Should we be worried about our batteries?

Before kicking this open conversation off, I want to state that I am not worried about the quality of the Evolve product. Also BoostedBoards has a very good reputation on the build quality and I see the recent events as just unfortunate. It could happen to any product and in the past I even had my MacBook Pro battery kind of explode on me (something happened and the battery expanded to 3x it's size damaging the whole MacBook). So it can happen to any product or brand.

My question is a little broader and involves my concern that batteries seem to be the achilles heel of many products (Samsung Galaxy S7, BoostedBoards v2, Hoverboards, Tesla, etc. and I am wondering how we should deal with this.

Does it involve a change of using devices/equipment and should we take more care about products which now have high performance batteries on board which are more sensitive? Are we demanding high performance (speed, range, quick charging) and quick new releases of products (v2, v3, etc.)? Or is this out of our hands and up to the manufacture who needs to step up their game and deliver a more reliable product to allow companies to use their OEM product and built something exciting and great?

 

apples business philosophy is a bit different to googles though. Why would apple spend millions on new features when people will still line up for days to buy a new product with no reviews? Google from my visit is full of fresh out of college kids who wanna make cool things for their own use using googles resources and then maybe implement them into products if they are worth it.

also to answer thewhizz question, you should be worried about most batteries tbh. It only takes a tiny bit of oxygen to hit the inside of a battery cell to cause a fire. Especially things that take hard hits when you crash like a board. Just lately the media has been putting it as a top story. I've heard dozens of stories of iphones, androids and vape pens setting fire to pillows while being charged over night. Weather from using a dodgey cable like the note 7'scase of just the over charging protection not kicking

I do agree with alex though that businesses are pushing out products too fast to satisfy customers especially yearly devices cycle devices like phones at the moment.

 

I showed my friend who's a hardware engineer whom also knows about batteries a pic of one of the vented V2 Boosted boards. When I showed him the pic of the battery venting he said immediately it looked like a short with a connection rather than an internal failure with a battery cell. Also reading a comment from one user who had his Boosted v2 board vent, he wasn't charging it which then its already past the overcharging / bms management stage.

 

Where did you pull that rubbish from? => " It only takes a tiny bit of oxygen to hit the inside of a battery cell to
cause a fire."

That's like telling people don't pump gas nor open your gas tank because its going to explode when it becomes in contact with air.

Battery fires happen due to shorts not by having oxygen (I presume you mean air which is only 20.95% O2). You can't have a fire, any fire in a vacuum. Battery shorts can happen while the battery was made if QA wasn't followed and a piece of metal dust ends up in the cell and shorts it, due to a short inside of the battery due to being crushed / or bent, and in samsung's case pushing technology too fast to make the batteries so dense that a top layer shorted with the bottom layer of cells. And of course overcharging / discharging the cells.

You can open a battery that's charged just fine in open air as long as you don't short it.

Please verify your information.

 

Don't forget we are already using standard batteries (like the AA's) etc. in many toys, tools and other stuff (and these get beaten up by kids anyway) and nothing ever happened to these. Also looking at the millions of smartphones out there, if there was a serious problem with batteries we would see many more cases of devices exploding/catching fire, etc.

So batteries are in the basics very save but in the new uses we put them through and the much higher capacity we demand that is what causes a more sensitive situation. It will take a little time and these kind of events which push technology forward.

 

Traditional AA's don't pack the same amount of energy as a LiPo AA, however the same point you made is clear. There are so many gadgets that are running LiPo based battery technology. Can you imagine how many batteries have been produced since the technology has been released. Now count all the incidents and mishaps. Now count the ones based upon pure battery failures. Its not a big percentage at all, its a drop of water in the ocean.

No matter what type product you're selling, QA is needed the entire way of the manufacturing process of every component that's going into that product to make it reliable and safe. And lack of it and failure to create a product within its technical specifications will in the end result in failure and possible injury or death.