Hey: let's talk about batteries, i'm back in california, so i'm getting a lot of questions. A lot of you guys are asking how to use these 20 cell packs for an e-bike and i've seen a lot of comments where people are saying you can't use them uh. These are too wimpy uh they're, not worth it they're useless and there's some truth to that, but it's also not true. So, let's get into it.

As you know, these are the original e-bike batteries that we were selling at jack 35 right. These are kind of premium. These cells, these contain 40 cells and they are mh1. So these are very, very good cells.

They have 3 3400 milliamp hours and together uh the bms could do about 25 amps, and so that's about 900 watt uh of power, which is pretty much uh capable of running on any any e-bike built right and right. So these are. This is actually a e-bike battery right. The problem with these is that well, there was only a few thousand - maybe ten thousand of these and now they're gone, and so now they trickle in here and there, but they're not widely available these ones.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of these uh and i alone have more than 10 000 of them right currently, and so the problem is that they are smaller. These are 20 cells instead of 40 cells and the cells themselves are a bit smaller. They're 2600 milliamp hours, not 3 400 milliamp hours, like the other one right. So because of that then they're gon na have a less power output and they're gon na have less capacity.

This is uh. Each one of these cells has about 10 watt hours. So 20 of these is 201 hours, but officially they are rated at 187 watt hours right, uh. Also, the bms that it has is a lot smaller, so it can only do about five and a half amps of continuous power.

So that's you know, that's a that's! A bit too small and so yeah this one alone won't run your e-bike, because these were designed really to power, a scooter which scooters have a smaller wheel and a lot of the times. They were uh designed to work in conjunction with an external battery, which is another 20 cell pack. That looks a little bit different than this one, but electrically it's exactly the same, so this in reality was designed to power in a scooter with two of these batteries. And so, if you put two of these batteries together, then you are able to run uh a small.

You know low power, e-bike no problem right, and so i think people just don't get that they. I either haven't explained it correctly or i haven't made a video where i show you how to do that. So in this video, i'm going to show you how to do that. You can run multiples of these in parallel and that's how you increase the capacity and you also increase the power output so that you can run your e-bike without cutting out, because this one once it reaches the five and a half uh amps of continuous use.

It just kind of cuts out, uh and you'll have to restart it again and then eventually comes back up, and then you can keep going right. So let's build a a battery using multiple of these that is capable to run your e-bike setup. Okay, today we're going to build with three of these. Why three? Well, i think that's where the magic numbers at these three would yield about 500 watt hours and they will be able to output continuously 500 watts right, which is pretty good power level to have an e-bike, and the first thing that you'll have to do is wake Them up so you charge them through the to the discharge board or you can charge them to the small charging port on the positive and negative right.
So there's i made a video in several videos now showing them how to wake these up and there's several ways. You could also drill a tiny little hole in this plastic here, so you can have access to that little button right there. You see that right there that's a little reset button, and so you click that and it'll wake up. If you don't want to do that, then you can just apply a 42 volt charge voltage on the black and the red small cables right.

That's the charging port on these. So once you do that, the next thing to do is to shrink wrap them together. So you can make this into a single unit and we're gon na do that we're gon na use this shrink tube. That is a hundred and sixty millimeters across right, and you should be able to find this one at jack35.com cut this next.

I suggest taping them using captain tape. Next, we shrink the wrap using some heat there. We go all right, so this next part is a little challenging, but not really so you end up with three cables. How do you connect that into a single cable that you can connect now to your e-bike? Well, you could buy.

These are parallel cables xt-30s right, so what you can do. Is you connect one two? So you just united two of these into one, and then you end up with two which then you can use the second one of those to then parallel now be careful with these xc30s. These are small enough that you can put them backwards and i've done that and they burn up. So you have to pay close attention so there we go.

So you end up with this. Now this works right. You could use some zip ties here and then zip tie all these together and it will work. You have one xd30 coming out that is capable of 15 amps and it's half a kilowatt hour 501 hours right, but this kind of looks messy.

But it's super simple. Super easy because you could just order these cables on amazon, and you could do this also another way that you can do it. I asked my guys at the shop if we had all the components to make this cable, and this is an xt-30 female right, which is the standard uh, usually with batteries get and then xt30s uh, males connectors, and so these will do this exact same thing right Here we go here, we go and that way now you have a cable. You can zip tie all these together here and these ones here, and you end up with an xt60 which is more capable of current of carrying that current and it's typically a very popular cable that you will find on ebooks and stuff, and that's one way you Could do that now in the future? I am going to design a pcb that goes on there and you'll be able to just connect all these in here and it'll.
Just have a cable coming out that is going to be an xc30 or x90 or whatever right. So it'll have two connectors coming out of this: the charging and the discharging right - and so this is an ongoing thing. I keep getting it wrong. All of these dimensions are just a bit off i'm trying to make it.

So it's super simple for my guys to build these batteries and to connect them and solder them, and you know it's going to be a thing, but it takes a few tries because i guess i don't have a lot of experience doing these right. I'm doing the three one and then we're gon na do a four uh pack, one also as as well as some other custom ones that i'm working on. But this is i'm not ready for these, yet i don't know it's gon na be a few weeks before we finally get all the connectors. These little white ones are not in from china, and everything is kind of delayed right now, with the state of the world away and shipping.

The way it is right, and so that's why these little projects as simple as even you know, one tiny little pcb like this with a few connectors and stuff takes quite a bit of time. I've been out of uh the office for a while, and i'm going to be later on this this week, so this is going to take forever. So that's why i want to make a video and show you guys that this is possible. You could do this right now and you could uh connect this to your battery to your e-bike, and so this is a good size.

That is not too heavy right and it's not going to be too expensive to build this and uh. You know this is structural. It's got, these plastic covers, the cells are not uh exposed and if you haven't built the drill the holes here so then this is kind of watertight right and you could make this watertight by using another one on the edges here and then just making little holes And maybe putting some silicone on the wires here, um yeah you could. You could have this on your e-bike and by the way uh.

This is available in other colors too. If you wanted to order a black one or a yellow one, uh there's a green one. I believe so you have choices when it comes to making this e-bike battery. So that's how you can make these 20 cell packs uh work with your e-bikes all right, so i'm going to include links to the parts that i use here to my web store, but also where i buy stuff.

So in case that i ran out - or you don't want to pay the prices that i talked on to these products, then you can still go and get them. Uh you'll just have to wait a little bit longer because they'll be coming from china and so sort of stuff right. So there you go. I hope this video helps you and all of you guys out there that are asking how to use these uh, affordable batteries.
For an e-bike right, these are available for, like i don't know, that'll be like 75, or something like that for that bike for that uh battery there for that 500 one hour battery, compare that to what's commercially available. Even the chinese ones are over a hundred hundred and fifty three hundred dollars for a comparable battery like that for your e-bike right. So you don't have to pay those prices, because this is diy and you could just build your own right with some some ingenuity and some stuff and then you can. You can have your e-bikes uh on the cheap.

Alright. So thank you for watching this. Video we'll see you guys on the next one bye.

14 thoughts on “Making a 500wh ebike battery on the cheap”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dan Chung says:

    I have 250w motor and controller waiting to get installed on my brompton. I was looking at jehu for a while and I was going to order these scooter batteries. now I'm confident that it will work! I purposely made the connection from the controller to xt60 male from the controller. now with 3 of these batteries parallel them I will have 500wh of fun. Jehu great video! I am local 626 here and work at 909,951. Can I come and buy some batteries from you directly? you are like 15 min from me.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Not copyright Music says:

    Alot of peaple have powerful ebike I use a bafang bbshd moter it's 1000 wats I need a 48 or 52 v

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Doug Salot says:

    How do you charge them when they're sealed up in parallel? And with the BMS currently it takes forever to charge using the "normal" charge port since the charger cycles on and off for some reason.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Bobulele Music says:

    Thanks for the update on these. Also glad to see the update on the website.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars David Arevalo says:

    I’ve been meaning to make a bike since the last video and I’m excited to try it

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jonathan Sperb says:

    You can print the pcb on paper and check de dimensions before sending to manufacturing. Cheap and quick. Just double check if the printing has the correct scale.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Skeptic Fucker says:

    All my packs have separate charge and discharge, can I just parallel the charge lines?

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jonathan Sperb says:

    In order to get more than 5A from those packs you need an activator similar to the ES200 with the correct code.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Swap Time says:

    I tried this as well and still get the packs going into a safe mode from over amping a 500watt motor on a old razor dirtbike. These packs are from the scooter 5.2 a packs you sell. It’s all stock gearing. With a kiddo on it it does ok but with an adult it can go to safe mode.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars David Flores says:

    Hey here from Chicago
    I’ve been waiting for this video so how many ahs are those also how much can we get out of the bms together like that??

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ali Sayed says:

    how about charging do you use the single port, or you need to disconnect and charge each separately ?

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Héctor Tarraza says:

    PLEASE ANSWER ME I’m working in a EV car 3,200 hundred pounds and I want to use those batteries, around 400 V and 400 amp… how many battery of those do I need??????

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Brian says:

    Need to add that to the scooters you sold and get some really great range. 😁

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Huib van der Veur says:

    Its been over a year since i last watched one of your videos man, but they are Still so great!!

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