Can I just Upgrade the Hub Motor?

So I have a USA version of the Lyric "Ranger" E-Scooter http://www.lyricmotion.com that I recently acquired. The USA version comes with a stock Bafang 48v 8fun geared front hub motor according to manufacture. My questions is simply this, Can I just purchase a decent higher Watt front Hub Motor for this scooter and get faster speeds and torque or do I also have to change out the stock batteries and controllers that come with this unit? I'm just curious if it would be this simple because the German Version of this same unit http://www.ebikeboard.com offers both the 500Watt and 1000Watt Front Hub motors. Do you think the stock controller and batteries will power a 1000Watt motor if I just upgrade the motor?

The Batteries are (25.6V - 14Ah - 305 Wh) x 2 batteries "Paired". I'm new to all this, so does this mean the this unit actually has 51.2V and 28Ah since they are paired batteries? Please let me know what I would need to do to increase torque for moderate hills and speed. I'm not looking to break land speed records or anything, just a little more zip yet not hurt my controller or hub motor.

My hopes is I can just swap out the front hub motor for the bigger 1000Watt and that will give me what I'm looking for. Thanks in advance for any input or advice. Let me know if I need to include any additional information. Thank you!!!

Yes. and no.

The bottleneck is your controller right now. the motor will take as much power as you feed it until it melts. the controller limits that power to a rather safe and boring limit. The battery should be able to handle 30 amps of output. possibly more, but it's impossible to guess without the manufacturer's specs on the cells.
Modifying the controller for 30 amps would give you roughly a 50% increase in torque. going beyond the 30 amps might damage the batteries if they aren't higher than 2C rated. But that is also close to the motor's upper limits as well.

The 1000watt motor would be a direct drive, where your current motor is a geared drive. Direct drive can handle far more power but they also require far more power to make the same torque. Simply switching the motor would be a downgrade in performance right now. you would also need to swap controllers and upgrade to a high end battery capable of very high output before you would see any real improvement.

You might try a voltage increase, depending on what the controller can handle. 36v bike hubmotor kits often tolerate 48v fine, for example. This 12v increase on 26" bike kits generally results in 4 mph more top speed, and at least 200w more kick. The increased wattage improves the take off, and improves performance on hills.

The other way to increase wattage would be to increase the amps of the controller, leaving the voltage the same.

I don't have the experience to say what your particular limits might be. Looking at the webite, I got little info I could make guesses with. Any of the mods does come with a risk of more heat in the motor. Depending on where and how you use the scooter, it could even melt the motor.

Two paired batteries, to me that implies parallel pairing. That would be 24v 28 ah. You can find out with a voltmeter. It could not be two batteries for 48v 28 ah, that would take 4 batteries, if one is 24v 14 ah. It could be 48v 14 ah if they are "paired" in series.

Do you have a multi meter ?

Thank you all for your replies so far.

I don't have a Volti Meter. Never used one before.

I opened up the compartment where the controllers are located. There are no marking on the controller to tell me what brand it is. I'm sure it's Lyric's way of keeping thing proprietary? It has 2 controllers. The forward controller looks similar to others that I've seen the rear one is much smaller. So I'm not sure what I'm working with on the controllers.

With regard to the batteries, the website shows that the are Paired batteries in a "series" and not parallel according the company website. I was able to identify the corresponding left & right paired numbers that mentioned on the website. You can see that here: http://www.lyricmotion.com/?section=Support&page=FAQ.

BATTERIES
Does the memory effect also apply to the Lithium battery?
No, it is practically non-existing. The memory effect is a phenomenon observed in nickel-cadmium-batteries, which suffer from a substantial capacity decrease by frequent partial discharges. Our Lithium batteries do not have this unpleasant effect that other adult electric scooters may have.
Why does the LYRIC not operate with just one battery?
Because the two batteries are connected in series and not in parallel. Consequently, the voltage is double and the current only half, helping to reduce losses.
Does cold temperature reduce the performance of the battery?
Yes. At 0°C/32F the battery has 15% less capacity than at 25°C/77F.

Electric bike needs a M.M. they cost 5-6usd. From h.f.. It priceless.

I'll getting one. Do you guys know of some good video links on general information to test and setup e-bike hub motors? Kind of like an instructional type video.

This may be a dumb question, but if your working with a 48 V controller, is it fair to say that it'll work with any brakes, twist throttle, lights etc??? or do you have to match up the same brand of controller for the same brand of hub motor?

It's not quite that straight forward, there are variations but start from a brushed motor needs a brushed controller, a brushless notor needs a brushless controller.
What is yours?
Brushless is most common, the controller connections can vary from bare essentials (battery, motor, throttle only) to other things like pedal sensor, cruise control, programming interface, 3 speed control, cruise control, cycle computer, and more. Many of these things are optional- your choice of whether to use them or not- but you should probably be able to match the features of your existing controller if you wanted to. Final thing if your motor is brushless- does it have have hall sensors? Controllers can be had for with, without, and both ways.

How many wires are coming from the motor ?

A very good place to get some basics of how this all works is the Grin Cyclery website. Justin has written some good FAQ pages on his store site. Some other good reads are there in the ES Wiki section.

Sounds like you are already running on "48v", so not much room for an upgrade using your existing controller. Increasing the amps by getting a different, higher amps controller may damage your batteries.

So a big increase in performance may get you into some $$ spending. You may have to replace both battery and controller to get a decent bump up in speed or torque.

Did you ever end up upgrading?

What ? Duck and cover..
Just buy a rear 48v kit 159.00 usd free shipping and a 600.09 battery. Good to Go.