Birdskowal wrote: 7 Jul 2023, 3:58pmHas anyone else experienced battery failure problems with the Mahle batteries or other Ebike systems?
Would you mind sharing how the batteries died of what were the symptoms of the fault. I have seen three batteries completely dead, no power output on battery, but system powers up when charger is connected. Not sure if this is relevant to your case, but I have found exactly the same problem in all three batteries. Component which costs less than a pound failure on the BMS, which is easy repairable if done immediately after the failure. If the battery is left like this for more than a week, the cells also fail due to deep discharge.
Hi Peter and all other members
Could you share how to replace( diagnose the BMS issues or who can mend. My battery isn’t working temp is reported as minus so hope with info I can repair or get someone to fix?
I'm afraid you may just get lots of posts saying that's the problem with buying bikes with proprietary electrical systems but you may get one or two that really help.
All true enough about what responses to expect from that forum as there is a strong contingent of those who install kits with generic batteries or even build their own, thus avoiding the 'locked in' factor of proprietary system which is a real pain (financially and practically)
I suspect they aren't any less reliable than many other batteries
I am a regular reader of the pedelec and endless sphere forums and I'd say that the Mahle battery problems seem to arise more than other proprietary batteries - that is of course a subjective assessment but I've seen Mahle battery problems raised enough times that I'd not want to chance buying one although as has been said already, there are many happy Mahle owners.
That of course is no comfort to those who already have Mahle problems.
Without my stoker, every trip would only be half a journey
I've got a Bianchi e-impulso with Mahle X35 system.
The bike is kept in an internal garage so never freezes.
It's done about 800 miles, though only switched on and working for less than half of that.
It over-wintered with a charge of about 60%
I usually fully charge it immediately before going for a ride.
I control the motor and monitor the battery state with an Orbea Coachsmart bar mounted remote.
My last couple of rides have seen the battery charge drop from 94% to 78% pretty much in the space of a couple of minutes.
After this initial rapid drop it seems to behave normally.
I've had the bike just over a year and I'm not sure how long the Bianchi or Mahle guarantee lasts.
Is this possibly the beginnings of trouble ? Should I take it back to the dealer to investigate?
Hi. I have a Ribble which is exhibiting these symptoms and suspect the Battery Monitoring System (BMS). I also know two Ribble owners with similar issues. Does anybody have any information on how to access the BMS and what sort of fixes are possible? Presumably you have to remove the battery and part dismantle it or find somebody who can? Any info much appreciated. Thanks
I don't know much about the Mahle setup but maybe parallels with the Gtech ebikes where you have proprietary battery packs with low capacity so each cell is more aggressively discharged and the Gtech battery packs had more early failures and a shorter life because the cells were discharged at such a high discharge rate because there were so few cells. For Gtech it meant excellent profits because there were so few cells in the battery pack it meant a real saving in manufactoring costs and better margin but then the high failure rate probably destroyed their profits and created customer bad will. Cells discharged at such high discharge rates are also more prone to breaking down and leading to fires. However it all depends on how much the battery packs are discharged, some cheap 20" wheel ebikes only have 24V battery packs of around 150-200Wh but the motor only takes sub 200W and perhaps only generate torque of 15Nm or less and the small wheels compensate for lower motor power.
As a rough calculation it probably takes about 10 watts to generate each 1 newton of torque. A typical hub motor ebike of 40Nm probably sustains about 400 watts to generate that and a mid-drive motor around 800 watts to generate 80Nm of torque. Sharing that by 36V gives about 10-11A output for the hub motor and around 20-22A for mid-drive motor. Then you have to work out how many cells are in parallel and for small battery packs that is often only 2 cells at 36V so you are requiring about 5A of output per cell for a hub motor for a small battery pack where as 4 cells in parallel would only be 2.5A and 3 cells somewhere in the middle. You can understand big battery packs last much longer, run cooler and are less likely to lead to fires because the cells get a much easier life.
i had a similar issue with my Orbea Gain - last year when i charged to 100% for a long rude i got the purple flashing light - i followed advice on line and let the battery drain (riding it for 10km with rear light on) - it happened twice but as i never usually need 100% I didn't worry too much. This spring i was planning to do some longer rides and got the same issue but found it hard to clear so was advised to have firmware upgrade. Dealer is 25km away so rode it without power but happily found it came to life 10km from destination - ran it on L2 to drain battery to 90% before i got to dealer. Firmware upgrade done and within minutes i had solid white light and the BMS had written a 454545454 code onto battery effectively bricking it - dealer blamed me for not using bike as clock on app had low km (i ride off line all the time so app doesn't know what I've done) then Mahle said they might help despite just being out of warranty but now it's my fault again (fir following manufacturer instructions?) - I'm faced with a £1000 bill as Mahle bikes are a bear to redo battery evidently. I am tempted to just scrap the bike as how do i trust Mahle - the number of failures is high - my Bosch batteries were used less in that period and are both fine as i followed instructions for low usage. i have a bike room in perfect humidity/temperature ranges - i suspect that some batteries fail early due to poor quality on manufacturing but it just becomes a lottery for customers.
GC-uk1 wrote: 24 Feb 2024, 6:50pm
Hi all, Peter Mar or anyone else who knows how to repair Mahle x35 battery please message me or share details.
I have had a 2nd failure, no obvious reason but after a ride I had solid white light, the battery was at red level when I got home. I couldn’t switch the bike off by iWork so just left it.
When I tried to charge a few hrs later it didn’t flash as expected, all I got was iWork with sold white. The app shows battery at 90% but it’s not been charged!
The battery will show error code 5 or 24 and flashing pink/purple light depending what I do but it won’t start/ power on or run on battery.
If I plug the charger in I get white light and then different error code if I lift wheel and pedal, doing this starts motor but when I stop the charger drops to green so no charge and I get purple flashing on iWork.
I expect the battery is at fault and would like to know if a repair is possible?
Any details/ information/ links/ advice is really appreciated
Graham
This is exactly what mine is doing! Did you manage to find a solution to this any help is appreciated
Thanks Alex
For what it's worth, the battery on my Mahle X35 Ribble CGR Ale has just failed in a similar manner.
It is 18 months old, and thankfully still in warranty. As others have described with their bikes, mine has had low use. I often ride with the electrics switched off, and when I turn it on have the assist at 30-50%, so I don't believe it has been damaged by high drain. I've tried to keep the SoC around 40-80%, although admittedly hadn't turned it on for a few months before it failed.
So, happy to be getting a new battery under warranty, but I'm concerned about the longevity of the new one. I hope that maybe Mahle have corrected the issue that is causing the battery to fail, or are they just waiting for all the warranties to expire so it's not their problem anymore? However they are still selling these systems, so I'm hoping they've fixed the problem
I have a 2021 Orbea Gain with the Mahle X35 system. I have been using it most weeks so it hasn't been left idle and has had no previous issues. After a ride recently, the battery still had a good charge in it, so I put it away for the next ride without recharging it. However, probably the next week, if not sooner, I went to use it and it wouldn't turn on! I made enquiries with a couple of ebike repairers and it seems it needs a new battery pack which includes the BMS and controller! At £800-£900 I am debating whether I want to go ahead with a replacement. I'm thinking I'll just cut my losses and sell it for spares or have the x35 system removed and ride it as a manual bike. If I had the battery pack replaced it could be that I would be spending another £800-£900 in another 3 years.
There's no way I would buy another bike with the Mahle X35 system!
As previously mentioned my wife's Ribble wth X35 failed a while back and I had to replace the battery (£600 plus as it was out of warranty). The whole problem started with me updating the firmware using the Mahle CGU cable, during the update process the bike went into 'safe mode' and wouldn't come out despite the efforts of the dealer and firmware patches supplied by Mahle. The fault also destroyed the MGU cable which I had to send back for a refund! No problems since the replacement which I did myself (it's not too difficult and would cost £100 for bike shop to do).
My own Ribble with X35 has been in storage in the garage since November, I've switched it on occasionally and checked the charge which was around 80%. Temperatures in the garage have probably gone below zero occasionally but I haven't charged the bike when it has been cold. Last week I went to prep the bike for a ride and I plugged in the charger to get it up to full charge and after after a couple of hours I noticed that it hadn't gone past 90% charge (as shown on my PulsarOne display). When I unplugged the charger the bike turned off and now won't switch back on. Dealer says that the battery is dead and will need replacing, it's out of warranty so that's another £600 plus.
Can't express how gutted I am having had two bikes fail in as many years. I've found other forum sites describing exactly the same issues as I'm now having so it's not uncommon. The dealer reckons he's replaced 20 or so X35 batteries in the last couple of years. I don't have much choice so i'll probably replace the battery and if it goes again I'll convert the bike to non-electric.
In my opinion these problems are manufacturing faults in the control circuit boards or battery assembly etc and not batteries deteriorating due to misuse or charging/storing incorrectly. I could accept a battery losing it's efficiency over a long time or over many charging cycles but both mine have failed within a few years and less than 40 charge cycles. Definitely won't be going near Mahle products in the future, I wonder if the newer X20 system is any better?
Sorry I can't be of any help to others with similar problems, in my experience Mahle don't want to know if it's out of warranty (24 months) and finding information about what is causing these failures seems very difficult. The Mahle controllers/firmware etc don't seem to be amicable to 3rd party investigation of faults. I'm told that even with the dealer app you can't do much to interrogate the faults to find out what's happened, the system seems to detect a fault then shuts down and and new battery is required.
[aside]
When I put the new battery (supplied by Mahle via a local dealer) into my wife's bike and linked it with the app It displays it as the wrong bike model although the right make. I've asked Mahle and Ribble about this and both point to the other being at fault!
I feel your frustration and pain with x35, I didn't want to self fit battery as you have no warranty, also had concerns of storage in garage in Scotland over winter. Here's my solution, hope this is ok posting X forum but there don't seem many answers to x35 woes and there must be many bikes out of warranty now https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/thread ... ery.48477/
I would never buy integrated battery again, better to be in control, have the challenge to tweak it and the ability to take batteries indoors. also both my bikes have too much torque, I don't use it, far more than x35, but nice to know it's not being stressed on a normal road ride
One thing I am going to do for next winter when my Mahle bikes will be in storage in a cold, external garage is too fit a thermostatic warming jacket around the battery tube. Amazon sell such things and I'll probably use a thermostatic mains plug to switch them on if the temperature goes below zero.
Probably a bit over the top but I would really like the batteries to last longer than a couple of years!
Aside: After obtaining a new battery for my CGR Ale (£650!) I went about installing it as I'd done for my wife's Al-e Hybrid a year before only to find that the old battery won't slide out because the bottom bracket shell is in the way and the plug won't go through the gap! I didn't have the tools to remove/insert the plastic BB shell (you have to put a new one in) so in the end I took everything down to EcoMove in Bristol and they did the required work for a very reasonable price.
Can I ask where you purchased you Mahle battery from and did it need coding?
Yes I’m in the same boat. Local dealer not interested and no longer sells Mahle bikes due to reliability problems and lack of support.
