One of the main advantages of bicycles over cars is the low environmental impact they produce. However, as it comes to electric bikes (as well as other electric vehicles) there is the issue of the batteries not only in the production step in the whole object life span, but also the end of life. This last stage causes negative environmental impacts when not following individual guides made by some experts in the field.

As time goes by, it seems like the e-bike market is increasing year by year. For instance, 4,5 million of electric bikes were sold just in Europe in 2020. This is a good idea specially when electric bikes substitute pollutant cars or motorcycles. Nevertheless, the traditional bicycle is always better than the electric one at least from the environmental perspective because of the energy it consumes (person-originated vs probably not renewable energy) and the batteries.

At the time of writing this post, there is not an international guide on how to treat batteries from e-bikes at the end of life. Some countries welcome bikers to deposit them in recycling points whereas others make bike stores responsible for the correct treatment of them, usually with agreements with expert firms in the treatment of gadgets batteries. Logic says it is better to trust in such companies due to the fact that they are used to manipulate batteries and extract its components to give them a proper end of life under the most challenging quality and environmental standards. Under no circumstances should you manipulate batteries since they can emit poisoning gas or even get burnt.

Finally, what can I do in order to expand the battery of my e-bike? Here you have some tips:

• Do not lock your electric bike under the warm sun

• Keep your battery at medium temperatures when not using

• Keep it at medium charge (30% – 60%) so that you avoid an important discharge which would seriously deteriorate it