Review of Range Extender Battery for Specialized SL Ebikes

By Stan Purdum

Hot!

• Extends range of Specialized SL ebikes by 50%
• Compatible with 1^st and 2^nd generation Levo SL, Creo SL, Vado SL, Como SL, Kenevo SL ebikes 
• Lightweight
• Fits in included special water bottle type cage

Not!

• Pricey
• Necessary cable not included in battery price; must be purchased additionally
• Battery must be mailed to bike shop, not to your home
• Returns only accepted through bike shop
• Battery disposal fee required upon purchase
• Delivery fee required
• Battery and cage occupy a water bottle cage location, eliminating that as a place to carry a water bottle.
• Adds 2.2 pounds to the weight of the bike.

Price: Battery $450, Cable $35, Environmental Recycling fee $15, Delivery fee $75 (total $575)

Available here: https://www.specialized.com/us/en/sl-range-extender-battery/p/173733

How obtained: Purchased from Specialized

RBR Advertiser: No

A word in advance: Some parts of this review will sound pretty negative, but that gives the wrong impression. The Range Extender battery is a good product and does what Specialized promises it will. I do recommend it, but there are some price and shipping hurdles and shortages of precise display information that could be improved.

About a year ago I purchased a Specialized Turbo Creo SL road ebike and once I added to it remote control buttons that enable me to move between assist levels without taking my hands off the handlebars, I have loved everything about it … until riding on a high-wind day drained the internal battery quickly.

Under usual riding conditions, that battery, installed in the bike’s downtube, lasts long enough for most of my rides. The bike offers three assist levels — Eco, Sport and Turbo. In Eco, the ebike motor sips from the battery; in Sport, it drinks from the battery; in Turbo, it gulps from the battery. Specialized says that it’s possible to get 80 miles out the internal battery, which, of course, is under ideal conditions on flat terrain using the Eco assist level. But even under less-than-ideal conditions on hilly terrain, I have managed to get 70 miles by staying mostly in Eco mode, and when feasible, pedaling without using any assist. When mixing in Sport mode and very occasionally Turbo, I can still get 60 miles or more. 

But high wind changes all that. This winter, I was on a multi-day group ride in Florida, where we spent each night in a new location, so riding every day was a necessity (unless one wanted to just travel in the sag wagon, but what fun is that?). Anyway, the route one day took us due north out of Flagler Beach on the A1A highway right next to the Atlantic Ocean. The day was sunny, and the scenery was fantastic, but the wind was tough. According to the weather report, the wind was out of the north at 18 mph, with gusts to 27 mph — a headwind — and the gusts were most of the time. Riding in Eco mode wasn’t really practical and even in Sport mode, I was almost at a standstill when the gusts hit. So I used Turbo mode much more than usual.

After 23 miles, I reached the lunch stop, where the sag wagon was, and I had only 17% of the battery charge left, not enough to continue under power, and after battling the wind, I, at 78 years of age, didn’t have enough energy left to ride on without the electric assist. So, reluctantly, I sagged the rest of the route, along with some riders who had been on regular bikes. One other rider was also on an ebike, but his had an externally mounted battery, and he had brought two batteries with him, leaving one in the sag wagon. So at the lunch stop, he just switched to his second battery and was able to complete the day’s ride. 

My long tale of woe is all to explain why I decided to buy the range extender (RE) battery for my bike. I plan to enjoy more multi-day trips, and I want to be prepared for whatever eventualities I can. Another benefit: It’s easy on an ebike to get addicted to riding at higher speeds, so with the RE, I can do so if I wish.

The RE battery adds half again the capacity of the internal battery (i.e., 160 Wh on top of 320 Wh). And it works as promised. The special cage was easy to install in the water bottle cage location directly above the motor. You charge the RE using the same charger that came with the bike for the interior battery, but there’s no way to charge the two batteries at the same time unless you purchase from Specialized a $60 splitter cable made for that purpose, but charging them one at a time has not been a problem.

With the cable, the RE plugs into the bike via same port as the charger does, but the RE has its own port for charging it. When the RE is plugged into the bike and you are riding it, the system default is to discharge both the RE and internal battery simultaneously, but if you prefer, you can use the Specialized appt on your phone to set the system to discharge the RE first. 

The RE has three LED bars on top that give you some idea of what the charge level is — but not as precisely as I would prefer. One green bar means the charge level = 10-29%, two green bars = 30-94% and three green bars = 95-100%. One red bar = 5-9% and two red bars = 0-4%. Obviously, if you have two green bars showing, the charge could be as low as 30% and as high as 94%, which isn’t particularly helpful information. However, the control unit on the bike’s top tube, which has 10 blue bars glowing when the internal battery is fully charged, shares the bottom five bars with the RE. Those five glow in green when the RE is fully charged. The five bars allow a little more clarity about the RE’s charge level with one bar = 0-19%, two bars 20-39%, three bars = 40-59 percent, four bars 60-79% and five bars 80-100%.

If you happen to have the Specialized Turbo Connect Display (TCD), which I do, it also shows a similar breakdown of the RE’s charge level. The problem with having this information there and on the control unit, is that the only way to get those to show that information is to have the RE plugged into the bike, meaning you must unplug the charger and hook the RE cable to the bike. Then, if you’re not satisfied with the RE’s charge level, you have to unhook the cable and re-plug the charger to continue the charging process. That’s a lot of fussing around that potentially puts wear and tear on the socket connecting pins of the cable, the bike, the RE and the charger. It’s probably better to just charge the RE until all three bars on it are green. (I did see in an online forum that replacing the Specialized app with the BLEvo app will give more battery information, and that the Wahoo ELEMNT bike GPS computer will read both the main battery and Range Extender levels, but I have no experience with either.)

The things I really like about the RE include 1) that it gives me 50% more range than the internal battery by itself does and 2) that both the Specialize app and the TCD display translate the total available charge from both batteries into a single percentage using the 100% scale of the main battery, wherein the 100% of the RE becomes 50% on the app and the TCD. For example, recently, when my internal battery was charged to 93% and my RE was fully charged to 100%, the total charge readout in the app and the TCD was 143%. When both are at 100% relative to their own scales, readout says 150%.

The main negative about the RE is the price. Though the battery itself is $450, you need a cable to connect the RE to the bike motor, and that’s an additional $35. The cable comes in four different lengths to accommodate all the different Specialized SL ebikes, so you need to specify which one you want (the Specialized website tells which cable is for which bike). There’s also a $75 delivery fee, which, the website explains, is because “Turbo Batteries are exempt from free freight due to Dangerous Goods Shipping requirements.” That must also be the reason that Specialized will only ship the battery to a bicycle shop (and will only accept returns through a shop as well). From where I live, my “local” bike shop is an 80-mile round trip. And finally, there’s a $15 Environmental Recycling fee. (My local bike shop owner tells me the shop, too, must pay a similar fee each time he orders an ebike for the store inventory.) Thus, the real cost of the RE is $575, plus sales tax, which in my case, brought my total to $615.25.

The battery weighs 2.2 pounds, but since the RE is made for the Specialized SL (super light) bikes, you’re not likely to notice any difference when rolling (at least, I didn’t).

The other issue is that installing the RE means giving up a convenient water bottle location. My Creo has two cage locations, but some of the models for which the RE is available have only one.

---

Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.