Did my Energica battery degrade in 2 years and 25.000 km and if so by how much?

When I bought the bike new in may 2021 it had a usable capacity of 17.400 Wh when charged in ideal conditions. That is a full balanced charge with a battery temperature of around 25 °C.

Fast forward to today or 2 years later and ~25.000 km added to the odometer I measured 16.250 Wh in the same conditions. So it looks like my total capacity dropped by around -7 %. To be fair the below graph reveals that optimal range is reached for a temperature range from 20 to 35 °C.

Two things come to mind when I “discovered” this. First of all the battery warranty states that you should at least still have 80% capacity left after 1.200 cycles. 1.200 cycles when you get 200 km per cycle would result in 240.000 km on the clock. A distance I’ve never achieved on any motorcycle. My personal record is 140.000 km. So I honestly don’t expect to ever se a remaining capacity below 80%.

Another thought is that my charging setup remained the same. I still charge at home on the same single phase AC charger. However the bike got several firmware updates since then. If I recall correctly I received the bike with firmware revision .38. Today my bike is on revision .41.

And I know for sure that they do change things like that in firmware revisions. I’ve experienced in the past that the regen levels on my bike changed for example. I’ve also heard from other users with older bikes that the maximum DC charge level was reduced after an update. So who knows, maybe at some point they decided they should limit the usable capacity for whatever reason.

Still it could be possible. After all this is a battery that isn’t temperature controlled. Even if it lost 7% that isn’t such a big issue. I’ve seen graphs from Tesla electric cars that show how range drops most the first 50.000 km, up to 10%, and after that goes down in a linear fashion but luckily not that steep.

Just so you know, I rarely charge at home for less than the full 100% capacity. So when I don’t use the bike for 3 days it stays in my garage fully charged. I can’t say for sure if this is a bad thing or not. Only when I know I won’t be riding for at least a week I make sure to have it stored at 80%. I’ve never used the storage mode.

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