Bad Range? Settings tweak?

So I just built a lipo street setup and took a test ride today…not pleased

I wired four 100c(peak),5000mah graphene lipos in series to make what I was hoping would be a ludicrous street build with decent range.

I took a test ride today and power delivery was good, but I notice that after about only 1 mile, vesctool said I was at 50%(maybe not the best way to guage, but at least in the ballpark).

Now, it was windy and fairly cold, so I definitely lost some range there, but not 50% worth. I wasn’t going crazy with acceleration or speed.

Specs:

-The aforementioned lipo setup
-Stormcore 60d+
-100mm mbs all terrain wheels
-dual turnigy sk8 6374 192kv motors
-14 :32 pulley setup.
-Daly charge only BMS
-gt2b remote.
-FOC HFI

I feel like I am overlooking something that is causing this God awful range. I want expecting huge range, but definitely better than this.

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I guess the simple things out of the way:

  • Were all batteries at 100% at the start?
  • Were VESC tool voltage cutoffs set properly?
  • Is the Daly BMS for Li-Ion, not LiFePo?
  • These are 3S LiPos correct? I would still expect maybe 10 miles on such a setup
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Batteries were at 100%.It is an LiOn BMS. I set correct cutoffs during setup, but will double check and yeah they are 3s.

I took my enclosure off after that ride and double checked all of my connections and made them a bit more permanent).

It’s a bit chilly, but not windy, and I seem to be getting a bit better range. I’m at 47.5 volts after a smidge over two miles.

Also, coming from riding my mountain board with barreled channel trucks everywhere, it’s weird riding a street setup again. Caliber II’s with 220 boardnamics hangers

Any other suggestions?

~2 miles from 4.2V to 3.96V sounds plausible for the size of battery and weather (that’s around 25-30% usage). Are you able to get the Wh usage or efficiency data from the VESC? That should be a little more accurate in terms of energy usage.

Show your battery and motor current settings. Did you change the “99A” default?

No I didn’t. I was thinking about that, though.

How much would that effect performance/range?

It could be a dealbreaker, especially with those cells. But even just in general, having battery current set high is one of the number one range-killers.

What do you mean by “deal breaker” exactly?

Running cells at a current that’s too high can drastically reduce their energy capacity.

For example, for some hypothetical cell, you may be able to get 10Ah from it at 1A but only 3Ah from it at 10A

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I have a feeling I know what’s going on here.

Ill send the stats later. These are the lipos. Definitely set at 99 amps. I know vesc tool rated the motors at around 137 amps( per, I believe)

YOWOO 2 Packs 11.1V 5000mah Graphene Battery 3S 100C RC Lipo Batteries with EC5 Plug for RC Cars Slash vxl Slash 4x4 vxl E-maxx Brushless Axial e-revo Brushless and Spartan Models Amazon.com

It’s weird that if I’m not gunning it around, that it would pull too many amps and run that inefficiently



As a test, lower Battery Current Max to 15A and raise Battery Current Max Regen to -15A. Change it the same on the other motor. Don’t change anything else. What happens?

@b264 Isn’t battery current max an overall measurement? Guess I was wrong about that haha. so its per motor and needs to be applied to each motor separately?been a minute since I’ve had to set up a new board so I’m blanking .

15A seems really low. wouldn’t that cut into speed an torque a lot?

Not necessarily. There are many ESCs and many different pieces of software. Without further details, this can’t be guaranteed.

Yes, depending on things. If you had 19 motors and a 1kg vehicle with a 1kg load using 15A at 150V per motor, it would be overly excessive. It’s just a current measurement.

Probably not, and maybe-but-probably-not. It would cut into power.

But for troubleshooting and information gathering, you should definitely try it and report back whether the range problem was affected, which seems to be the central problem here.

I listed the specs at the beginning of the post. But yeah, you can’t be expected to know how all the different esc’s/motors work haha

15 was too low. 25 was better, but was missing a bit of power. Will increase until I have the power I want, but still not getting good range even at those low battery amps

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That’s useful information.

I personally would expect to get about 8 - 10 miles (12 - 16km) from that.

Maybe you just need more battery. How would you describe your riding style? Do you use the motors as a ski lift or as an afterburner?

searching this topic I don’t think this has been mentioned yet… have you checked your bearings? if bearings are bad enough I’ve had them cut my range down by up to ~60%

maybe op needs to go on a diet