Sure you want a car with a lithium battery?

Look what a tiny cell phone battery does after a small ding. Imagine what a giant prius battery would do after a bad collision. Instant fried human!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OsBc8RqSKU&feature=related]YouTube - Lipo (Lithium Polymer) Battery Fire through mechanical Damag[/ame]

Yes, because I'm **sure** that a hybrid car battery would be built exactly like the phone battery. I'm also **sure** that the manufacturer would think about the liability and do it anyway.

Pure FUD. Can you find us a video of a gasoline pool fire next?

Catching fire is not so much an issue any more thanks to different compound and cathode design.
(In the case of Tesla, a sophisticate eletronic monitoring system to babysit each Li-Ion cell).
Check LG Chem and A123 websites for details.

The problem falls on the life-span (how many times of recharging for total capacity to reach 80% of that when it was new) and cost of such new Lithium battery. In the case of Tesla, the battery system costs more than $20,000 each.

Moderators anyone? HELLOOOOOO!

I'm gonna have to agree with brick...too much FUD with larger, COMEPLETELY different chemistry/build lithium battery technology. Please do some research b-4 posting such nonsense as this video clip.

You're slipping son, there once was a time you waited till after post 10 in a thread before you resorted to personal insults. Maybe you should have a long hard look at yourself. I tried that once and it made me feel rather ill, I need to lose some weight badly.

Maybe as you started the thread you might want to counter the point made by the liberal?

Have you seen where that battery is in a Tesla? It's huge and it's right on the driver's backrest!!

Why are we allowed to carry a mobile phone with its battery onto an aircraft?

Heh. I don't really like to get into arguments, there is something oddly amusing about a guy with a distress signal for an avatar getting mad because my response vaguely resembled logic.

Two important points:

1. I don't think a tap will do that to a normal laptop battery. They probably stressed it or overheated it first.

2. While the Tesla Roadster uses the same lithium ion batteries that laptops use, but with liquid cooling and serious monitoring and battery management, other proposed EVs as well as my Xebra and many EVs from conversion shops around the country are using a completely different chemistry which is thermally stable.

Comparing laptop style li-ion batteries to LiFePO4 batteries is like comparing raw nitroglycerin to a plastic fireplace log. The old lithium batteries are flammable. The new lithium chemistries are not.

Hey, it's a fun little video. I like it. But it bears no relevance to lithium batteries in cars. (Though the instability of the old-style batteries was a factor in my decision to go with LiFePO4 instead.)

Yeah, brick mostly stole my answer.

My EV stores about as much energy as one gallon of gasoline. My gas care, on the other hand, can store about ten gallons of gasoline. Which one do you think has the bigger potential for fried human?

Heck, I don't even LIKE fried human, or I'd still be driving gas cars.

I've never tried fried human, so I don't know if I'd like it. I've read that humans taste like pork. But I'm pretty sure that if I did like fried human I'd still not want to drive a gas car. There's a big difference between liking fried human and wanting to be a fried human.

This looks like more than a simple tap and the results match what I've seen on many cheaper lithium cells during nail penetration testing. The specific battery chemistry and cell construction play a huge role in how a cell will respond to such a test.

The purpose of a nail penetration test is to simulate an internal short, bypassing some of the cell's protection mechanisms. When all of the energy stored in a lithium cell is released in a very short amount of time things do get very warm. If you want to see more nail penetration videos check these two out. (I believe both of these tests were performed by A123)

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb_J2QQ0k-4"]YouTube - Nail penetration testing A123 Li-ion[/ame]
The A123 video is a good example of how a proper Li-Ion cell will perform. You can rest assured that any battery approved for use in a vechicle will undergo DOT testing MUCH more rigorous than that in the above video and it's not a fair test to compare the two simply because they both contain lithium.

Problem child is right ... you'd have to be some kind of loser to not know gas is way more safe than lithium:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgAaj3DkA-w&feature=related]YouTube - surveillance cam footage of truck catching fire[/ame]

huh huh huh,
never mind.



someone missed their dose of lithium, I fear.

I think that b11101100 hit the nail on the head as it were. If you look carefully at the original video at between 0:01 and 0:02, you can see the end of the stick that "tapped" the battery. It has what looks like a nail in the end of it....go figure....

Even if it didn't, if that's all it take to set off a Li chemistry cell phone battery, I should have fried myself a dozen time over by now.

Based on data from the U.S. Fire Administration’s (USFA) National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) and NFPA’s fire department survey, NFPA estimates that an average of 325,100 vehicle fires were reported to U.S. fire departments annually in the years 1999 through 2003. These fires caused an average of 440 civilian deaths, 1,500 civilian injuries, and $1.2 billion in direct property damage.

The percentage of EV batteries in that 325,100 ? Try 0% It'd be a shame if that level of auto fire incidence increased 1%, by adding a million EV's, wouldn't it? Estimates are that gas related auto fires will decrease substantially though, if that same level of ICE were removed. Wonder why. Dirty little secrets the oilies don't want you to know.

While I do agree that lithium ion batteries in cars aren't a real danger, the video posted by hill shows that the operator of the gas pump was a real tool. There are pictures up on the pump that say and show "Fill portable containers on the ground"

Sadly, the warnings are only in english, and ment for folk with an I.Q. at least above a powdered doughnut!

KK6PD

Actually, it's weirder than that! You can't find an "action" movie that does not have at least one exploding car. Every gas-car driver knows he's driving a bomb on wheels. But it's just become so commonplace that people accept it as inevitable.

But a new danger, well that's worth a good few hundred hours of ranting against change.

It kind of looked to me as though, when he removed the nozzle from the can and it ignited, he turned around and sprayed the bed of his truck from the nozzle.

Maybe we need to set a minimum IQ for obtaining a driver's license.

The video makes a good case for why gas should be pumped by a trained employee ONLY.

It would be interesting to know if there's a relative difference in gas station fires between Oregon and New Jersey (that require an attendant to pump your gas) vs. states without that requirement.

Exactly! And If we posted info on how you shouldn't pound a nail through your batteries, we'd probably all be safer in that department as well.

Oh, and as for not having your child use the pump? Check this out. My daughter starting helping us "fuel" the EV when she was 18 months.



Yup. Still in diapers, but she could safely fuel the car.