can get. This can be even more important if the scooter you have has a short range and you have a long commute.
- Additionally, if you have a scooter that takes forever to charge up, you’ll want to top off the power level whenever possible.
- For short or long trips, charging the battery after each use will help keep the battery healthy as it keeps the chemicals active.
- When it’s time to charge your scooter, make sure you plug the charger directly into the battery before you plug it into the wall outlet. Once the battery is done charging, unplug the charger from the outlet before you unplug it from the battery.
- In order to get the most out of your scooter’s battery, always charge it after every ride.
- Leaving the scooter’s battery partially charged for several days at a time can lower the battery’s power.
- If your scooter is in storage for several months, make sure you store it on a fully charged battery and recharge it once a month.
- Most electric scooter battery chargers are designed to recharge sealed lead-acid batteries. This means that you can use any type of charger that’s approved for SLA battery use, as long as the connector, amperage, and voltage are the same as the charger that originally came with your scooter.
- The standard SLA charger is designed to not charge defective batteries. This is a type of built-in safety feature. If a charger were to charge a defective battery it could cause the battery to overheat or even melt.
- A healthy battery will bounce above their rated voltage level after it is fully discharged. If a battery doesn’t bounce back, then it’s considered worn out or defective.
What Happens if You Use the Wrong Type of Charger?
Some people want to use their scooters for more than one battery cycle per day, so they’ll end up using a charger that has a much higher amp rating than the charger that came with the scooter. These faster rate chargers are usually rated in the three to six-amp power output range and most can recharge a scooter’s battery in as little as two hours. However, using one of these chargers can affect the lifespan of the battery and can even affect the scooter’s runtime.
In order to preserve the life of your scooter battery, whenever possible, use a slow rate charger. If your scooter is driven for more than one battery cycle a day, use a lower powered charger and charge the battery overnight, and save the faster, more powerful charger when you need to charge the battery in a hurry.
Never use a motorcycle or automatic charger for SLA batteries. These chargers are designed to charge wet cell batteries. If you use them on SLA batteries this usually results in permanent damage to the equipment and the battery due to overheating and overcharging.
