Lithium ion batteries...?

theoldwizard1 wrote:

John & Angela wrote:
Well, there is a gazilion of them going into electric cars ...

Tesla cars use 18650 size cells. The current ones are either manufactured by Panasonic or manufactured under license from them.

Yah read a little blurb on how they are connected and operated. interesting. I'm not sure whats in ours, I just know it accelerates real fast, is REALLY quiet, is way fun to drive and is cheap to run. I still have two thirds of a jug of window washer fluid left over from the fist annual maintenance...and that was the total of my maintenance costs after a year, one jug of washer fluid. :)

John & Angela wrote:
Well, there is a gazilion of them going into electric cars ...

Tesla cars use 18650 size cells. The current ones are either manufactured by Panasonic or manufactured under license from them.

Well, there is a gazilion of them going into electric cars in the next decade so I would suspect there will be successes and failures but for the most part there have been very few incidents. Percentage wise less than gas tanks going boom from what I gather. :)

bwanshoom wrote:

theoldwizard1 wrote:

Samsung will likely never release the information on the "root cause", but I will bet it is not primarily the battery itself.

In this article Samsung explains it is a manufacturing defect in the battery.

That is NOT how I understand this quote !

Samsung recently explained to Korean authorities that it needs time to determine the exact cause of the problem, but the company believes the problem occurred during the (phone) manufacturing process.

Initial conclusions indicate an error in (the phone) production that placed pressure on plates contained within battery cells, That in turn brought negative and positive poles into contact, triggering excessive heat.

Boeing has some well document issues with lithium batteries in the 787, also Cessna tried it on a business jet with issues.

I'm not ready to put that in my RV yet.

theoldwizard1 wrote:

Samsung will likely never release the information on the "root cause", but I will bet it is not primarily the battery itself.

In this article Samsung explains it is a manufacturing defect in the battery.

d3500ram wrote:
OK thanks fo rthe replies... I was just wondering since those smart phones were having issues and I read that they are discontinuing production because even the replacements are still defective.

Was just asking the question since it seemed that batteries were being blamed even though I never had any one fault on me.

Samsung will likely never release the information on the "root cause", but I will bet it is not primarily the battery itself.

Frequently, like in the Boeing 787 battery issue, it is more than one thing that causes a serious problem. In that case the following poor design decisions were made even knowing Li-Ion batteries are much more likely to catch fire than any other battery.

• Not venting the battery compartment overboard
  
• In sufficient thermal and smoke detection
  
• Insufficient built in fire suppression
  
• And ultimately waving third party design analysis and testing

The issue is not so much the battery type, rather something wrong with either the batteries or the phone. Since this time it is not happening during charging, for some reason the batteries in this phone are being unexpectedly rapidly discharged, maybe shorted out. It is up to Samsung this time to figure out what they've done wrong.

The technology has been around a long time. The overheating problem with rechargable batteries (and some types of single use batteries) has been around a lot longer. When the laptop manufacturers were still using nickel-metal hydride technology some poorly made batteries and poorly managed charging systems caused a few recalls for overheating, the overload and heating even extending to the power brick when charging got into runaway mode.

My first overheating experience with small batteries was with NiCads, shorted one out in my hand, dropped it real fast. I was so accustomed to carbon-zinc and its high internal resistance, did not think about NiCad needing special handling. Already did know you never want to short out lead-acid batteries, had known them to blow up because somebody dropped a wrench across the posts.

OK thanks fo rthe replies... I was just wondering since those smart phones were having issues and I read that they are discontinuing production because even the replacements are still defective.

Was just asking the question since it seemed that batteries were being blamed even though I never had any one fault on me.

Again. I have been using LiOn and LiPo batteries for well over a decade.. Not one fire, even though ONE of the made-in-China batteries did get recalled.. It still did NOT catch fire.

Any battery, even a carbon zinc, can start a fire if it is abused (Shorted in this case) This includes Lead Acid batteries as well as the more exotic types.

Proper care and feedind is needed, and of course check out your supplier.