Giant xlr ebike chargers unethical?

[Karlhub]

I lost my giant 2018 SX 1+ charger and then I ordered one off of Amazon for $30 surprisingly it came in two days to my house in Cape Town with the extra R300 shipping. then I thought the bikes battery was dead as  it’s been standing for months I know that’s bad for the battery so when I plugged in the charger nothing happened the charger had a light that stayed green which meant not charging then I tested the voltage on the charger and it was all good then I thought to myself my battery is broken  so I took it apart to check for any loose connections then I found out that Giant had connected the ground to the negative wire on the battery so that only the original chargers would work I just resoldered with a negative and negative and positive and positive  and now it works perfectly fine I thought I was gonna have to replace my battery for R14,000 just putting this out here for Any other people struggling with this problem!

[Steady Spin]

I don’t see an ethics problem. 

It is engineered to work a certain way and there will be a good reason for wiring it the way it was. 

Lithium batteries… I will definitely not mess around with wiring. I’ve seen the damage a single 18650 cell can do. 

[MORNE]

Sorry but no. This is fine. 

Theres a + (red)and a - (black) same as an AA battery. That charge cable is as basic as you’ll find. Not to mension ive seen thicker gauge wire used on things that carry a lot less current en for hobby applications.

LiPo’s (the real bad boys) and their chargers even come with balance ports which are basically an extra set of 6 or so cables to make sure every cell is balanced properly. 

Li-ion (18650) on these things use are relatively safe when it comes to charging. They are as dumbass consumer friendly as you can get. Otherwise they’d supply a fireproof bag with your bike lol. Ebikes would weigh lietral kg’s less if they used lithium polymer packs but unfortunately that battery tech is not plug and play for the average numpty. So they cant. 

the biggest threat to them is over discharging….but they should all have a built in low voltage cutoff before a single cell gets to 3.11V or whatever. Thats usually what makes them go bang due to old age. 

Edit: where the OP soldered is just the power connection to the BMS board as can be seen in this pick. The bms is the ,chip’ that protects agsinst over charging/dischardging. Basically the brain of the pack. That bunch of wires on the right in yellow/black is the balance ports to the indv cells. The red plug/tail is power out (to bike). The round thing is basically just what gets power to it from the charger/wall. (Power in) . Its that shape most probably so you cant accidentally connect things up the wrong way and melt it…(the battery pack is fully capable of that)

You could swop that out for some high AMP gold plated Deans plugs even if you wanted. Even more hardcore is to hardwire everything internslly since every plug/switch is a loss of efficiency 🤪. But thats a whole new bag of dodgy fun.

 

Edited May 28, 2022 by MORNE