NYC battery fires and damage

[onemorejoltwarden]

NYC "ebike" fires from DEC

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-east-village-ebike-fatal-fire-20211217-q3clvufyuzgcbmaobhumncbfam-story.html

Several disturbing QUOTES:
In the past, the victims and their vehicles were both brought to the hospital inside the ambulances.
“These items are not to be removed by field units,” reads the new directive. “They are even more dangerous when transported in confined spaces. ... Under no circumstances is a unit to transport an e-bike or a scooter in the back of an ambulance when transporting a patient.” FDNY

Pretty disturbing piece, but NYDailyNews does that.

Also:
East Village fire victim was charging nine e-bike batteries at once when blaze exploded in apartment
https://jalopnik.com/nine-e-bike-batteries-cause-huge-nyc-apartment-fire-1848241582

Condo and Apprtment renter insurance is getting tougher to get and costlier in the wake of the Miami collapse last summer. Mine just created a demand that ALL EV's and their accessories be inspected for UL approval and inclusion in insurance.
The argument put forward was that there is a recognized fire hazard and that the EV owners are asking the others to assume their liability.

The above NYC issues were used as support.

These guys were apparently charging scooters as a business , and one might assume at some level there was a capacity to think safety and liability above the random level. ( I would say norm, but we know that is , um, not yet fully realized)

 

[Comrade]

Mine just created a demand that ALL EV's and their accessories be inspected for UL approval and inclusion in insurance.

This kind of makes sense, but not really.

Does UL even certify batteries? Does every phone, laptop or any other device with a lithium battery sold in US have a UL certification?

There is so much hazardous crap coming out of China. Are life insurers going to deny claims when someone gets electrocuted by those cheap non isolated phone chargers?

 

[onemorejoltwarden]

Traditionally, battery cells have been certified to UL 1642, the Standard for Lithium Batteries.
https://www.edn.com/making-sense-of-complex-global-lithium-ion-battery-regulations/

one more:
https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/news/21252461/lithiumion-battery-sparks-4alarm-bronx-fire
Occurred Jan 8,2022
Many of the reports get multiple listings. This is a decent review in a firefighters newsletter.

There is a lively debate over insurance of EV's and eBikes.
low prevalence let them often be treated as RV's or included as bikes.
As they become more prominent there are more injuries, fires and thefts seen.
Exclusion by Renter, Homeowner and Auto policies and gaps in specific eBike policies create substantial risks and expenses.
The proportion of non conforming vehicles increases the conspicuousness of the issue.
Many do not conform to existing standards.
We are offloading risks and those to whom we are asking to assume our risks are waking up.
Relative risk is starting to be recognized, and the eBike community not controlling the discussion well.
Letting insurers define things does not look attractive
But they speak the language of safety better than we do.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.
Impeccably, with an honored reputation that is recognized and respected, I might add.

 

[LewTwo]

Lithium Batteries are not the problem.
There are a number of different chemistries used in Lithium batteries.
I will lay long odds that these were Lithium-Cobalt chemistry.
Lithium-Iron-Oxide batteries tend to be more tolerant.
People need to understand the differences.

 

[Chalo]

Lithium Batteries are not the problem.
There are a number of different chemistries used in Lithium batteries.
I will lay long odds that these were Lithium-Cobalt chemistry.
Lithium-Iron-Oxide batteries tend to be more tolerant.
People need to understand the differences.

Any battery can start a fire. Countless cars have burned because their lead acid batteries got something too hot.

Lithium iron phosphate batteries don't self-ignite like lithium cobalt batteries sometimes do. But we're all content to have lithium cobalt batteries resting against our bodies pretty much all the time. Phones, ear buds, flashlights-- none of these use lithium iron phosphate cells. The risk isn't serious unless you're using garbage cells or you abuse your pack regularly.

The meaningful trade-off, as I see it, between LiCo and LiFePO4 is energy density versus cycle life.

 

[dogman dan]

I'd lay odds these fires are from "safe" bms equipped round cell packs found everywhere these days. Scooters, hoverboards, bikes, etc.

My insurance company paid with no questions, but was noticeably unhappy they had nobody to sue. Bought the battery on ali express. The company sold batteries for a few weeks or months, then vanished.

Those of you building batteries, I can't say this strong enough, keep that shit outside. Don't allow it to burn your house down, and you eliminate the problem of whether its insured or not.

If you buy a name brand e bike from the local bike shop or something, I'd discuss it with your insurance company before parking it in the garage. It may take a bit of extra cost, but it won't be enough to kill you. Having that fire with good insurance is WORTH WHAT IT COST.

But a homemade battery, keep it outside!!! They may not want to cover that thing.

 

[Triketech]

Does UL even certify batteries? Does every phone, laptop or any other device with a lithium battery sold in US have a UL certification?

Ergo, UL/CE certs are optional, not required to sell by law. Insurance Companies drive the requirements as you eluded to.

Yes, UL has Test Standards along with a facility dedicated to batteries. It takes a budget of about $20,000 to prep and run through a the test cases and get certified. Any internal changes will require re-testing.
https://www.ul.com/services/battery-safety-testing

UL requires traceable manufacturing records. CE allows self-certification with minimal auditing.
Battery chargers are more likely to be CE certified as the components don't evolve every 9 months.

It's down to what little common sense is allocated to human beings these days.

 

[LewTwo]

Any battery can start a fire.[/url] Countless cars have burned because their lead acid batteries got something too hot.

"Gareth kept his rifle cartridges and loose batteries for his night vision in the same front pouch on his coat."

Any time one has electrical potential there is the potential to start a fire. My college girlfriend once gifted me a Piezoelectricit/butane cigarette lighter. You can not get much less electrical potential than that. However it was adequate enough to ignite the butane.

It's down to what little common sense is allocated to human beings these days.

Worst case I read about was some dude that always carried a spare, fully charged 18650 cell for his vaping device. He was visiting a local store with his loose change (mostly pennies) and the spare battery in the pocket of his cargo pants. As he is browsing the goods on offer, the pennies shorted out the battery and became red hot resulting in his pants suddenly bursting into flames (with second and third degree burns on one side of his body).

Moral of the story: "You can not fix stupid."

 

[SafeDiscDancing]

Just a simple objective observation...

BatteryHookup runs a business where a significant percentage of their battery inventory came to them because of a faulty BMS.

So we must assume that there are a large number of battery packs suffering from "stupid" robots that murder them.

This is as it has been for a very long time.

Which was why some time ago I just started to think of my batteries as having something like spark plugs in a car or a motorcycle in the gasoline powered era.

Is it really so hard to know twelve cells?

All I do is study my cell voltages and I bottom balance and then key off my weakest cell when charging.

But you see that requires that you THINK and the world now is about Dumb and Dumber and not thinking or knowing anything.

The robots rule the batteries and they also murder them.

The BMS is like "The Terminator" movie... not always a good robot.

 

[dogman dan]

Its true, none of my dangerous lipo which I balanced manually burned my house down. But I did charge them in the fireplace.

It was a dumb bms that presumably overcharged the battery in my garage. We can only assume the cause, but its likely the bms kept the charge going when one cell group overcharged, at a voltage where the charger should have kept charging. So before the charger shut off, the bms should have stopped the charge. It didn't. This defect could have been present in the bms from day one, undetected.

I have no bike batteries anymore. I ride gas. But my mower battery, my drill batteries, are in a detached garage these days.

I don't worry too much about the other batteries in the house. The laptops, the phones. Even if they go off, it just won't be the same kind of fire as the bike made, when 1000wh burned, setting off the other, not connected 1000wh of cells. Sounded like a 50 cal was shooting in my garage when it all went off like a string of firecrackers. Something like 500 round cells went off in about 2 min.

 

[ebike4healthandfitness]

The meaningful trade-off, as I see it, between LiCo and LiFePO4 is energy density versus cycle life.

Isn't the main difference actually charging speed:

Lithium Ion can last a lot of cycles if you don't charge to 4.2v, but instead use 4.1v (doubles cycles at the cost of only getting 85% to 90% the capacity of 4.2v) or 4.0v (quadruples cycle life at the cost of only getting 70% to 75% the capacity of 4.2v). This in a package that would also be lighter and more compact than the equivalent capacity of LFE.

Yeah, so I'm not sure LFE is worth buying for cycle life. Though I have seen some information that you can get up to 15,000 cycles if you limit depth of discharge to 10% (i.e. using only 10% of the capacity of the LFE cell before recharging again):

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries

The main advantage I see with Headway LFE is fast charging that is also safe. The Headway 38120 max charges at 10C. That is impressive! And still impressive when we factor in the reduced volumetric (and gravimetric) density of Headway 38120 compared to Lion.

 

[LewTwo]

The main advantage I see with Headway LFE is fast charging that is also safe. The Headway 38120 max charges at 10C. That is impressive! And still impressive when we factor in the reduced volumetric (and gravimetric) density of Headway 38120 compared to Lion.

[/quote]
Simplest case a 1P string ... what are you going to use for an 80 Amp charger ?
Gets even more difficult as P (cell strings in parallel) and S (Cells in series) goes up.

 

[ebike4healthandfitness]

The main advantage I see with Headway LFE is fast charging that is also safe. The Headway 38120 max charges at 10C. That is impressive! And still impressive when we factor in the reduced volumetric (and gravimetric) density of Headway 38120 compared to Lion.

Simplest case a 1P string ... what are you going to use for an 80 Amp charger ?
Gets even more difficult as P (cell strings in parallel) and S (Cells in series) goes up.

Yes, a pack made from headway 38120HP LiFePO4 will require a very strong charger even to just charge a small amount of watt hours at 10C, but then again I am seeing a J1772 car charger plug as option even for little one person EVs:

http://swaymotorsports.com/

"How does the charging work? Does it come with a charging station? Does it work with existing car chargers in parking lots? How do you set up a charger at home?

The Sway charger works with both 110v household current and 240v. Sway will come standard with an onboard 110v plug for wall charging, and there will be an upgrade option for the J1772 car charger plug that will work at standard EV charging stations. A home charging unit for charging the J1772 is available, and requires 240v current."

 

[JackFlorey]

It was a dumb bms that presumably overcharged the battery in my garage. We can only assume the cause, but its likely the bms kept the charge going when one cell group overcharged, at a voltage where the charger should have kept charging.

Or a high charge rate caused dendrite formation. Or a single low-ESR cell in one parallel group took most of the charge current, causing dendrite formation. Or there was dendrite formation from a plain old low quality cell. Or one cell had mechanical damage (either during or after manufacture) that cause a cathode to anode short.

There are many ways that li-ion batteries can fail and cause a fire.

 

[onemorejoltwarden]

This is the kind of reaction I am concerned about:
https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/news/e-bikes-banned-from-caledonian-sleeper-trains-after-risk-assessment-3583
I don't mean to be all Lock Hughes about this, dredging this stuff up, but stuff like this generates the kind of attention that the hoverboard folks got.

The NYC backlash against ebikes came after pedestrian injuries by delivery riders, and we saw how much of a problem that raised against a harder to localize target.

 

[dogman dan]

Thats why I said, Presumably. Its quite likely dendrites forming was the reason one cell got weak, and needed a bms to shut it off early. The presumtion is that the bms did not do this, overcharging the cell/cell group that needed to be shut off. Packs die because some of the cells get weak all the time and don't burn. But a good overcharge does tend to set one on fire. A functioning bms should prevent the fire. So I presume my bms failed to shut off. I presume the fet in the bms failed in the still charging mode.

I feel the bms failed because the battery was still connected to the charger. I forgot to check it and unplug before I went to bed. It did not burn just sitting there, or after a crash or dropped battery, it burned while on the charger. The fire investigator just called it a failed charger, which helped me a lot with the insurance claim.

It was a 20 ah pack, on a 5 amps charger. So I wasn't charging particularly fast for good cells. Might have been way too fast for a damaged cell. But a working bms should have prevented the fire, which got real big after a car and a motorcycle both with full tanks of gas got going. The flames coming out my garage door were 40 feet tall.

Anyway, the bigger the pile of cells, the more you should be charging it outside your dwelling. Your laptop or phone goes up you might be able to do something about it. When I opened the kitchen door briefly it was still only the battery burning. The fire was a 10 foot fireball, doing the backdraft thing across the roof. One min later, the garage door fell out and the 40 foot flames. 3 min the firemen were there. Just saying, when 2kw of batter goes off, its pretty spectacular.

 

[glystopher]

Charge them outside isn’t possible for me because it’s cold outside and you aren’t supposed to charge the batteries cold. The bike sits in the front apt room and there’s a smoke detector . It’s an Ariel rider not a diy sketch battery so hope that’s good enough.

 

[dogman dan]

Watch it charge then. Don't forget and let it stay on the charger while you sleep like I did. I trusted the bms while I slept. Unplug it, then go to bed.

I don't hang out here to be a scare monger. But what happened to me, with an extra cheap battery from ali express was scary.

It really is rare to have a battery burn. Really rare. But it sure is spectacular when a really big one goes up. I had one battery on charge on the bike, and it was close to a second battery that had finished charging. The first one going off set off the second. It was a huge fire when 48v 40 ah went up. This is the kind of situation to avoid, like the one in the story earlier in this thread. Multiple batteries close to each other while one is charging is not good without some kind of metal cabinets to separate them.

It would help some, meaning giving you a few seconds or even minutes more time if you put your battery in a simple metal file cabinet while it charges. Aint gonna contain it much, but some is better than nothing.

Don't charge your bike leaning against the couch, the drapes, the pile of paper to recycle, etc. Sounds obvious, but look again at where you charge. Inside the oven may be the safest place in your apartment.

 

[xylene23nyc]

Sadly, I see ebike battery fire stories in NYC becoming much more common. In Manhattan Ebikes (mostly delivery services) are now just as common as Taxis on the road. It's crazy but I still have not heard of any ebike shops in NYC known for offering/building high quality ebike battery packs.

I assume most ebike batteries being purchased in NYC are all generic cell import builds of dubious quality. I'm also guessing that the higher chance of bike theft makes it difficult for many to justify spending $1000.00 on just a quality battery. The most common ebike for deliveries here (Arrow) sells for around $1600.00 total. I'm surprised that ebike battery fires are not more common here.

It will raise prices but I'm all for forcing more safety standards/regulation to imported ebike battery packs.

 

[Chalo]

It will raise prices but I'm all for forcing more safety standards/regulation to imported ebike battery packs.

The result of that would be more homemade batteries, which are much more of a wild card. The best and worst batteries I've ever seen were homemade.

 

[xylene23nyc]

Possibly. Hopefully they don't ban or require licenses to purchase bulk Lithium cells in the future. The demand for cheap battery packs (and resulting fires/deaths) will certainly increase here so I predict that heavy regulation in some form will come eventually.

 

[Chalo]

The demand for cheap battery packs (and resulting fires/deaths) will certainly increase here so I predict that heavy regulation in some form will come eventually.

Maybe. Hopefully instead there will be folks who see market opportunities, and provide cheaper and better modular battery solutions.

Consider personal computers. Before 1977, they were exotic, hokey, tinker-oriented machines. After 1977, you could just buy one that worked as is-- if you were willing to spend a median annual wage on it. But in due course, they got easier to use, more plentiful, and cheaper. Now we almost all have a respectably powerful computer in our pockets, that didn't cost us very much at all to buy and that even a young child can figure out.

I think e-bike and other mobile power batteries are farther along this market development arc than computers were in the late '70s and really '80s. But we still have to choose from expensive batteries, sketchy batteries, or homemade batteries. Sooner or later I think we'll see reliable, configurable, high performance batteries at commodity prices. Just not quite yet.

With any luck, we'll circumvent our dependence on rare and expensive elements along the way. If everyone in the world is going to have access to these things, cobalt, nickel, and lithium won't be on the menu.

 

[99t4]

I'm also guessing that the higher chance of bike theft makes it difficult for many to justify spending $1000.00 on just a quality battery.

Thisthisthis^^^

 

[xylene23nyc]

The demand for cheap battery packs (and resulting fires/deaths) will certainly increase here so I predict that heavy regulation in some form will come eventually.

Maybe. Hopefully instead there will be folks who see market opportunities, and provide cheaper and better modular battery solutions.

High quality modular packs would be a TOTAL game changer. Hopefully it's being seriously worked on and will be implemented soon. 72V 40Ah battery made with Lego skills!

At the very least one could purchase the next big battery over time after their ebike gets stolen in NYC

 

[xylene23nyc]

For anyone wondering what NYC is like as far as ebikes and why resulting fires are a thing, check out this common scene outside most take out restaurants in Manhattan.

Now also imagine bumper to bumper traffic and jaywalking Kamikaze style pedestrians coming at you from all angles. Throw in the occasional ebike fire. Love/hate my city