Congratulations on your new scooter purchase!

Here are some important care and maintenance information and tips to help you get the most out of your new scooter:

Battery Life: (thanks to Currie Technologies for some of the text and illustrations):

In order to ensure the maximum life of your scooter/bike batteries, try to recharge them after every use. Try to avoid draining the battery too much. While this may sometimes be necessary, for average use, try not to drain the battery more than 50%. Doing those (recharge after every use and not draining beyond 50%) will ensure 300 - 400 recharges to your batteries.

If you consistently drain the batteries, say by 80%, you will reduce the lifespan of your batteries considerably, getting only about 100 - 200 charges instead of 300 - 400. (A good guide is to not exceed half of the rated miles per charge. i.e. if the rated miles per charge is 20 miles, try to not go over 10 miles between charges). Another way to extend the life of the batteries is to charge the batteries once a month if you are not using your bike/scooter for extended periods - batteries can discharge very slowly over time, particularly in cold conditions.

Battery life for Currie products:

SLA batteries need to be kept at a full charge when not in use. If you park your scooter for any length of time without a full charge you will damage your battery cells.

The longer a battery sits without a full charge, the more sulfated it becomes, restricting its ability to hold electricity

See our FAQ on Battery Testing for additional information.

The Currie Electro Drive™ reserves the bottom 20% of the battery to prolong its life. Without this system, a completely drained battery would give only 100 re- charges. By using 80% of the battery capacity we increase the number of recharges to 400-500 cycles. If you use half of the available charge, you can get up to 700-800 cycles. As you can see, the battery life is dependent on how often you use it and how deeply you discharge it. Riding 6-10kms 4 to 5 times per week would allow about 2 years of battery life.

Performance: The batteries included with many out-of-the-carton, lower end products, are often only meant to provide you with the bare minimum in battery performance. Most scooter and bike manufacturers are in the business of making bikes or scooters - not batteries. So, in order to keep the prices of their products as low as possible, the batteries are often of lesser quality, particularly with the low-end scooters or bikes.

We highly recommend that, when it comes time to replace the factory supplied batteries, replace with high quality batteries in order to achieve the highest performance from your electric scooter or bike. You should always replace the batteries as a pack! It is a waste of time to put one new battery together with an old one.

Remember: the battery pack is only as good as the weakest battery! All the batteries might be perfectly new and fully operational, but if one bad cell exists, the entire system will be brought down to that level of performance.

Another way to get the power you need, when you really need it (IE getting out of the way of a racing herd of buffalo) is to give the battery a few seconds to "rest". After a few seconds of coasting (if your model is so capable) the battery has time to build back up it's voltage somewhat so that when you hit the throttle for a bust of power, you will feel the extra push in the motor. It's not a dramatically significant effect, but you will notice it. When your batteries are seriously drained, you can kind of hobble home by using short little bursts of throttle rather than trying to maintain a constant drain on the batteries.

Getting the most distance: If you can only think in terms of how many horses are under the hood, electric is not for you. Let's face it, no current technology gives more raw power than the sustained controlled miniature explosions of the combustion engine. But what it lacks in explosive power, it gains in efficiency. Here are a couple of ideas to get the most distance per charge:

1. Acceleration is not our friend! The faster you push to get up to warp speed, the more energy it takes. Accelerate slowly and evenly, getting up to a nice cruising speed a little at a time, and you will get more distance per charge. Getting any mass moving from a still state to one of motion requires the most "juice" and so a little kick to get motion started can save a little bit more (for kick assisted scooters or bikes).

2. Sustained speeds. As much energy as it takes to get us up to speed, maintaining that speed is not nearly as drawing as acceleration is. But it's still requires some energy to defeat the pulling forces of gravity. And the more the mass, the more energy it takes to maintain higher speeds. So, if you want to make it downtown and back, SLOW DOWN. It takes less energy to keep 200 pounds rolling along at 10 miles per hour than it does at 20 miles per hour. The wheel does "deflect" gravity, but it cannot stop it's braking effect on moving objects. So if you want to go farther, go slower.

For more information on batteries visit http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm

Important: now available is the BatteryMINDers brand of de-sulphater which using polls technology can more than double the life of your batteries . Click here to find out more.

Charging: NEVER turn on the bike with the charger connected and live. ALWAYS unplug the charger first, then unplug from the recharging port on the bike, THEN you may switch on your bike or scooter. Sending too much current through the charging port to the controller/motor can result in permanent damage to your scooter. When charging, do the reverse; turn off the power to the bike, plug in the charger to the port on the bike, then plug the charger into the outlet. Almost every charger now days is a "smart" charger, meaning it will stop the flow of electrons to the batteries once a full charge has been achieved. No overcharging, no wasted electricity. Sweet.

Quick Release! Always be sure to have the tip of the quick release leaver pointed towards the rear of the bike/scooter. If they were to face forward and and get caught on something, it would pull the Quick Release into the release position while you are moving - needless to say, that wouldn't be much fun.

Registration: If you have bought a Currie Technologies electric bike/scooter, please be sure to register your product with them at http://www.currietech.com/html/CTI_homepage.html. While your serial number and product information is registered with us, it will help us to give you the best and fastest service if you register with Currie.

Battery Care guide courtesy of Currie Technologies

Click on Image for a 1000 pix wide image.

Quick Setup Guide for Currie Technologies scooters

All bikes or scooters need to be assembled by an adult prior to first use, or by a qualified shop like Scoot On This! LLC.

Shop rates:

Full Service and support after the sale. Authorized Service Center for Currie Technologies Izip and Ezip line of electric bikes and scooters.

We also service most other brands of electric Bikes & Scooters (at our discretion please)

Please Click Here. for our rates and services.

Chrome and Metal Care

Having grown up on the Oregon Coast, I learned at a very early age the detrimental effects of salty coastal air. It wrecks havoc on cars, bikes, and scooters. The coast is nice because the ocean air helps maintain a moderate climate. But it is hard on metal. Any metal.

So here is what you do. First try some paste type of Chrome Polish. Wipe it on, let it dry, then buff it off. If the pitting of the corrosion is too far advanced, you may proceed to tougher tactics: Steel Wool. Whoa, the Super Fine stuff, not what you scrub your pans with. I think it goes by zeros and you want the four zero? Tell the hardware person what you are using it for, and that you want the finest grade of steel wool they have. The hairs of the steel wool will be like the size of human hair or something. Now while it won’t scratch the metal, it could scratch the plastic body parts, so be careful. And be sure to wash the scooter thoroughly after using the steel wool so that none of the little particles of steel wool that break off when you are scrubbing the pitting on the metal will stay behind and leave rust spots (it is iron and will rust very quickly).

Now that you have removed all of the accumulated corrosion, it is important to protect the metal from the process repeating itself. Use a good quality car wax on all the chrome parts and they will not only shine like new, but will have a barrier to keep out the salts in the ocean air. If there are any exposed metal that is not chrome, and is not painted, paint it. Paint it to protect it. If it’s a part that is not easily painted, and is not chrome, get some 3-in-1 oil and smear the oil over the metal parts with your finger. Oil will not protect for as long, so you will need to re-apply any time the metal surface looks dry again.

More care and tips as we get the chance!

Drive safe and have a blast!!