As electric vehicles become widespread, problems keep occurring. What is going on? In fact, most batteries on the market are of qualified quality, so the problems largely come from use and maintenance. If you are careless about charging in particular, battery life will be shortened.

Let us talk about the misunderstandings and wrong practices when charging an electric vehicle:

1. The higher the charger voltage, the better

In practice we find that the industry favors high-voltage chargers, claiming they make the battery charge fuller and run farther. When first used, such a charger does seem to charge fuller than a national-standard one. But that result comes from blindly raising the voltage at the cost of battery life. For the vehicle and battery, long-term over-voltage charging makes the battery swell and its capacity drop rapidly.

Suggestion: for a 12V battery the charging maximum should not exceed 14V; for 24V it should stop at 28V; for 48V it should stop at 56V. Anything higher easily causes problems.

2. Charging every day, or waiting until the low-voltage protection kicks in

For lead-acid batteries one cannot say there is no memory effect at all; it is simply not as obvious as with nickel-cadmium batteries. A lead-acid battery should be recharged when roughly one third of its power remains, and the only reference should be the charge indicator: recharge when the indicator shows one third. Of course, first confirm that your charge indicator is working properly.

Suggestion: choose a charging scheme that fits the battery type, and keep the charging voltage within the safe range.

3. Fast charging with high current

Fast-charging stations are a good product in themselves, but frequent fast charging is not advisable. Batteries made with today's technology do not meet the conditions for high-current fast charging. Fast charging leads to only one result: chemical and physical reactions surge inside the battery, showing up as heating and a swollen case.

Suggestion: use no-name fast-charging stations sparingly, and never allow high-current charging without temperature control. Even for emergency charging, monitor the battery temperature at all times and stop immediately if it rises.

4. Keeping the charger on the vehicle for use anytime

Consumers generally like to carry the charger on the vehicle, and the result is often destructive. Present chargers use switch-mode power supply designs, and long-term vibration can cause cold solder joints between the circuit board and components. If the sampling circuit fails, the charging voltage rises sharply and the battery swells in a short time; in severe cases a fire can break out.

Suggestion: keep the charger in a fixed place and protect it from knocks. Do not carry it on the vehicle; if you must, fully consider the faults that vibration can cause.

5. Chargers with a fan

Fan-equipped chargers occupy nearly 70 percent of the market. A good-quality fan is fine, but a poor fan certainly creates noise. Compared with fanless chargers that rely on natural heat dissipation, fan-equipped chargers fail more easily.

There are two reasons: (1) the limited life of the fan itself; (2) the large amount of dust brought in by the fan accumulates inside the charger, blocking heat dissipation and burning it out.

Suggestion: choose a charger with large heat sinks and natural heat dissipation.

Suggestions for choosing chargers and batteries:

Simple, safe chargers with complete protection functions should be our first choice. Note the following points:

1. Completeness of the protection circuit. Check whether protections against reverse connection, overload, overcurrent, and overvoltage are in place. Every battery has requirements for charging current and voltage; excessive current causes high temperature that makes the battery swell. Overload protection means whether the charger survives a short-term overload; it mainly prevents damage from the surge current when the charger is plugged in before the battery connection.

2. If you buy a fan-cooled charger, choose one that exhausts air rather than sucks it in; an intake-fan design is like buying a vacuum cleaner, and over time the dust inside is enough to block heat dissipation. Natural heat dissipation is recommended.

3. Choose products that meet factory standards with complete certifications. When choosing a battery, prefer a high-quality, good-reputation branded battery, such as a Xupai battery. Xupai batteries are of excellent quality with good service; its sales, customer service, technical support, and repair systems are well established, giving consumers better after-sales service.