July 26, 20241 yr NSFW. Very disturbing video of an E-bike battery catching fire when a man is in a lift - things go from perfectly normal to inferno in seconds. No background about the type of battery or the manufacturer but it's another example that can be used when there's a campaign to restrict when batteries can be used or stored. Hopefully it won't be used for some knee-jerk legislation banning unapproved batteries.
July 26, 20241 yr NSFW. Very disturbing video of an E-bike battery catching fire when a man is in a lift - things go from perfectly normal to inferno in seconds. No background about the type of battery or the manufacturer but it's another example that can be used when there's a campaign to restrict when batteries can be used or stored. Hopefully it won't be used for some knee-jerk legislation banning unapproved batteries. That was a normal silver fish battery. It wasn't connected to anything and wasn't on charge, so I would conclude that it must have had an internal short that heated it up while he was carrying it until it exploded from the heat. I guess the lesson is to not carry a battery by its handle. Instead, hold it like a baby so you can feel how warm it is. Poor guy!
July 26, 20241 yr Don't think I want to watch, sounds terrifying. I use four lifts a day with my bike at the train stations :o
July 26, 20241 yr Debunked - Lift Battery Fire Apparently happened in China during 2021. The battery got hot whilst charging in the man's flat. He was using the lift to go to the ground floor and take it outside to cool-down. I reckon he hadn't let it cool down enough before charging - an error people with battery mowers often make.
July 26, 20241 yr Debunked - Lift Battery Fire Apparently happened in China during 2021. The battery got hot whilst charging in the man's flat. He was using the lift to go to the ground floor and take it outside to cool-down. I reckon he hadn't let it cool down enough before charging - an error people with battery mowers often make. It says unverified reports, which means speculation. That story doesn't add up to me. If you were charging a battery in your flat and it started to get hot, would you take it in the lift. Most would stand it outside on the landing if they thought there was a problem, though some people do get daft ideas. One thing is clear though, it wasn't the magnetic field in the lift that caused it to explode.
July 26, 20241 yr Debunked - Lift Battery Fire Apparently happened in China during 2021. The battery got hot whilst charging in the man's flat. He was using the lift to go to the ground floor and take it outside to cool-down. I reckon he hadn't let it cool down enough before charging - an error people with battery mowers often make. Hardly a glowing defence against the assertion that batteries present safety issues? I am not overly convinced if he had not attempted to get it out of a building that requires a lift, there would not have been some serious implication, just leaving in his flat
July 26, 20241 yr Terrible thing, however it happened. I think if my battery got hot and I could not get it out of the house, I'd chuck it in the sink and turn on the taps.
July 26, 20241 yr I'm not sure that would help, you might steam yourself to death... It might - just might cool it enough to stop it running away into a horrible conflagration.
July 26, 20241 yr Very saddening. Had he just charged that battery, or removed it from the bike after using it? Smoke alarms are pointless - by the time there's ignitable smoke, it's far too late.
July 26, 20241 yr I think if my battery got hot and I could not get it out of the house, I'd chuck it in the sink and turn on the taps. It might - just might cool it enough to stop it running away into a horrible conflagration. One of my many daft notions was to charge or store the battery while it's resting on thin plastic mesh over a large barrel of water being filled continuously through one side at an angle to make a whirlpool exiting through a pipe on the other side, draining into a sink: battery catches fire, melts through the mesh and is continuously cooled by the whirlpool until completely extinguished. But I assembled this instead. Easier: https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/home-ruination-by-ebike-battery-fire-expulserating-preterminator%E2%84%A2%C2%AE%C2%A9%E2%84%A0.46934/ There will be an easy to assemble mobile independently powered battery mounted version, when a couple of items arrive from China. Edited July 26, 20241 yr by guerney
July 26, 20241 yr It might - just might cool it enough to stop it running away into a horrible conflagration. When it starts to heat up and spit thermal runaway has already started only option is to run, that is what LFB recommend.
July 26, 20241 yr When it starts to heat up and spit thermal runaway has already started only option is to run, that is what LFB recommend. I won't be running away! Because it will merely be 38 degrees centigrade to the touch (summer, 30 degrees in winter) when I fling the damn thing out of the window on it's shovel inside it's box, less than 10 seconds after the horn has sounded. Edited July 26, 20241 yr by guerney
July 26, 20241 yr I wonder if it would be possible to make a diy heat-proof charging enclosure using a wire basket (shopping basket, trolley, etc) lined with fire bricks.
July 26, 20241 yr I wonder if it would be possible to make a diy heat-proof charging enclosure using a wire basket (shopping basket, trolley, etc) lined with fire bricks. There aren't any materials which won't burn at those temperatures available to the general public, and even if there was, toxic smoke will necessitate purchase of a new home interior, and possibly lung replacement. Better to keep it outside, or run, or if you can do so safely: fling it out long before it smokes and bursts into a fireball spitting out cells with such force they embed themselves into walls like large bullets. Edited July 26, 20241 yr by guerney
July 26, 20241 yr Hopefully it won't be used for some knee-jerk legislation banning unapproved batteries. If that had happened in One Hyde Park instead of China, we'd all be hunted down and shot. Unless it was a Chinese guy. https://onehidepark.uk/ things go from perfectly normal to inferno in seconds. I bet surface temperature of that heat conductive aluminium case was well above normal ambient air temperature, for many seconds before the smoke and inferno. He might not have noticed gripping the plastic handle.
July 26, 20241 yr Engwe battery? https://www.reddit.com/r/ebikes/comments/1eamp6a/engwe_bike_battery_killed_someone_in_china/
July 26, 20241 yr I'm thinking of the ways it could happen. I just figured out this. The battery is quite heavy and the bottom piece contains the main power wires and is made of plastic. I wonder if he dropped it on its end when he was taking it off the bike or put it on the floor outside the lift. A drop of about 6 inches onto concrete would probably be enough to break the palstic with the full weight of the battery smashing it into the ground, then the power wires shorted and caused the over-heating. The whole weight of the battery sits on those wires sometimes. A drop of even a couple of inches onto concrete could cut into those wires even if the plastic didn't break. I've had to re-position those wires in a few batteries I've looked into because they didn't look to safe to me. Also people tend to drop the battery down the slider when they fit it to the bike because it's quite heavy and awkward, once engaged at the top. Those batteries have been around for a long time. Despite what I said, they have a pretty good safety record. Maybe his had just been assembled badly
July 26, 20241 yr I reckon he was drawing 22A from a tiny inadequate Chinese celled battery pack inside that case with his 48V rear hub motored ebike, and it overheated during his hilly journey home... he didn't notice holding it by the plastic handle, thinking pleasant thoughts about what to have for dinner, until tragedy suddenly struck.
July 26, 20241 yr Here's is what I mean. This is a well-made one that has a proper plastic support at the bottom of the cell-pack to separate it from the terminals in the detached bottom piece. Most don't have that. The full weight of the cell-pack goes on that white foam rubber, and even in this case, the red wire was squished under there. It didn't come out so well in the photo, but there's a groove in the white stuff where the red wire was. In other ones, I've seen both wires trapped under there, and even crossed over. There is sufficient room to tuck them out the way, but that's something you need to look out for if ever you take that bottom piece off.
July 26, 20241 yr Second pic: looks like wire has broken the foam? There must billions of sliding batteries like that in use, if what you suggest is the cause, surely there'd be oodles of blazes all over the place - perhaps they are in China, which we never hear about? "Last year, the National Fire and Rescue Bureau reported 21,000 fire incidents related to electric bicycles, a 17 percent rise from the previous year. In Shanghai, bicycle fires rose by about a third to 1,020, resulting in seven deaths and 23 injuries, according to the city's Fire and Rescue Brigade." https://www.shine.cn/news/in-focus/2403018531/
July 27, 20241 yr "if you look closely in the first 4 seconds, something is dripping out of the bottom of the battery case" https://endless-sphere.com/sphere/threads/grins-perspective-of-ebike-fires.123098/post-1815997
July 27, 20241 yr I reckon he was drawing 22A from a tiny inadequate Chinese celled battery pack inside that case with his 48V rear hub motored ebike, and it overheated during his hilly journey home... he didn't notice holding it by the plastic handle, thinking pleasant thoughts about what to have for dinner, until tragedy suddenly struck. I wonder how many Amps this idiot was drawing when I snapped him on my dashcam yesterday. If this had gone on fire, I'd have been very pleased to see it (unlike the poor fellow on the video up top).
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