Installed on August 8, the first week saw the new 51Ah pack being put through its paces:
- Normal commuting, every day usage
- Capacity testing, hypermiling
- Quick dash to Austria and back
- Overnight stay and slow TWIKE-style traveling
Let’s see how my TW560-usage for this week looked like in detail:
Drove to Dreifels from my office in Zurich: 35E pack genesis. Very relaxed return home – percentage counts down very, very slowly.
Day at home, some quick trips to Bülach.
Same, same. An additional trip to Eglisau.
How much capacity does my battery have? After this day, we know it’s 17.77kWh!
One day trip to Austria with my oldest daughter, 100% motorway going there. Voltage drops surprisingly far when under full load.
A very slow drive to Austria – emulation of TWIKE long-distance travel. I stay overnight after sampling (and buying) some very, very good distillates during my very own private tasting session. Michelehof has been awarded multiple world spirit awards and by appointment, Albert Büchele opens the distillery for visitors and allows people to buy from his world-class spirit selection direct.
A very interesting drive back home via the Bregenz Forest.
In total, TW560 did 1327km during its first ‘big-battery’-week!
Take-aways for week one:
- Very linear discharge profile
- TW560’s inability to recuperate after a trip-mode full charge lasts only about 10km
- Dreifels controller definitely needs an easy way to switch between both daily and trip charge mode
- Quick charging? When exactly?
- Inverter continues charging at full speed for over 70 minutes after other chargers have stopped – feels like a huge waste of time and formerly was only 7 minutes
- Traveling will be even more relaxed
- Looking forward to driving across Switzerland on one charge…on the motorway!
- I would have raised the pack’s voltage by about 12-16V, driving a TWIKE at 310V isn’t much fun and driving itself would stay dynamic for longer
- My dual external chargers need to be reconfigured to keep on charging until 418V (Don’t know yet if the specs actually allow this)
- Additional charging capacity needs to be added to TW560 to get a full charge down to about 90 mins – currently, at least 210mins
- More and longer motorway trips will have its toll on IGBT’s, connectors and motor -> Joint analysis with Dreifels required to mitigate these risks!
There are certainly many more points, but for now I’m just extremely happy to have the new pack!