Some hope opposing the electric nightmare?

gazzatriumph

Legendary Knight
Can you not return it and get the fast version?
Bought off Gumtree so can't return it, unfortunately I had to leave it to the wife to deal with it when it arrived, wasnt quite as described in the advert. I'm having it serviced tomorrow I reckon it will need new batteries although they charge ok I'm not sure how long they last. 4 mph will be ok for what I want.
 

Scrappy

Legendary Knight
Second battery plant fire within a year...

 

MartytheMartian

Legendary Knight
I'm no expert on these batteries (although I am currently ploughing my way through a fifteen hundred page book on battery technology as I decided I wanted to know more about how batteries are designed and work) but my initial take on these Lithium batteries is that it's the 'smart' rapid charging technology we have isn't good enough to stop them overcharging and going up in smoke and that the risk increases the harder/faster they are charged so, unless users are prepared to take hours and hours to charge their glorified golf carts there is a serious risk of fire. I get the distinct impression that we are nowhere near 'expert' at charging batteries but they have pushed to charge them faster and faster in an attempt to prove that EV's are a viable option. Even just scratching the surface of my book on battery design and operation I have quickly come to realise that batteries are tricky little bastards to design and get working correctly with plenty of fiddly variables and even some simply unknowable parameters that can cause things to go south quickly if you get them wrong.
 

Don the Don

Legendary Knight
Thermal runaway in electric vehicles (EVs) refers to:

Honeywell+2

  • A chain of events that starts with the gradual breakdown of EV battery cells.
  • Pre-heating of the EV battery cells and pack.
  • Elevated temperature causing organic solvents to break down, releasing gases.
  • Increased pressure and temperature beyond the flashpoint.
  • A catastrophic process that can lead to uncontrollable fires.
  • A danger to the vehicle and its surroundings.
  • A condition where lithium-ion battery cells enter an uncontrollable self-heating state.
  • A risk associated with high power and energy density Li-ion battery packs used in EVs.
 

Scrappy

Legendary Knight
I've experienced a situation where a phone I had got so hot it couldn't be held, it wasn't charging at the time either. Obviously a phone battery is miniscule compared to those in electric vehicles, so I imagine the heat those could potentially generate is immense, and that combined with the chemicals involved could make a pretty devastating bomb. I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near one failing :eek:
 

Tallpaul

Legendary Knight
I've experienced a situation where a phone I had got so hot it couldn't be held, it wasn't charging at the time either. Obviously a phone battery is miniscule compared to those in electric vehicles, so I imagine the heat those could potentially generate is immense, and that combined with the chemicals involved could make a pretty devastating bomb. I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near one failing :eek:
You don't want one in your pocket with thermal runaway happening next to the plums.................
 

MartytheMartian

Legendary Knight
Yep thermal runaway indeed. I gather the reason a battery, of any sort gets hotter and hotter is that, as the electrons flow through it you get a barrier building up around the anode and cathode (In Lead Acid batteries it's Hydrogen gas and in LiON phone batteries and LiPON EV batteries I believe it's carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) this makes it harder for the electrons to flow through the battery which increases the internal resistance and the resistance creates heat as the electrons try to continue to flow through the battery and the heat increases the gas build up which increases the resistance which increases the heat until it reaches a point where it either goes on fire, bursts or explodes depending on the battery type.
 

Don the Don

Legendary Knight
Yep thermal runaway indeed. I gather the reason a battery, of any sort gets hotter and hotter is that, as the electrons flow through it you get a barrier building up around the anode and cathode (In Lead Acid batteries it's Hydrogen gas and in LiON phone batteries and LiPON EV batteries I believe it's carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) this makes it harder for the electrons to flow through the battery which increases the internal resistance and the resistance creates heat as the electrons try to continue to flow through the battery and the heat increases the gas build up which increases the resistance which increases the heat until it reaches a point where it either goes on fire, bursts or explodes depending on the battery type.
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz :sleep: I'm not that interested in the fecking things, what I know is they are volatile and akin to riding in a bomb that could go off at any time , god help you if you are involved in a smash.
 

MartytheMartian

Legendary Knight
I gotta admit that I'm a nosey bastard so I am poking around the world of electronics. I trained as a radar and radio tech back in the early nineties and then worked in the Semiconductor and electronics industry in the mid nineties but, not having done anything electronic in the last twenty five years and being a bit bored I've decided to re-train myself. I've discovered that, when I thought I knew it all back them I actually knew practically fuck all beyond general fault finding with a meter, oscilloscope and the service manual for whatever I was supposed to be fixing. Now I want to know everything I can learn about electronic design and development and, ultimately, if I live that long, I want to design my own tube and transistor guitar amps and guitar effects pedals. Thanks to those crafty Chinese I have recently bought a Bench oscilloscope, Signal generator, DC bench power supply and even a rather nifty handheld Multimeter/Signal Generator/Oscilloscope unit and I picked up a Battery internal resistance/AVO meter and a Night Vision camera for a relatively tiny sum of money.

I developed a bit of an interest in just what goes on inside batteries during experiments at reviving the batteries from the bikes which had all gone dead due to neglect. I'm happy to say that, on that front, Only two out of seven batteries, weren't able to be revived and, rather a pisser, one of those that was truly dead was the youngest battery of them all that I had bought from Tayna early last year. From skimming through the book on the things they are a bit black magic - The book actually says that there are things about designing batteries that can't actually be measured or pinned down and are basically down to experimentation. Interestingly it actually explains too why batteries die in storage and when disconnected which, apparently, is because, metal impurities in the electrodes actually continue to function like little circuits even when the battery is disconnected so batteries are rarely truly inert. See, I'm a nosey bastard and I tend to poke my nose into things just out of sheer pigheaded curiosity.
 
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