Inb4 people unknowingly damage their bike battery by using the wrong cable.
it needs to match or exceed the rating of the charger, or else you could cause damage to the devices, the cable, or even start a fire.
I could be incorrect, but I don’t think this is the case with USB-C. I believe fast-charging power bricks are generally able to detect the capabilities of the cable and device to prevent damage.
You’re right, but not if the cable is unable to deliver that expected power. If it’s rated too low, the wattage will heat up the cable, and you’ll get unexpected behavior due to how heat and electricity interact.
It’s possible that the charger or battery might have some way to monitor and mitigate that, but it’s not something I would recommend testing on your expensive ebike.
This is fair, but one would hope that manufacturers see the writing on the wall: if using USB C as the charging input, the products (ebikes, phones, laptops, etc) have to be resilient, because we already have a world where the USB C connector is the “lingua franca” but each charger’s capabilities are different.
Phones already have logic to detect “slow chargers” or poor cables, by way of sensing the voltage drop when ramping up the charging current. That’s the minimum level of sophistication I would expect in a production ebike, and it’ll certainly have to be more than that for 100+ Watts.
Fortunately, charge controller chip manufacturers are mostly on top of this, marketing their wares for very advanced charging profiles and feedback inputs. Especially for an ebike, I would further expect variable charge rates, so that users who know that their charger isn’t high power – or if they’re concerned with the slightly elevated risk of battery fires at higher charge currents – can choose to use a lower level, or to prolong battery life.
But I’m not an electrical engineer; I just watch in awe the things they produce.
I could be incorrect, but I don’t think this is the case with USB-C. I believe fast-charging power bricks are generally able to detect the capabilities of the cable and device to prevent damage.
You’re right, but not if the cable is unable to deliver that expected power. If it’s rated too low, the wattage will heat up the cable, and you’ll get unexpected behavior due to how heat and electricity interact.
It’s possible that the charger or battery might have some way to monitor and mitigate that, but it’s not something I would recommend testing on your expensive ebike.
This is fair, but one would hope that manufacturers see the writing on the wall: if using USB C as the charging input, the products (ebikes, phones, laptops, etc) have to be resilient, because we already have a world where the USB C connector is the “lingua franca” but each charger’s capabilities are different.
Phones already have logic to detect “slow chargers” or poor cables, by way of sensing the voltage drop when ramping up the charging current. That’s the minimum level of sophistication I would expect in a production ebike, and it’ll certainly have to be more than that for 100+ Watts.
Fortunately, charge controller chip manufacturers are mostly on top of this, marketing their wares for very advanced charging profiles and feedback inputs. Especially for an ebike, I would further expect variable charge rates, so that users who know that their charger isn’t high power – or if they’re concerned with the slightly elevated risk of battery fires at higher charge currents – can choose to use a lower level, or to prolong battery life.
But I’m not an electrical engineer; I just watch in awe the things they produce.
The USBC PD spec requires cables to be able to pass 3 amps minimum.
Unless you’re buying non-spec cables it should be fine.