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Mark Verbrugge, a battery expert at GM's research and development center in Warren, MI, says that such safety measures should be enough to keep batteries safe. Yet one factor remains outside the direct control of automakers. "The one thing that really worries OEMs is you can't control poor-quality manufacturing as it relates to safety," he says. For example, says Verbrugge, if "two electrodes touch because it's poorly manufactured, you've got a problem."
Such an internal short circuit can start an uncontrolled chemical reaction, Sandia's Doughty says, adding that "if there's a flaw in the manufacturing, and it has an internal short circuit, there's nothing you're going to do externally to interrupt that reaction." Such problems are rare, occurring in one of ten million cells in laptops and other electronics, Doughty says. But, he says, "If there are 7,000 cells, and there's one in ten million failures, you do the math in terms of how many vehicles are going to have a cell problem."
Even if a bad battery does make it into a vehicle, however, it might not be a big problem. "We've designed it so that if you reach into our battery pack and deliberately set one of the batteries on fire, it doesn't propagate to the neighboring cells," says Eberhard. He gives two reasons: each battery comes in a steel case and a liquid cooling system can carry away the excess heat.
Yet Doughty says that during tests he's seen violent explosions of the type that could potentially rupture a steel case. If the liquid cooling also fails, a single battery could cause neighboring batteries to overheat, setting off a cascade of small explosions. Doughty says electric car companies may be able to engineer systems that are "acceptably safe," but he notes that, although "engineers always have multiple layers of safety, the worst accidents happen when, because of a very rare event, two or more of these multiple layers are compromised."
Even if such an accident is rare, there could still be a backlash against electric vehicles. In particular, Doughty is concerned about conversion kits for turning conventional vehicles or hybrids in lithium-ion-based electric cars (see "Plug-In Hybrids Are on the Way"). "The thing I worry about is that one of these days there's going to be a lithium-ion-powered vehicle that's going to have a pretty spectacular accident -- and then what are people going to say?"
Experts have two key recommendations for moving forward and producing even safer electric vehicles. First, automakers need to have a very strict screening process for their battery manufacturers, Verbrugge says. And, in the long run, Doughty says, it will be important to support research into new high-energy lithium-ion battery chemistries that are not prone to overheating.
GM plans to develop batteries with A123 Systems for its new electric vehicle.
Guest (Bill R)
Doesn't sound much worse than hauling around 15 gallons of gasoline.
Guest (oh yes)
it's much worse since lithium carries fuel and oxygen. once it burst into flame there is very little you can do to stop it. compared to gasoline you just use an ordinary fire extinguisher and fire is gone. you need a special fire retardant for lithium fires...
Guest
have you ever seen a car fire?
apparently not. "an ordinary fire extinguisher and fire is gone"? no, that is not at all the case.
Guest (Sir Lanse)
Get this car and a small wind generator. The car can recharge overnight and I won't need all the overhead to hook into the power grid. Hooking into my house/utility grid is where the big expense is.
Guest (Phil)
You don't think a "small" wind turbine (one that's large enough to recharge an electric car overnight) is expensive?
Guest (Ben)
Also, you could add squirrels in cages hooked to little generators to recharge the car as you drive. You could feed them their own crap.
Guest (Michael)
Thats just crazy enought to work
Your on the right track! However, I fear that the sheer amounts of crap generated from the 2 or 3 squirrels necassary may cause a major explosion - this would cause the batteries to explode. And the squirrels wouldn't have a cut off switch, so it would be impossible to stop this perpetual motion machine..
But dare to dream - people are always afraid of inovators like us. Hence this article in the first place. Does anyone question 60 or so litres of hydrocarbon in a fuel tank? Not anymore. Count the megajoules people!
Do you honestly think an extension cord is expensive? Or are you complaining about the increase in your electricity bill? Have you visited a gas station lately? When I owned a lead-acid electric vehicle my average monthly electricity bill went up by guess how much? $5 per month. That's less than you'll pay for 2 gallons of gas! How is that expensive???
Guest (Delafield)
A123 Systems - save lithium-ion battery?
A123 Systems (www.a123systems.com) makes a safe lithium-ion battery, I believe. See http://www.a123systems.com/html/tech/safety.html
Regards, Delafield
Guest (Environ)
I have read about this battery technology
Yes. And it is suppose to be able to stored 4 times energy than regular lithium ion battery and very safe with no possibility of explosion. When I read about it, I was very optimistic about the future. However seeing how politic is going to play into this, I don't feel so optimistic anymore.
Guest (Kevin Bullis)
Yes, A123 has produced a safe battery (see our stories, http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16894&ch=biztech and
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=15913&ch=nanotech)
Right now, however, they've engineered it for high power, not high energy storage capacity. This means it's not ideal for full electric vehicle applications such as Tesla's sports car.
Guest (JMPMan)
Guest (Walt van S)
Fire at A123's development lab
Are there any details about the fire? Cause? extent of damage?
Guest (Environ)
Guest (Benjamin G)
Hi Kevin,
I don't understand your comment about A123 batteries not being suitable for EVs. A123 claims twice the power density of traditional Li-ion, as well as intrinsic safety, faster charge/discharge, higher power delivery, and longer lifetime. What's not to like?
B.
Guest (Kevin Bullis)
Power density has to do with how much "umph" the battery can deliver--very useful in power tools. It is not the same as energy density, which is the total amount of energy a battery can store. Total energy is more important for electric vehicle applications, since it is the basis of range. With so many batteries on board to achieve range, there's going to be plenty of power anyway. A123 batteries have less energy density than (at least some) other lithium-ion battery chemistries.
Guest (Envrion)
Do you have any proof? I read the report at there website and it seems to indicate otherwise. Are you a stooge for the oil gangs? In other words, are you an oil gangster?
Guest (tc)
That energy density (capacity) and specific energy (power sourcing capability) are 2 different things?
The A123 = 3.3V, 2.3 AH, 70 grams. That calculates to 110 WH/Kg. In terms of Lithium Ion, it's better than Saphion's 90 WH/kg, (or state of the art NiMH @ 75 WH/kg), but it's a far cry from the often cited, and not very safe 2200+ WH/kg state of the art Lithium Ion cells. And of course... the cost will always be an issue. Are you willing to pay 3 times more for a battery that only offers 50% more capacity?
Guest (tc)
200 WH/kg Lithium Ion... not 2200... If only keyboards enjoyed the same advances as batteries. :D
Guest (Hugh E Webber)
Altair Nano testing safe Li Batteries in Car This Year
Most battery combustion problems occur at the terminals. Altair Nanotechnologies builds batteries with its proprietary nano-particulate titanate terminal coating, which allows a full charge in three minutes without overheating. The AltairNano batteries are being put into a car for testing this year.
Guest (Mark Shapiro)
The engineers are building several layers of safety into the batteries, and experience will lead to more improvements.
Better yet, electric cars need much less total energy than gasoline cars because electric motors are very efficient and you have regenerative braking.
You want safest? Drive less!
Guest (Kerry)
I recall that Kodak tried to market a Lithium 9 volt battery back in the eighties. The battery had a block of wax in it that was supposed to melt to stop any thermal runaway situation.
Guest (Jerry Jones)
The submarine USS Scorpion was lost because a defective torpedo battery fire caused the warhead to cook-off. The Navy knew it had a whole batch of defective batteries in service and covered it up, just like Ford and their Exploder, er Explorer and Pinto. It's cheaper to pay the lawsuits than fix the product. . . . .
Guest (rob)
Of course sailors can't sue the Navy...
Guest (kha)
The Scorpion went down in 1969. Battery technology has improved significantly since then.
Guest (Mike Swift)
The most probable cause of the Scorpion accident was a failure in a torpedos motor run system causing the torpedo to start and fill the forward torpedo room with exhaust from the motor. Pressure buildup in the torpedo room forced open the forward deck access hatch causing the torpedo room to flood, and sinking the boat.
Guest (Chris)
GM hires journalist to discredit Tesla Motors
Nice try, automobile-oil complex, but the trend is already begun and this is the beginning of the age of alternative fuel vehicles like Tesla's new electric roadster. Hiring a "journalist" to cover this supposed epidemic of exploding electric cars only proves that companies like GM and Ford are on their way to extinction and a campaign of disinformation is only going to piss off the public and hurry along the process.
Guest (Steve)
With such a big push from the government and politicans to use ethanol, expect lots of subsidizing from the government to build ethanol plants not newer and better batteries. While batteries will only get better with time, sitting more than 5 to 10 minutes to charge a battery is unacceptable to the average person. While it does take a lot of energy to produce this bio fuel it is on its way to being a commodity.
I completely agree, ethanol is not the answer. But its getting politicians lots of votes in midwest farm states. If Detroit was least bit serious about ethanol, they would produce high compression engines which greatly improve the mpg for ethanol. Current flex vehicles are a joke in my humble opinion. I have used E85 in my 03 fuel injected vehicle as experiment. No caution lites on dash appeared, performace was OK, but mpg dropped by 30 % or so. So....with current flex engines, we are really not reducing our dependence on foreign oil very much. I grew up on a farm, and seem to remember it took lots of natural gas produced nitrogen fertilizer to achieve any decent output of corn as bushels per acre. Switchgrass and with higher compression engines may make more sense, ie turn the ploughed midwest prarie back into buffalo grasses, etc. But, I am a technolgist so hope A123 has the initial answers / fix for USA. Anyone investing in Lithium or its production processes ?
Guest (kent beuchert)
GM didn't hire anyone - big anti-GM lie
I see the misinformation people are out in force - if they can't argue the facts, they start the slander machine. Is this fellow a paid purveyor of lies? Is Greenpeace paying this fellow
to spead lies to make a smokescreen
to cover up the dangers of batteries?
Guest (Kha)
This article isn't hyper-critical of Tesla - it simply raises a (very valid) point, and then emphasizes how safe Tesla cars actually are.
Did you read the entire article?
Guest (Jerry Jones)
Exactly, and if aspirin and gasoline cars were just now invented (and patentable) they would be unbelievably tightly controlled by the government and therefore unbelievably expensive. . . .
Guest (Steve Gehrman)
Valence Technologies Saphion Lithium ion batteries are 100% safe!!
Guest (John Marshall)
The moron who wrote this article needs to learn about "Google" a quick search on Lithium ion and safe brings you to Valence which has an incredibly safe lithium ion chemistry that does not over heat or catch fire.
Guest (Philip)
I am unfamiliar with their technology, but as someone who's hand built a lithium-polymer battery pack and used it to race across two continents, my ten bucks says John Marshall doesn't know what he's talking about. There's no need to insult any morons here. It's pretty obvious where the morons are.
Looking at a Valence data sheet, the first issue I see is that although the phosphate chemistry might be safe, it has less than half the capacity of an equivalent 18650 cell. And the capacity numbers are provided with an operating voltage down to 2.0V. At least in 'traditional' li-ion chemistries, draining a li-ion to 2.0V will severely damage the cell's capacity and cycle life.
That's not to say that phosphate chemistry li-ion cells don't have their place. However, for an equivalent car-sized battery pack compared to say a lithium-ion cobalt pack, you'd need more than double the mass.
Guest (Kha)
I'm not sure if we're all reading the same article or not...but the one I saw ended with a couple of paragraphs explaining why the lithium ion battery systems in electric cars are actually very safe.
Unless that text has a double meaning, I'm pretty sure it vindicates lion batteries in cars. It also answers questions from critics and potential worry-warts.
Guest (tc)
But it's barely more energy dense than the state ofthe art NiMH's that are on the market today. On the plus side... they do cost more than twice as much.
Guest (Gimpy)
http://digg.com/tech_news/Lithium_Ion_Electric_Cars_Another_Dell_Explosion_Waiting_To_Happen
Guest (Martin Eberhard)
Tesla Motors battery pack is designed such that the cells are spaced far enough apart and the thermal mass of the system is high enough that if any cell catches fire, adjacent cells do not catch fire. This is true regardless of whether or not the cooling system is running. The purpose of the cooling system is to increase the battery pack's life - we depend on no pumps for safety... (continued)
Guest (Martin Eberhard)
This is not a theoretical result. Tesla's engineers (together with with Exponent/Failure Analysys Associates - a firm known for expertise in lithium ion battery safety and failure analysis) have performed hundreds of successful tests to prove this safety. In each of these tests, we set a cell in the middle of a Tesla pack on fire (by heating the heck out of it) and observed the results. 90% of the tests were performed with no pumps running. 100% of the tests showed no propogation - a design requirement for shipping Tesla Roadsters... (continued)
Guest (Martin Eberhard)
Designing a safe, large lithium ion battery is difficult, but not impossible.
Saying that a lithium ion powered car is unsafe because somebody's laptop caught fire is about as absurd as saying that gasoline powered cars are unsafe because somebody's campstove caught fire.
Guest (John Reilly)
Actually the Redundacy You Need
May be a tape recoder for interviews, a press agent, and a good libel attorney if you were so sorely misrepresented.
Guest (Jason)
Thanks for setting the record straight
Touche...
Best of luck with your venture -- I still want a Tesla motorcycle...
Guest (Adam Henninger)
Martin, I admire what you are doing! However, Altair Nanotechnologies is producing nano-structured lithium titanate spinel based lithium ion batteries. These batteries are superior to the graphite based batteries that you are using in many ways, including, recharge time, and battery life. Why are you using, what seems to be, an inferior technology? Have you considered this technology for your production?
Guest (Chris)
If ICE engines were the new technology...
Imagine if batteries were the standard technology and the internal
combustion engine was its replacement. Do you think people would be
more worried about the small risk of a fire in a battery back or the
series of controlled explosions that happened thousands of times a
minute under the hood of an ICE car?
Guest (Hugh E Webber)
Model T would have been attacked: short range, unsafe, unreliable, no infrastructure
I have a guest blog on EVWorld.com which uses current anti-EV (electric vehicle) arguments against the original Ford Model T. There were almost no gas stations or good roads, the car broke down every 20 miles, it was unsafe and you could get a broken arm cranking it.
Guest
Does anyone drive a Model T today?
I see your point though, why are people so afraid of 'new' technology, like electric cars?
Just wait 20 or years - all the doubters will be jumping on the bandwagon...
Guest (Barry)
So petrol (gas) can't burn or cause an explosion?!?
Nothing new, it's the oil companies and people who is heavily invested in oil using negative "marketing" to delay the return of the electric car
Guest (protn7)
There are lithium ion batteries under investigation that do not ignite or explode. They have modified electrolytes that are inflammable. I gues that ultrasound could be used to see through the batteries and find badly constructed electrodes that start fires.
In consdering whether or not electric cars can be safe:
As an ASE Certified Consultant Educator, L-1 Advanced Engines, I can advise you that there are over 538,000 internal combustion systems which any given tech must be able to address at any given time for proper diagnosis and repair, and reduction of pollution.
A gas analyzer I use reports about 19% oxygen in our atmosphere. This is very different than the 21.7% that I read about 42 years ago in science books.
Comparing one sort of safety with another, more long-term condition of safety, I call your attention to this:
In terms of the amount of oxygen loss to our atmosphere, (from 21.7% to about 19% in the last 50 years only), this unsustainable loss of 20 percent of our planetary breathable oxygen is unacceptable. (Lots of folks will die at 10 percent oxygen, and very few will live in Denver). This use of oxygen (not just a mindset of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas gain) for the propulsion of most passenger vehicles is abjectly unacceptable in fact. Battery electrics fed by wind power or nuclear are absolutely the only solution given these new facts. Further loss beyond the 20 percent of our planetary oxygen already lost from internal combustion and other causes must be curtailed in the shortest possible order, because there just is not any more time left to do it. So, in relationship to how much planetary oxygen which will be left for future generations to breathe, the safety of electric vehicles is in fact, the very safest of all. Dan Petit.
Re: One kind of safety vs another
I believe internal combustion engine exhaust contains mainly, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and water, ie. in combustion the oxygen in the air is combined with the carbon and hydrogen present in the fuel. After combustion the oxygen is still here, just in another form. I think carbon dioxide is used by plants to make cellulose and plants then release oxygen. At this point I don't like internal combustion engines either. Better keep lots of plant around ? Think I need to start reading up on the carbon capture scrubbing etc. technologies the utility coal power plants developing now in trials, ie what form is the carbon in after they get done with it and how can we set its oxygen content free again ?
Is Safe Using Li-ion Camcorder Battery ?
http://www.Camcorder-battery-shop.com 2006-10-28
Some customer ask me the question"Is Safe Using Li-ion Camcorder Battery", as there are too many event of "battery recall" at present.the following is my answer.
There is the rare possibility that any battery can explode. Some battery designs are more prone to this than others. Being a name brand battery isn't always a good indicator that a battery isn't one of those that might possibly explode. Sometimes even name brand stuff does this.
These things are very rare but it does happen. This is the one thing you might be concerned about when it comes to batteries. BTW camera companies buy their batteries from a company that makes batteries for the most part. The only thing you can do is to check for reports of explosions on the web. In the past there was no good way of finding out these things without making a trip to the periodicals section of a good library.
I buy lots of aftermarket batteries. I generally try to check about a retailer since it's often hard to know exactly what batteries are being sold. If you find a dealer that is known to sell lots of batteries that don't have problems then you shouldn't have any problems.
Like I said, I have all sorts of batteries from a number of manufacturers and I've never had any problems with explosions. I have had batteries that really weren't all that good. The worst ones I have were actually Panasonic but I strongly suspect I used a charger that was too powerful for them.
Li-ion batteries do not explode, at least I have never been able to find a reliable report of the battery exploding however they have been reported to get very hot, hot enough to reach 6,000 degrees which could in some cases being more dangerous than exploding.
The reference given seems to be a bit outdated. It states "Similarly, Li-ion batteries for defense applications are being produced that far exceed the energy density of the commercial equivalent. Unfortunately, these super-high capacity Li-ion batteries are deemed unsafe in the hands of the public. Neither would the general public be able to afford to buy them" There are actually several Li-ion battery chemistries used but even the consumer Li-ion batteries can be dangerous if you try to cut them open or puncture them.
Most camcorders today use the Li-ion batteries, as well as cellphones and a lot of laptops.
There was an accident in my family early this week. My nephew was in a car fire. The suddenly turned off, when he started the engine again the car was set on fire.
What could have caused this?
The boy is in intensive care with burns.
I would appreciate if you have knowledge about soemthing like this to sahre it with me.
What new batteries are being developed? I've heard the Polymer Lithium-Ion Battery does not overheat or explode...any info?
Lithium-Ion Battery - Supply Demand for Lithium?
In our lithium work at TRU we have proactively studied and read many reports on the readiness of the lithium-ion battery for HEV and EV. Most expert opinion says that in about five years 2013 the technology will be ready and as a result the electric vehicle market will take-off like the proverbial hockey-stick. Yet none of these experts can explain succinctly why they expect this breakthrough to occur. If you have the explanation we would like to have it and I am sure the readers of this forum will too! Also if you are a company developing lithium batteries for electric vehicles please contact us at TRU urgently. We are engaged now - January 2008 - in developing a long range 2020 forecast of the lithium market and could include your company in our technical review of electric vehicle battery technology. The lithium supply-demand issue is much more complicated. The lithium industry is controlled by very few players and is quite secretive. In addition it needs real experts to estimate lithium reserves and whether it is economic to extract them. On the lithium demand side many of the numbers published in the industry come from very doubtful sources and have been proven to be inaccurate. Some of the forecasts that have been put out and then widely circulated have no foundation. And regretfully many forecasts for the electric vehicles and the lithium battery for those vehicles fall into this category. We at TRU have and are continuing to analyse the outlook for lithium on both the supply and demand side of the equation. However, our team includes lithium brine & mineral resource geologists, lithium processing specialists, battery & electric vehicle experts, lithium lubricants veterans, and the like. Our conclusions needless to say are very different from those usually presented. Please contact me through this forum or visit our website trugroup.com. The link to the TRU Group Inc lithium page is http://trugroup.com/Lithium-Battery.html
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Guest (L)
safe car
I'd like to read some about how safe is H cars.
Reply
Guest (kitk)
relative safety?
of course, as i say, life is a risk. all technologies have their risks, including organic farming or hunter/gathering! this technology will mature with experience, and probably become better than ever expected. early gas cars were,, expensive jokes, till they were made practical.
Reply
Guest (dH)
This article must be sponsored by the oil companies
I think petrol also can burn and blows up, I think that's not safe. Just see an example in any old american TV series ;)
Hidrogen also blows a small-medium crate around the car. Blows 50 times bigger than petrol can. Also the examples above the lithium-ion cells... 300 mobilphone energy cell registered as bad... How much mobil phone runs around the world? 500.000.000 ? Or more? Where is the danger? I will change my V8 to a Tesla or convert it to electric as soon it's possible.
Reply
Guest (kerry bone)
Avoiding the issue
Perhaps you'd beter read the article - it mentions the safety concerns of the electric car developers. Gasoline cars are not
particularly prone to causing
fire casualties. In 50 years, I've enever know anyone who was injured by a car fire. Do you? You have no data of either gas cars fires or future electric car fires to make any conclusions concerning relative safety. I don't think safety will have anything to do with whether electrci cars will succeed. They will fail because there is not now a practical electric battery. Plug in hybrids make a whole lot more sense than battery powered cars, which have no supporting infrastructure, even if practical batteries did exist. There is also the problem of a currently strained electric grid which couldn't come close to suporting electric vehicles, even if less than 10%
owned them. As of the here and now, electric cars will have no impact
on transporation. They're too expensive and too impractical.
Reply
Guest (Ed Riffle)
avoiding the issue
Just one point about the grid being strained. If the cars are charged at night on circuit controlled by the power company nearly all cars could get their charge without strainging the grid which is strained at peak times not on average.
Ed
Reply
dsewall
4 Comments
Re: Avoiding the issue
Umm, actually I do know of several deaths caused by gasoline-fed car fires.....and such fires became more common after introduction of catalytic convertors and high-pressure fuel systems with electric fuel pumps.
Reply
dsewall
4 Comments
Re: safe car
I wonder if H2 might actually be safer than gasoline in case of accident with fire, as it has lower energy density and is so light that it would vent rapidly into the air, whereas gasoline will not.
Reply
ThomasW
1 Comment
Re: safe car
No, unfortunately that may not be the case.
1. To store liquid hydrogene (H2), you need a tank which is cooled down. Mercedes have had great problems trying to solve this issue alone.
2. Leaking hydrogene is explosive when mixed with air and the rapid burn creates very high temperatures.
3. Even NASA experimented using liquid hydrogene in rocket combustion engines, but the project was aborted due to the uncontrolled burn.
4. Fuelcells fuled with hydrogene are very expensive due to the rare alloys needed to create a stable nonoxidating process.
5. Try looking up zeppelin's. The first versions used hydrogene, which were known as flying fuelbombs.
Reply