A DETAILED LOOK AT THE CHARGING TIME OF THE M365 E-SCOOTER
Written by Ed Wiles, Scootered Founder
Key Points
Introduction
One question I am often asked - usually right after its top-speed and range - is the time it takes to charge the Xiaomi M365 battery. I have previously responded with Xiaomi's figures but decided it would be a good idea to test it on my 3-month old M365 to see what the results were in the real world. Thus, having used it as a demonstration model for a local event, I rode it home to deplete the battery even more, and had got it down to 3% by the time I plugged it in. By the way, I would not recommend riding the Xiaomi M365 when the battery is under 5% because performance drops off remarkably (I was somewhat embarrassed by the speed I was travelling on level ground).
Below is the resultant graph plotting the battery percentage against time (in hours) while plugged into a normal British 240V domestic plug socket (though it did go through a 1m extension lead I doubt this made any material difference to charging time). The M365's power cable has a transformer (much like that of a laptop) to transform the voltage (in this case to a 42V output).
Xiaomi M365 Battery Charging Graph
What The Battery Experiment Tells Us
It took less than 4.5 hours to charge from 3% so we can assume it takes about 4.5 hours to charge from 0% because the charging rate is significantly faster in the first 20 minutes - charging beyond 25% within that time. After this, although there are some curves in the graph, between 25% and 95% (from 20 minutes to 4 hours) the rate of charge is pretty uniform. The last few percent take the longest time.
This is actually faster than Xiaomi's official charging time. There could be a few reasons for this. Firstly, Xiaomi may have erred on the safe side in their official figures to avoid being taken to task by users discovering it took longer than advertised to charge their scooters. Secondly, the Chinese laboratory settings in which Xiaomi produced their figures may differ to those of the real world conditions (though the transformer should level out the differences). Thirdly, Xiaomi's figures probably relate to a brand new M365 and after three months of usage the capacity and thus charging time may be less; but this is all speculation on my part.
