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Do 52V batteries give more range than 48V?

The volts on an E-bike battery do not define the range of your battery, however, they can play a role in the overall mileage due to efficiency values.

To make things simpler to understand you would need to compare a 52 vs 48 that have the same AH values and are fully charged.
A 52V battery would be fully charged to about 58V,
A 48V battery would be fully charged to about 54V

Now since Power is a function of Volts and Current formulated as;
Power = Volts x Current

Let's take an example of a motor that wants to output 500W, now putting the values of the required wattage and the available voltages we can compare how much current would be needed to realize a motor to spin at 500W.

For a 52V battery fully charged at 58V we will get;
500W ÷ 58V = 8.6 Amps

For a 48V battery fully charged at 54V we will get;
500W ÷ 54V = 9.25 Amps

From the above example it is clear that a 52V battery would need lesser current to drive the motor at 500W output.

Realistically in a practical environment two things will happen;
  1. The difference between a 52V & 48V is more pronounced at the top end of charge (when the batteries are fully charged).
  2. At full charge, the 52V battery would deliver a peppier ride with faster acceleration.
Beyond these, everything else would be subjective and depends on a lot of variables. In terms of overall range, the difference can be negligible or marginal.

With that being said Biktrix has moved almost all its Mid-Drive segment bikes to the newer 52V platform where the differences are somewhat noticeable.