FactualThis Villeurbanne company repaired or refurbished 40,000 batteries in 2021. In 2022, this will probably be double.
The diversity of batteries, placed in transparent plastic bins on a shelf in the workshop of the company Doctibike, in Villeurbanne (Rhône), testifies to the inventiveness of cycle manufacturers to stand out from their competitors. They are compact, long, flat, rounded, protected by an aluminum shell or embedded in a colored metal tube, designed to clip into the frame of the bike or to rest on the luggage rack…
Beyond the design, however, the batteries all contain the same basic material: cells a few centimeters high, similar to the batteries that are placed in a computer mouse. “An electronic cigarette contains one cell, a bicycle battery, 30 to 40, and a car battery, 4,000”explains Anne-Sophie Caistiker, who founded the company, in 2014.
As its name suggests, Doctibike is a clinic for the batteries that power the motors of electric bicycles, scooters and scooters. Those waiting on the shelf are intended to be repaired or reconditioned, before being returned to their owner or put back on the market.
With its twenty employees, twice as many as in 2021, Doctibike is a growing company, which repaired or reconditioned 40,000 batteries in 2021. “It will probably be double in 2022”assures M.me Cashier. In total, 60% of its customers are distributors, bicycle manufacturers or operators of electric scooters, such as Tier or Voi.
Careful diagnosis
Among the 40% of individuals, some come directly to the company’s headquarters in Villeurbanne. On this day at the end of May, a man with thick gray hair arrives straight from Clermont-Ferrand. “My bike battery is dead. There is nothing left “, he says, desperate and determined to buy a new one. He does not know that the object may be repairable.
A few days later, a Doctibike employee will open the battery, check the connections, the operation of the motherboard and the condition of the cells. It will then be necessary to restore a damaged mechanism or recondition the assembly using new cells.
The operation takes a week; the repair costs from 50 to 100 euros, the reconditioning, between 250 and 350 euros, against 500 euros for a new battery. “The user can thus keep the same bike, even if the brand no longer manufactures the batteries, which often happens”argues Anne-Sophie Caistiker.
At the entrance to the workshop are stored 500 batteries from a fleet of scooters. After a careful diagnosis, Mike Garcia, technician at Doctibike, estimates that only about forty of them will have to be crushed, in order to recycle the metal that composes them. The others can be saved.
You have 34.99% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.