I’ve posted several times before about how that Bluetooth low energy connection between Energica motorcycles and smartphone works. Possibly into more detail than anyone asked for after I reverse engineered that connection.

Every Energica that leaves the factory has both GPS and BLE built in. Energica provides an app for Android and iOS that you can find searching for MyEnergica.

The thing that kind a surprised me, but maybe shouldn’t, is that not all data gathered and shared with that connection is displayed in their MyEnergica App. These are the 3 values that Energica didn’t want you to see.

Actual speed

Every Energica owner sooner or later discovers that the speed indication on the dashboard is about 10% too high. So when you ride 100 kph you really only go 90 kph.

Luckily it’s an easy number to correct for in your head once you realise this. But that doesn’t take away it’s rather annoying you have to in the first place.

And it’s also not so cool once you discover that the 200 kph top speed is only 180 kph. Not sure if the same is true still if you get the race kit with 250 kph limit. I know one Belgian owner that replaced his rear sprocket to correct for this.

And yes they do know the correct speed. Both from the GPS on the bike as from the can bus info. It’s really a deviation put in place. Maybe to get more range?

Actual battery reserve

Another example of data that is part of the BLE data exchange but nowhere visualised is the reserve battery capacity in Wh.

Almost every EV company uses numbers on their batteries that aren’t even close to what you can actually consume. Zero for example has a 14.4 kWh battery that in reality is closer to 12.6 kWh. And even that number isn’t always achieved and depends on several conditions.

Energica has a big 21.5 kWh label on the side of the battery. The nominal capacity can be found in the manual and is listed as 18.9 kWh. But again in reality even that number isn’t what you can use yet. I’ve shared before what the numbers are I get. And this is clearly very different depending on several conditions.

You could probably get that number or a very close estimate by running your battery to 0% and then charge it fully with a charger that reports Wh or with an extra measuring device in between. This isn’t the exact number as you will then also measure the capacity lost in heat during the charging process. Plus at 0% your battery isn’t really empty anyway. But it is a good indication.

Even easier is to just check the BLE connection (either RAW data or using my App) since that reports an exact number in Wh. That is what I used to get the numbers on my graph. And it is what goes to 0 when you reach 0% (also confirmed that for you). But again that is a number that Energica includes but never displays.

Battery Temperature

And the third and last number included in the communication but never visualised is the battery temperature. If you own an Energica and ever rode it fast or in warm weather or just charged a few times in a row you’ll understand why that one is hidden.

The Energica battery collects a lot of heat when used hard or charged fast. And it also doesn’t really excell in releasing that heat to the environment. On the dashboard you can see the ambient temperature but the battery temperature is never visualised as an exact number.

All you see on the dash is a battery icon that is either green to indicate everything is OK (< 40 °C) or yellow to indicate you should watch out (> 40 °C). When you really stress it hard you’ll even get a red icon. Oh and there is a blue icon also for when it’s really cold. But since it’s so easy to heat up that one is probably very rare.