[Closed] Exploding E-Bikes - it was bound to happen.

Shocking

E Bikes? kill it with fi.. oh they have.

It's a current issue, that's for sure.

any live reports?

And there in lies the issue with batteries.....Be it an electric bike or an electric car.....

Probably charge the culprit...no resistance to arrest.
Some bright spark got it wrong
Hannover eh.... Watts the wurst that could have happened.

And there in lies the issue with batteries.....Be it an electric bike or an electric car.....

I always thought this was something that could surge.

Ohm-my-god, that's terrible.

Having stemmed from a ground floor bike shop, the “exploding” battery is said to have quickly caused multiple fires which spread into a nearby car park.

Sounds like the combustible inventory/fire safety of the bike shop might have been a significant factor in the spread of the fire...

Given that half the E-bikes knocking about now will be import kits, some with a "Chinese Export" sticker rather than proper CE inspection/marking, most bike shops would be well advised to review their fire safety arrangements (both in workshops and in any storage areas) as they're likely to be dealing with more and more E-bikes/kit conversions with Dubious/unknown electrical safety...

yes, shops with good electrical safety policies will get the Li-Ions share of the market.

D0nk - certainly not something that can end up unstable of its own accord.

absolutely cookea ... unfortunantly there are two avenues for the crap batteries .... good companies building good packs with good cells costs good money so people buy cheap.

and others thinking they are paying good money for good cells well made and getting badly made packs with poor quality cells

The potential is always there though

The fire was fanned by the shop's air conditioning system providing liposuction.

Lipos are funny though, I keep my little RC packs in a purpose made containment bag and only charge them in controlled circumstances. But I'll happily strap the (cheap chinese) 18650 packs I have for bike lights to my head or stick them in my jersey pocket beside my spine and kidneys... Bikes'll be more of the same despite having millions of batteries in them.

yeah you wouldn't want to use anything that might catch fire as a power source for a car eh?

D0NK - Member
And there in lies the issue with batteries.....Be it an electric bike or an electric car.....
yeah you wouldn't want to use anything that might catch fire as a power source for a car eh?

The difference between an explosive and a flammable substance is that one contains all the energy in it and thus doesn't require air to burn/explode. It is a genuine safety problem with battery storage.

thing is though, any battery that comes with a car is gonna be of decent quality. Whereas with an e-bike, particularly a home-made conversion, it could be any old cheap explody crap.

Yes, but a car battery is going to have a lot more energy in it, and be flung at walls/ditches/crash barriers/other vehicles at far higher speed.

battery protection and stability during crashes are one of the major expenses in electric car design.

apparently they are quite strict on it according to the blokes on endless sphere .....

but then they were the same folk that suggested i needed an 18ah battery for my use when a 11ah would have done at half the cost and weight.

battery protection and stability during crashes are one of the major expenses in electric car design.

Glad to hear it, I hope the money is well spent!

Aside from my flippant remark, shirley the issue is with cheap/nasty/ outright dangerous application of cells/batteries. I presume the auto industry went through quite a dangerous period while figuring out the necessary procedures to make their power source safe-ish.

TR and others have since elaborated, but the post I replied to just read as [i]batteries=bad[/i]

Many years ago, someone once accused me of burning his shed down - a battery system I'd fitted had caught fire.

Turned out he hadn't been happy with waiting 4 hours for it to charge, and had decided to modify the charging system...

D0NK - Member
Aside from my flippant remark, shirley the issue is with cheap/nasty/ outright dangerous application of cells/batteries. I presume the auto industry went through quite a dangerous period while figuring out the necessary procedures to make their power source safe-ish.

TR and others have since elaborated, but the post I replied to just read as batteries=bad

It's not simply about making the power source 'safe' (or less hazardous), it's about making sure those working on the things have fully appreciated the potential hazards and arrange their work areas accordingly...

Fire and electrical safety in the automotive service industry have probably been prompted more through the risks posed by Petrol than anything else... Cars are bloody dangerous so mechanics are used to taking preventative steps.

Imagine you run a garage, pretty much every car you work on comes complete with a complicated electrical system, providing multiple opportunities to ignite the integrated tank full of fuel... So assume a fire could happen at any time, how do you minimise the danger of it spreading?
Maybe move that cabinet full of chemicals to a separate area, make sure paper and cardboard don't accumulate, clean up any spills immediately and have extinguishers on hand and maintained... Basically any measure aimed at preventing the spread potential fires could save your business (and life) one day...

Conversely bicycles haven't historically posed much of a fire hazard to those servicing them, being mostly non-electrical, mechanical devices.
Previously the most likely source of any fire ignition in a bike shop would have been the kettle or the workshop radio, Hence they probably still don't worry about fire loading anything like as much as a garage would, maybe they should start now the E-bike "Revolution" is upon us...

There will be more people taking their E-dandyhorse's into the LBS for a tune up, not all will be built to an appropriate standard to start with, and shops aren't used to dealing with explody batteries...

I feel safer not having to drive into petrol stations.
I feel less safe plugging in when it's raining.
There's no magic bullet. Yet.

Given that half the E-bikes knocking about now will be import kits, some with a "Chinese Export" sticker rather than proper CE inspection/marking, most bike shops would be well advised to review their fire safety arrangements (both in workshops and in any storage areas) as they're likely to be dealing with more and more E-bikes/kit conversions with Dubious/unknown electrical safety

As battery capacity and energy intensity increases and the willingness to chip or boost systems to get more power, this is going to get worse. When they de-militarised Lithium battery technology about 20 years ago this was a big concern as it's fairly easy to create a powerful incendiary device by simply short-circuiting the battery. There have been a number of aviation accidents too - Egyptair pilot left his two mobile phones in the cockpit that ended in a plane crush.

[url http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38903863 [/url]

Drill battery catches fire on train, 4 injured.

Are they positive it was the battery?

It wasn't inevitable, it was a flute occurrence.

Terrible shame....:)

Would a 29er E-bike trigger a chain reaction from the battery to the wheels?