Charging an EBike on the road (1 Viewer)

[JohnnyRoyal]

Good evening
We are setting off on our first European road trip soon. My wife has an electric bike for this trip.
In our MH we don’t have an inverter but do have a leisure battery and a solar panel.
So my question is how do I charge the battery when we are off grid and can’t use EHU?
Can we charge the battery whilst driving?
Thanks for your help
John

 

[Carpmart]

You can get 12v based chargers which up the voltage to the usual 36v that e-bikes use.

If you don’t have an inverter, you will not have anyway to charge I’m afraid.

 

[Lenny HB]

You will need to fit an inverter and it needs to be a decent quality pure sine wave one. If you only have a single leisure battery you will need to fit a second one or charge while driving.

 

[StillGoing]

Good evening
We are setting off on our first European road trip soon. My wife has an electric bike for this trip.
In our MH we don’t have an inverter but do have a leisure battery and a solar panel.
So my question is how do I charge the battery when we are off grid and can’t use EHU?
Can we charge the battery whilst driving?
Thanks for your help
John

What size and type of leisure battery do you have? What size solar panel?

For my eBike I use a Victron inverter (a 12/375 but a 12/250 should be fine) which I use when driving and on solar.

 

[VXman]

An inverter with enough wattage to power the charger. Best do while while driving but maybe able to manage if you have a powerful enough battery backed up by solar. Just keep an eye on battery level.

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[suavecarve]

There are ways of charging your battery on the e bike dependant upon where you are going and what the battery is and what type of cycling you do.

In an ideal world if you have a bosch battery, cycle on disused railway lines and alike and are going to Provence, Ardeche, Languedoc, Germany, Belgium and Holland then with a bit of planning you can be fine.

Otherwise without an inverter it is a bit of an issue

 

[scotjimland]

E-bike chargers are generally draw about 2A .. for an inverter you would need one that can handle 240v X 2A = 480watt .. so 600watt would be adequate ..

the charger will draw 40 A from the leisure battery .. so you may have to upgrade your battery bank and fit a b2b charger

We have two e-bikes and I looked at charging 'on the road' but decided that as many aires and nearly all sites have at least a 6A EHU .. I wouldn't bother..

Also, depending on her e-bike range,( ours can do about 60+ miles on Eco mode).. you may not have to charge up after every cycle outing .. and even if she ran out they can still be pedalled without power.. albeit not see easy, so if you don't have EHU ask her to cycle on the lowest power to maximise the bike's range..

Another alternative, which may work on CLs or other sites with no EHU, if you ask the owner, or warden, they 'may' be happy to let you charge up the battery in their site office or house..some advertise battery charging in the listing ..

 

[jumar]

What we do if we need to charge whilst moving.

Inverter connected to both chargers...our B2B will put out about 30 amp...into the battery.

Whilst stationary...2 solar panels feeding Lithium battery which in turn feeds inverter which has two eBike chargers connected.

This is our tried and tested system which generally gets done daily whilst away in van..

I have tried other methods, but this is now my way to maintaining our eBike batteries.

 

[DangerMousy]

What size battery do you have on the bike, how far do you plan to ride and will it actually need charging? The reason I ask is that we previously had bikes with 400Wh batteries which we mostly used as transport for shopping and sightseeing (so fairly short trips) and found we never got to the stage of actually needing to charge them whilst off grid. We'd make sure they were at 100% when we left a campsite, but they'd last us for days without needing to be charged again. We didn't do long all-day bike trips though, so it really depends on how you're going to use them.

We now have bikes with much smaller batteries that need charging more frequently, and they're just about the only thing we regularly need to charge off-grid (there are a few other things we like to use, but the bikes are the only necessity). We use an Ecoflow Delta to charge them....I costed up getting a decent inverter fitted and even without also upgrading the MH batteries we found that a standalone power pack was much cheaper (and also has the benefit that we can easily take it with us if we change the MH). Note that there will now be lots of people telling you that these power packs are a waste of money and that you should upgrade your MH systems instead....these things are bit marmite but they work for some of us. The battery pack can be charged from the cigarette lighter when travelling (slow), via solar panels, or from the mains when you have EHU.

From a purely cost point of view though, its going to be cheaper to pay for a campsite for a night now and again (or find an aire with EHU), than it is to either buy a power pack or fit an inverter.......you could get 30+ nights on a campsite for the cost of a power pack.

 

[meanders]

Can I just flag up that you must use the proper charger if what we see about battery fires is to be believed. I am fairly certain that a number of these are where batteries are not properly paired to the charger.

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[jumar]

We have just done a 40km eMTB ride....both bikes are now charging from our Lithium leisure battery via an inverter...supported by our Solar panel thats giving me 140w....a second freestanding panel might come into play, but we the riders need recharging first...
I didn't mention on an earlier post that we also have a back up Battery pack..(Bluetti) this little gem supports us well as we only have battery storage for one medium size leisure battery....

 

[jumar]

We have just done a 40km eMTB ride....both bikes are now charging from our Lithium leisure battery via an inverter...supported by our Solar panel thats giving me 140w....a second freestanding panel might come into play, but we the riders need recharging first...
I didn't mention on an earlier post that we also have a back up Battery pack..(Bluetti) this little gem supports us well as we only have battery storage for one medium size leisure battery....

Charged...full, ready for next adventure....
I've just made a rough calculation....if I only used my eBike to visit the shops...go to a bar, have numerous loo visits on a large site...I don't need to charge again until the day after 31st March 2025....however if I want a riding experience again tomorrow that increases my heart rate...inspires and thrills me, brings great pleasure.... I'll be charging again tomorrow for sure...,

 

[jumartoo]

Charged...full, ready for next adventure....
I've just made a rough calculation....if I only used my eBike to visit the shops...go to a bar, have numerous loo visits on a large site...I don't need to charge again until the day after 31st March 2025....however if I want a riding experience again tomorrow that increases my heart rate...inspires and thrills me, brings great pleasure.... I'll be charging again tomorrow for sure...,

But my bike won't need charging

 

[JohnnyRoyal]

Thanks to everyone for your advice. I will have to hope a won’t have to charge the bike too much. Then when we get back I will look at the better options advised for our next trip
Thanks again

 

[jumar]

Just had 43 km MTB route....bikes in Garage, charging for tomorrow's ride only one battery segment used this will take 2 hours I imagine.... beer on table recharging me.....

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[suavecarve]

Thanks to everyone for your advice. I will have to hope a won’t have to charge the bike too much. Then when we get back I will look at the better options advised for our next trip
Thanks again

Let us know where you're going and we can probably advise of local options for free charging.
Definitely pop into a tourist information Centre as they know nearly as much as us

 

[PaddyM]

My new bike is PowerMore ready , a 250w piggy back battery option , clever those Bosch boffins ! My main battery is 750 w so potentially a giga watt e bike !

 

[jumar]

My new bike is PowerMore ready , a 250w piggy back battery option , clever those Bosch boffins ! My main battery is 750 w so potentially a giga watt e bike !

We both are riding with 750w Smart systems having retired (Sold on) our two YT Decoys that carried a 540w battery...
This new larger battery driven units are incredible...so far increasing the range hasn't been considered...but it's there.
One use I've thought about would be, on a longer Multiday ride where the opportunity to charge wasn't available...perhaps getting 3 days riding ... interesting stuff..
Agree what you write about Bosch in general...I love being able to change power settings on my Phone to suit my riding before setting out...Great piece of kit..

 

[Lenny HB]

Just bought a Specialized so much better than the older Bosch Active I had. Only a 70Nm with 710w battery. Power delivery so much smoother than the old Bosch. You can change the power mapping for the different power levels change over, or select power in 10% increments from o 0 to 100%. It's a mullet design appears to make it very manoveable & loving the rear suspension.