E-Bike Battery Destroys Apartment in Germany.

[Andy-Mat]

Heftige Explosion: eBike-Akku zerstört komplette Wohnung

Akkus für eBikes lagern bei vielen Menschen in der Wohnung. Einem Rentner-Ehepaar im Kreis Steinfurt wurde dieser Umstand jetzt zum Verhängnis.

www.computerbild.de

A retired couple in Lengerich in the area of Steinfurt, stored an e-bike in their Apartment and around 19:45, it exploded and set the apartment on fire.

This happened on the 6th of November.

The explosion in their dining room was so massive, that it blew out windows and reduced furniture to matchwood.

The damage is estimated to be around €200,000! But no injuries, thankfully!

Apparently, the charger was not connected at the time.

 

[vfr400]

It sounds very fishy. There isn't anything in an ebike battery that can make it explode like that. Did their ebike catch fire and set off the bombs they were making or the fireworks they had been saving for new year? Maybe the writer of the article exaggerated a bit, and it was just the normal battery fire with all the cells popping like fireworks.

 

[stevenatleven]

Wonder if it was a Bosch battery ??

 

[MontyPAS]

Heftige Explosion: eBike-Akku zerstört komplette Wohnung

Akkus für eBikes lagern bei vielen Menschen in der Wohnung. Einem Rentner-Ehepaar im Kreis Steinfurt wurde dieser Umstand jetzt zum Verhängnis.

www.computerbild.de

A retired couple in Lengerich in the area of Steinfurt, stored an e-bike in their Apartment and around 19:45, it exploded and set the apartment on fire.

This happened on the 6th of November.

The explosion in their dining room was so massive, that it blew out windows and reduced furniture to matchwood.

The damage is estimated to be around €200,000! But no injuries, thankfully!

Apparently, the charger was not connected at the time.

Sure it wasn't the 5th of November

 

[Andy-Mat]

Sure it wasn't the 5th of November

It was an old retired couple. The newspapers covered it a few days earlier and I missed it then. But its all on the web. Also, it was not the only one either.....
I translated their words, and apparently it did blow out windows, so probably it was burning for a period and eventually the last cells, all went up together.
But I am guessing.
I shall see if a fire department statement is made.
Am I the apparently the only one here who can read and speak German, now that is worrying , the standards of modern education.........surely there are a few others with a proper education with languages as well?
German is actually my 4th language if you count English as a first, school French, Royal Navy Portuguese and I moved to Germany at around 34 years old, past my best at learning languages if the truth be known.....
German is considered to be one of the most complicated European languages, which puts some people off of course.....
3 Ways of saying "you" for example in the present tense.
3 different forms of "the", are a short indication.....
But I did (dream) that a few could read the link I sent! WRONG!!
Andy

 

[MontyPAS]

It was an old retired couple. The newspapers covered it a few days earlier and I missed it then. But its all on the web. Also, it was not the only one either.....
I translated their words, and apparently it did blow out windows, so probably it was burning for a period and eventually the last cells, all went up together.
But I am guessing.
I shall see if a fire department statement is made.
Am I the apparently the only one here who can read and speak German, now that is worrying , the standards of modern education.........surely there are a few others with a proper education with languages as well?
German is actually my 4th language if you count English as a first, school French, Royal Navy Portuguese and I moved to Germany at around 34 years old, past my best at learning languages if the truth be known.....
German is considered to be one of the most complicated European languages, which puts some people off of course.....
3 Ways of saying "you" for example in the present tense.
3 different forms of "the", are a short indication.....
But I did (dream) that a few could read the link I sent! WRONG!!
Andy

As an uneducated, non German speaking pleb..... I will take your word the battery caused the explosion

 

[pichipedals]

Google translate does for me a lot of the time,...

Practical eBikes are very popular and are particularly popular with older people. A retired couple from Lengerich in the Steinfurt district had also bought the practical bicycles with an electric auxiliary motor - and should now regret this step bitterly. According to a media report, an eBike battery stored in the apartment exploded on November 6, 2020 - and blew up the couple's home. As the two 76-year-olds reported, they had been sitting in front of the TV in the living room that evening when they heard a thud around 7.45 p.m. The man looked for the cause of the noise and discovered the smoking battery in the dining room.

Battery blows up apartment - total loss!
With his presence of mind, he put the apparently defective battery in the bathtub and left the apartment with his wife. Only a few moments later the battery exploded - with devastating consequences. The detonation was so violent that some windows and doors were blown out and furniture was shattered. Together with a 29-year-old neighbor, the couple managed to get out of the house just in time. According to the police, there were no seriously injured people, but the apartment is completely destroyed and uninhabitable - the damage is likely to amount to 200,000 euros. The couple suffered slight smoke inhalation and are currently living with their daughter. The cause of the exploding battery remains unclear. It is particularly worrying that the device was not even connected to the electricity at the time of the fire and the subsequent explosion


I’m not too bad with French but they don’t seem to have ebike battery fires.

when I spent a lot of time on radio control forums there was always concern over li-po batteries, on charge and when stored. Battery charging sacks were common practice, and some users had army surplus ammo boxes they stored batteries in. I don’t think the situation was helped by lots of low price battery packs coming from China; that’s not to slate the Chinese battery quality but when you could buy battery packs for under £7 delivered from China compared to branded ones at £40 from uk hobby shops you had to wonder. I bought half a dozen or so of them , and renewed then every 6 months just in case they went bad (plenty of vibration and shocks when in a RC model).

im not sure how all that translates into ebike batteries but of course anything that looks like a bargain isn’t always just down to very cheap labour rates. It a,so makes you wonder whether the advice not to leave batteries in external storage/ unheated garages and to bring them into the house is appropriate in all cases.

what that news article doesn’t elaborate on is the type of bike, battery type, voltage etc etc; that detail would reduce some of the sensationalist headline.

 

[vfr400]

Am I the apparently the only one here who can read and speak German, now that is worrying , the standards of modern education.........surely there are a few others with a proper education with languages as well?

That's a bit presumptuous isn't it? Did it not occur to you that some of us might have been born in Germany and lived there both at the start of their lives and for a period of their adult life, and that these same forum members might have a German name and German forefathers? And did it not occur to you that forum members might not have even noticed that it was written in German because Google Translate automatically changes it to English as the page loads.

I'm taking it at face value, but it just doesn't add up. Was it just coincidental that he had a bath full of water ready to dunk it into. How did he pick it up when it was already burning?

 

[Andy-Mat]

As an uneducated, non German speaking pleb..... I will take your word the battery caused the explosion

Thats what the newspaper report stated. I was not there, but after seeing another fire on youtube, you can hear the cells exploding, and the rush of expelled gas.
I certainly feel that this old couple heard something....they took as being an explosion.

Andy

 

[Andy-Mat]

That's a bit presumptuous isn't it? Did it not occur to you that some of us might have been born in Germany and lived there both at the start of their lives and for a period of their adult life, and that these same forum members might have a German name and German forefathers? And did it not occur to you that forum members might not have even noticed that it was written in German because Google Translate automatically changes it to English as the page loads.

I'm taking it at face value, but it just doesn't add up. Was it just coincidental that he had a bath full of water ready to dunk it into. How did he pick it up when it was already burning?

What does that have to do with having a foreign language, being born there? You always manage to go off on a tangent! Unimpressive.
Nobody up to now has even claimed a foreign language, be it German or anything else. I am shocked that languages are still as unimportant for some Brits as they were when I was a kid.
My own father had English, French, German and Turkish, so maybe I was brought up in a different environment......though he picked up German at the grammar school I attended in night school classes.
Its very sad, you miss so much not speaking a foreign language when abroad, that you cannot even know about, if you don't speak it.... The door is simply closed.
Andy

 

[pichipedals]

Does it say the bathtub was full of water ?

 

[vfr400]

What does that have to do with having a foreign language, being born there? You always manage to go off on a tangent! Unimpressive.
Nobody up to now has even claimed a foreign language, be it German or anything else. I am shocked that languages are still as unimportant for some Brits as they were when I was a kid.
My own father had English, French, German and Turkish, so maybe I was brought up in a different environment......though he picked up German at the grammar school I attended in night school classes.
Its very sad, you miss so much not speaking a foreign language when abroad, that you cannot even know about, if you don't speak it.... The door is simply closed.
Andy

The reason people don't talk about which languages they speak is because this is a British forum, where we speak English. Most people would be able to figure that out. As well as modern languages, I can still remember a fair amount of Latin, for which I got grade A at O-level.

 

[vfr400]

Does it say the bathtub was full of water ?

Good point, well presented.

 

[mike killay]

What does that have to do with having a foreign language, being born there? You always manage to go off on a tangent! Unimpressive.
Nobody up to now has even claimed a foreign language, be it German or anything else. I am shocked that languages are still as unimportant for some Brits as they were when I was a kid.
My own father had English, French, German and Turkish, so maybe I was brought up in a different environment......though he picked up German at the grammar school I attended in night school classes.
Its very sad, you miss so much not speaking a foreign language when abroad, that you cannot even know about, if you don't speak it.... The door is simply closed.
Andy

Well, I am bi-lingual, Welsh and English and also speak a fair bit of French.

 

[MontyPAS]

Well, I am bi-lingual, Welsh and English and also speak a fair bit of French.

Tri-lingual then ???

 

[WheezyRider]

Ok, can we detoxify this thread and stop going on about who can and can't speak what and get back to the facts?

Was this a battery pack from a reputable supplier?

Had the pack been dropped or abused in some way?

Had it been charged incorrectly, with the wrong kind of charger?

Was it on charge when the incident happened?

Had it been left on top of or near to a room heater?

These are the kind of things we need to find out so we can get to the bottom of this.

 

[Nealh]

Explosion may mean natural gas was ignited or another flammable source other then the battery.

 

[Nealh]

Andy again going off on one again, castigating forum users over how many languages they should have or know.

 

[richtea99]

What does that have to do with having a foreign language, being born there? You always manage to go off on a tangent!

and
> Am I the apparently the only one here who can read and speak German, now that is worrying , the standards of modern education.........surely there are a few others with a proper education with languages as well?

I'd call that off at a tangent. Choose your words and criticism carefully.

Anyway, back to the 'bathtub', as Google likes to call it. I asssumed that they'd popped it in the (empty) bath since that was a good non-flammable place to put something smoking - I'd call that smart. Smarter would be lob it out the window, but who knows how high up they were (apartment might be ground floor or 20th floor), and what safe ground there was around them.

 

[vfr400]

What does that have to do with having a foreign language, being born there? You always manage to go off on a tangent! Unimpressive.
Nobody up to now has even claimed a foreign language, be it German or anything else. I am shocked that languages are still as unimportant for some Brits as they were when I was a kid.
My own father had English, French, German and Turkish, so maybe I was brought up in a different environment......though he picked up German at the grammar school I attended in night school classes.
Its very sad, you miss so much not speaking a foreign language when abroad, that you cannot even know about, if you don't speak it.... The door is simply closed.
Andy

You missed out Double Dutch.