New York City wants lithium-ion e-bike batteries to be stopped at the border when they don’t meet national safety standards after rash of deadly fires::After a series of deadly fires.
New York City wants lithium-ion e-bike batteries to be stopped at the border when they don’t meet national safety standards after rash of deadly fires::After a series of deadly fires.
We really need a better battery technology, one that doesn’t trivially become an incendiary device.
There has actually been a ton of progress with this over the last decade.
However, everything we have discovered so far either can’t hold as much energy, has really limited charge cycles, or is far too expensive to use at scale.
Ton of progress?
I would refer to that as “research ongoing but no progress yet”.
Current 18650/21700 Li-ion cells are a lot safer than they were 10+ years ago, less chance of thermal runaway and fires now.
The big problem is the higher the energy density the greater the release of energy in a catastrophic failure. For example if you were to increase energy density ten fold, then the release of energy due to catastrophic damage to the battery would be ten fold. Materials aren’t even in the consideration, it’s going to be an explosion.
We’d certainly welcome an EV battery that weighs greatly less, but safety is always going to be a forefront issue only by the physics of energy storage.
Still there needs to be a lot of improvement. I think the weight issue is the outstanding one. Higher energy density and greater longevity would certainly be welcome, but I think safety will always be skirting the edge. It’s not been a fast track toward these goals, but it’s still come a good way. Unfortunately I expect lithium-ion technology to hit a wall sooner than later.
From 1980 to 2018 they say vehicle fires decreased by 60%.
That is done by regulation and holding companies accountable for their products. The issues arise from low cost products from shit companies.
People hate inconveniences like regulations because they make prices higher, but security is never about convenience.
We need to stop fining companies miscule amounts and ban imports from companies that don’t meet stricter regulations. It isn’t going to cost $5 dollars for junk you throw away after one time use if we do that. Users will pay more for a higher quality reusable product under those regulations as well.
Safter and less e-waste.
I mean shit, why are 1 time use disposable electronics even allowed? E-cigarettes you toss instead of swapping a cartridge are a quick one that comes to mind. Apparently people get mail/advertisements in the mail now that have some sort of lcd screen so they can play a video. So you just chuck a battery and screen when you open your mail. That’s disgusting. (Amazing how far the tech has come, but still)
It seems to me that one simple (and therefore probably wrong) solution to e-waste would be to have retailers, distributors, and manufacturers accept nonworking or obsolete devices for responsible disposal or recycling.
Turn the one-way supply chain bidirectional. If you sell it, you’ve gotta take it back when it’s broken. If you have an assembly line for making it, you can make a disassembly line for taking it apart. If that’s expensive, well, apply some ingenuity to making it cheaper.
Want to deal with fewer broken devices? Make devices that don’t break so much.
There are solutions for battery safety with Li-Ion battery types. It’s just these cheap products are not using them. They use the cheapest batteries which also have the least safety. Then they use the cheapest charging components which again increases the hazard. Charging faults are a common cause of Li-Ion battery fires.
Safer Li-Ion battery types are commonly used, but may be heavier and/or more expensive. For example the safest Li-Ion battery is the lithium iron phosphate type (known as LiFePO4). It’s quite safe against fire, but it’s heavier and more expensive. Next safest is the lithium manganese iron phosphate type (known as LMFP). It’s considerably safer and still has the weight advantage, but more expensive. That type is used a lot in cars and home energy solutions.