Turbo Levo Expert, should I sell?

[boneht]

I have a turbo levo expert 2020 model which has done about 4000km and I love it.

The problem is we are 10000 km apart which makes it kind of hard to ride (I'm currently riding a Trek hybrid but don't say anything )

To make matters worse the Levo is in my daughter's broom cupboard taking up valuable space, the only attention it's getting is to have stuff chucked on it.

My circumstances aren't likely to change for sometime, 4 months at least.

So two questions,does the Levo suffer from being stored unused for a long period and should it be charged periodically? I havent had any reliability issues and put that partly, in my mind, down to regular usage.

Second, would it be wise to sell now (while ebikes are hard to get) and buy another once my circumstances change?

I guess a lot depends on what sort of price I like expect to get?

 

[DtEW]

I have a turbo levo expert 2020 model which has done about 4000km and I love it.

The problem is we are 10000 km apart which makes it kind of hard to ride (I'm currently riding a Trek hybrid but don't say anything )

To make matters worse the Levo is in my daughter's broom cupboard taking up valuable space, the only attention it's getting is to have stuff chucked on it.

My circumstances aren't likely to change for sometime, 4 months at least.

So two questions,does the Levo suffer from being stored unused for a long period and should it be charged periodically? I havent had any reliability issues and put that partly, in my mind, down to regular usage.

Second, would it be wise to sell now (while ebikes are hard to get) and buy another once my circumstances change?

I guess a lot depends on what sort of price I like expect to get?

If you feel like you might want to ride an eMTB again after 4 months, you're probably better-off hanging onto it. You probably won't be able to acquire one easily nor without a premium within the coming year.

Lithium-ion batteries have no memory effect, so they are less-tricky to store. According to this, Li-ion batteries will self-discharge 5% in the first 24 hours, and then 5% each month (AFAIK the Levo's batteries do have safety circuits). If you have your daughter charge it to 80-90% (9 indicator marks), it should be okay to store for 8 months.

 

[salko]

For long term storage (several months) I would charge it to 40-60% ...

 

[boneht]

thanks, so if I get her to check the battery level every month and top it up to 9 bars if it gets to say 2, all will be good.

 

[salko]

Charging the battery above 80% for long term storage it's not good for the battery health ...

 

[DtEW]

For long term storage (several months) I would charge it to 40-60% ...

thanks, so if I get her to check the battery level every month and top it up to 9 bars if it gets to say 2, all will be good.

If she can check it every month, keeping it between 40-60% (5-6 bars) would be optimal. This is assuming she doesn't forget and have long periods where she doesn't check.

The 9 bars (80-90%) recommendation is with the assumption that she was just going to do it once and forget about it. It's decidedly less-optimal for battery health, but it will buy you a lot of time (again, the ~5% monthly self-discharge rate) between checking/charging sessions and still avoid the worst thing for your Li-ion battery: deep discharge (<20%, 2 bars). This one-effort approach should last the whole time until your return, but again... not as good as the checking-more-periodically approach, assuming she is diligent-enough about the latter.

Rule-of-thumb you might want to communicate to her (I'm assuming she's just looking at the TCU on the bike and doesn't have the bike connected via Mission Control) is that you add ~1 bar of charge for every ~20 minutes of charging. This way she can just use the timer on her phone so she doesn't overcharge (because people naturally tend to go do other things instead of waiting for a battery to charge).