Are Lithium-Ion Electric Cars Safe?The use of a type of battery with a history of overheating raises safety concerns.
Laptops equipped with lithium-ion batteries occasionally overheat and catch fire. This has some people concerned about the use of this type of battery in new electric sports cars and kits for converting conventional cars and hybrid vehicles into all-electric cars. It's an exciting time for electric vehicles -- with regular announcements of increasing storage capacities for battery materials (see "Battery Breakthrough") and exotic, high-priced vehicles slated to come onto the market, such as the recently announced sports car from Tesla Motors of San Carlos, CA. But electric vehicles have failed in the past. If they're going to succeed this time around, they'll need to win over the general consumer, and that will mean, among other things, demonstrating that the powerful battery packs are safe. Lithium-ion batteries have long been favored for powering laptops and cell phones because they're small and light. But packing so much energy into a small space is also dangerous. The batteries have been known to burst into flames, sometime violently; and because both the fuel and the oxidizer are bundled into the battery, they can't be smothered like common fires, says Dan Doughty, who manages lithium-ion battery testing at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. The key safety challenges are preventing overcharging, overheating, and damage in an accident. In each case, chemical reactions can get out of control, causing "thermal runaway," which can generate temperatures hot enough to melt aluminum and cause batteries to explode, he says. According to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, from 2003 to 2005 more than 300 incidents occurred involving lithium-ion laptop and cell-phone batteries overheating or catching fire. Many of the incidents involved personal injury. This potential problem with lithium-ion batteries is multiplied by the thousands in vehicles. In the case of Tesla Motors' car, for example, almost 7,000 batteries are packed behind the passenger compartment to power the car (to an impressive 60 mph in about four seconds). But the company has done a lot to keep its battery-powered system safe -- much more than is done in laptops, says CEO Martin Eberhard. To keep temperatures under control, Tesla's engineers have developed an electronically controlled liquid cooling system. They have also included overcharging protection, three layers of fuses, and sensors that will trigger the batteries to disconnect in the case of high-temperatures, a sudden impact, or a roll-over. In fact, the decision to use many small batteries rather than a few very large ones was in part a safety consideration -- each battery and its relatively small amount of stored energy compared with the entire system is isolated and protected within its own steel case. And the entire system is also encased for protection in the case of an accident.
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BMW's Electric Car
11/19/2008
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
08/03/2006
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08/03/2006
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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.
08/03/2006
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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.
08/06/2006
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Ed
08/09/2006
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dsewall
08/29/2006
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dsewall
08/29/2006
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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.
ThomasW
04/06/2009
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08/03/2006
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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!
08/07/2006
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smithsomian
02/20/2008
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Regards, Delafield
08/03/2006
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08/03/2006
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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.
08/03/2006
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08/04/2006
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08/08/2006
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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.
08/04/2006
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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?
08/11/2006
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08/11/2006
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08/04/2006
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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!
08/03/2006
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08/07/2006
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naturlm
01/23/2007
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to spead lies to make a smokescreen
to cover up the dangers of batteries?
08/06/2006
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Did you read the entire article?
08/07/2006
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08/03/2006
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08/04/2006
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08/04/2006
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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.
08/04/2006
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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.
08/07/2006
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08/11/2006
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08/04/2006
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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.
08/04/2006
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08/05/2006
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Best of luck with your venture -- I still want a Tesla motorcycle...
08/05/2006
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08/08/2006
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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?
08/04/2006
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08/04/2006
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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...
08/07/2006
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08/09/2006
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08/10/2006
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08/10/2006
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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.
sciencedan
09/05/2006
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naturlm
01/23/2007
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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.
tancecom
11/08/2006
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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.
rose
03/15/2007
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smptedude
07/31/2007
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truera
02/20/2008
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