Should I recharge daily if i ride less than 10 miles a day?

[MagnumPA]

The manual says recharge after every ride, but I've seen on here that the battery can only take so many recharge cycles (500 ish?) before it dies.   
My daily ride is just over 8 miles, 3 days a week, should I just recharge once a week?  I mostly use the throttle, pedaling from stops and up bigger hills, just enough to use 1 bar on the display when I'm almost home. 

[JimInPT]

The manual says recharge after every ride, but I've seen on here that the battery can only take so many recharge cycles (500 ish?) before it dies.   
My daily ride is just over 8 miles, 3 days a week, should I just recharge once a week?  I mostly use the throttle, pedaling from stops and up bigger hills, just enough to use 1 bar on the display when I'm almost home.

No, don't do that.  I think the number is 800 cycles, BTW.  You need to do an initial balancing as described in the manual the first three or so rides for 12 hours no matter how few the day's miles.  After that, recharge when it gets low - I put it on charge at 1 or 2 bars, sometimes more if I'm expecting a long ride the next time so it's fully ready to go.  As long as you don't let the battery go completely dead very often (or preferably, at all) you 're fine with recharging when needed.  Note that Rad recommends doing the balancing once in a while; I can't remember that interval offhand, but it's not frequent.

As a side note, I checked with Rad and they agreed with my scheme, which is to put it on a 7-hour charge cycle using a countdown timer, no matter how many bars are left, so it doesn't sit on the charger too long and I don't have to babysit it.  7-hour charge cycles are no problem according to them.  I have a power strip to use those opportunities to also charge my extra headlight, supplemental blinking tail light and helmet on the timer at the same time.

[MagnumPA]

I did balance as shown in manual.  I have the charger plugged into a power strip that plugs into a lamp timer set for 3 hours, but the green light usually comes around 2.5 hours.  Is that what you mean by countdown timer, or something else?  I guess I'll try riding all week and see how much I have left on Friday afternoon.  Maybe I need to invest in a decent electrical meter? 

[JimInPT]

I did balance as shown in manual.  I have the charger plugged into a power strip that plugs into a lamp timer set for 3 hours, but the green light usually comes around 2.5 hours.  Is that what you mean by countdown timer, or something else?  I guess I'll try riding all week and see how much I have left on Friday afternoon.  Maybe I need to invest in a decent electrical meter?

Yes, I use a timer like that, selecting the countdown mode.  It remembers the settings in nonvolatile memory, which is handy, so I just push Switch/Countdown/Confirm buttons, no need to reset the time.  I have a couple more of these timers to control a water distiller etc; they're pretty good.
https://amzn.to/3B6BdjD

Three hours won't be long enough to fully recharge it if it's about 3 bars or less when you charge it up, in my experience.  That's why I checked with Rad about using a 7-hour recharge session every time to cover all possibilities.  But unless I have a good reason to recharge at 3-4 bars (like a long ride coming up next), I wait until I hit 2 bars, and try to avoid dropping it all the way to 1 bar, when I put it on the charger.

[Altema]

Agree completely with Jim. I don't bother recharging until it's actually low, and that can mean 3 or 4 rides before I plug in. Exception is when I know the next ride will be extra long, or before a group ride with unknown mileage.

[MagnumPA]

So this was my first week without charging every night; first two days it used 1 bar a day per 8.2 mile round trip, the third day it went from 3 bars to 1 flashing bar and was about 4 mph slower the entire trip.  Does that sound about right? 

[DickB]

For maximum battery longevity, the sweet spot is keeping the charge level between 80% and 40%. Charging to 100% and discharging below 40% will decrease longevity. Doing so once in a while is of little concern. Without a way to limit charge to 80%, I'd charge to 100% after every ride. I've done a fair bit of testing of the Rad battery and meter on my Rover 5. 2 bars is 24% or less remaining capacity - I would not go below that on a regular basis unless you are taking long rides and need to use full battery capacity.

I find it curious that Rad specs 800 charge cycles. The manufacturer's spec sheet for the cells that Rad says is in my Rover 5 battery (Samsung 35E) lists longevity at only 500 cycles, and that is with capacity degraded at that point to only 60% of new.  I think 300 cycles is more real-world, which is what a lot of cell manufacturers specify with 80% capacity of new remaining. That said, at 10 miles per day it will take quite a while to reach even 300 full charge/discharge cycles.

I ride 12 miles per day and charge to 80% after every ride, as I am trying to maximize battery longevity.

[vudude]

I wanted to implement two Rad batteries charged to 80% at all times. RadPowerBikes has no batteries in stock. Time to head in a different direction. Thanks for the Power/Voltage chart, DickB

[Joel52334]

Charging cycles on the RP battery ought to be similar to any LI-battery cycle.  80% to 20%  I'm looking into a much higher AH battery still at 48v.  The person I talked to, get's them drop shipped (for free) directly from China.  He's a personable person, not looking for much overhead.  I'll post here when I get his own review using it on his RW3. He's thinking in the 60mile 80km range. That's about right.  Happy Shipping to all!  JLH

[DickB]

Charging cycles on the RP battery ought to be similar to any LI-battery cycle.  80% to 20%

The Rad charger float voltage is 54.6V, which charges to 100% of the cell capacity. A float voltage of 52V yields 80%.