E-Bike Batteries Are Catching on Fire Way Too Often And delivery workers are demanding safe charging stations.

[AHicks]

Production bikes? Hard to get more production than Rad Motors. WIth their kind of sales numbers, sure, the odds are that something eventually goes wrong unless you go to +3 sigma as far as preventative measures. From the above article cited by OP.

"Even well-known models aren’t foolproof. Just ask Marcus Hoed, the head of Dutch-X, an upmarket New York City delivery company that has contracts with Whole Foods and Amazon. Until last year, he was operating a fleet of 100 e-bikes by Rad Power Bikes — a popular Seattle-based brand — that came with what Hoed describes as no-name, “white-label” batteries. One morning, five minutes into a charge cycle, one of the batteries caught fire and exploded inside Dutch-X’s downtown warehouse;"

I don't want to get a war going here, but my bet is if that operator, with 100 Rad bikes being charged regularly in a commercial environment (red flags going up yet?), was following ALL suggested practices (for instance avoiding charging a frozen or overheated battery?), using chargers that have not been abused (eg charge jacks yanked from batteries by pulling on the cable?) their chances of that fire would have been greatly reduced.

Further, if RAD (or anyone else) did have a big issue with the batteries they were using, wouldn't it figure this guy wouldn't be the only one complaining? How many battery fires have been noted in the RAD thread here? I've been following it for quite a while, and I don't remember seeing one, let alone enough of them to get me real concerned about potential issues....

I am not saying it's impossible to have an issue with a production bike battery. My point is that given NORMAL usage, by a retail end user, the chances of a fire are pretty remote.

You do as you like.....

 

[tomjasz]

Thomas, you're welcome to be cautious as you like, but to sit there and try to scare people with production bikes, using suggested charging practices per owners manual, into being as cautious as you prefer, is something you can count on being called out on every time I see it. As can EASILY be seen by the lack of reported fires nation wide, your cautions are overkill, period.

I doubt seriously that we would be seeing the kinds of sales numbers we're seeing if the chances of a fire were even close to what you are implying. If you can't/wont agree, we'll need to agree to disagree on this point and move on.... -Al

We’re fellow curmudgeonly posters.
Go ahead and call me Tom.
And thank you for your permission.
Scare? No, use common sense. deciding an OEM hasn’t had a fire based on forum posts seems supercilious.
i clearly qualified my reasoning based on storing, charging and owNing a stock of bare cells and a dozen cased battery packs. Go ahead call me out. I’ll take my thousands of direct contact experience with customers over your forum posts. Folks aren’t anxious to own their disasters however big or small on forums.

Fires will bring more regulations. Due diligence may save a home, and perhaps lives. Living in an apartment especially and NOT protecting your family and neighbors is scandalous and careless. I guess you haven’t seen the numbers in NY. Or worse make noise about the extent I go, when the point is some level of protection for charging and a fire plan is something we all should consider.

 

[tomjasz]

Reports of ebike fires like stories about EV fires a few years back were news because they were rare. Perhaps I’m being naive but I charge following the Bosch manual.

A very different animal. Look at some battery pack tear downs. A UPP pack (OEM standard) is like comparing a Yugo to a Bentley. I’d be right there with you if I had BOSCH packs.

 

[m@Robertson]

That guy in the Bronx was charging nine packs at once. I'm certain they were cheap, no-name Chinese packs and I'm just as certain the whole shebang was wired up like a drunk's Christmas tree. All on the same circuit no doubt, using equally cheap, no-name Chinese chargers. How can you NOT expect frequent fires in that kind of environment? This is why so many people are SO stupid when it comes to bargain pricing their ebike batteries.

Its like setting up a campfire with gasoline. Sure it can work quickly and safely, but make one mistake and boom. Thats much of why people don't do it. Because they recognize the stupidity. It remains to be seen how long it will take for people to wise up here insofar as buying smart and charging smart is concerned.

1. Quality batteries from reputable domestic sellers, where you know what it is they are putting inside the pack. If you can't afford a high quality battery, ebikes are not for you. Period.
2. low amperage, reliable chargers that can be counted on to trickle down to their set voltage and not just keep on charging
3. Fanless chargers so a 2-cent fan failure does not cause an overheating / fire risk inside the charger.
4. Mechanical (!) cutoff timers so the owner can calc the time needed to reach the desired charge and then the power gets cut before anything bad can possibly happen.
5. 80% charging does not only preserve battery life. It also gives a fudge factor so if all safeties fail (bms, charger voltage level) AND your forced power cutoff goes a little late, you have charged to say 85% instead of 105%.

Expecting safety to result from the kinds of practices common in the environment described in that article (delivery riders, hard use, all weather use etc.) is foolish. Won't happen. Will result in catastrophic failures. But its all operator error from the moment they decided to buy the bike with that battery in it.

 

[mschwett]

long before i got into eBikes, i built and flew drones with big 20-30AH 6S1P lipo batteries - the kind made from big flat slabs rather than premanufactured 18650 cells. these batteries are literally just the cells wired together. no balancing hardware, no cutoffs, nothing. often rated for 25-100C, the whole thing can be discharged in a 20-30 minute flight, literally down to zero if you’re extremely stupid or uninformed. plug that thing back in to “charge” and the risk of a fire is probably better than 50/50. ditto using a dumb charger which just keeps on going past a safe cutoff level. people also often charge them FAST, to get back in the air fast.

i charged those batteries in the concrete basement of the high rise (concrete) building i live in, in battery bags in a corner 5 feet or so away from anything else. debated an ammo box but decided what i was doing was enough. even with extremely careful flying, charging, and storage two of them ($600/ea) got badly puffed up after a few months of use.

on the other hand, the 18650 packs in my eBikes, which have brand name and state of the art BMS systems to manage their voltage, discharge rate, charge rate, and battery health (presumably including their impedance, hopefully on a somewhat cellular basis) give me zero worries whatsoever. there’s really nothing i can do to them that is going to hurt them, and i trust that major manufacturers (and their lawyers) have taken basic precautions. the batteries aren’t even removable.

between those two extremes there’s a wide range of danger levels. i think the real problem is that people don’t always know where they sit on that continuum.

 

[tomjasz]

This is a battery from a well-known reseller that claims to build batteries in the USA. Glued cells to get higher Ah in a Reention Dolphin case. With the same cheap BMS used by budget China pack builders. I think I paid around $5 for spares from the Chinese user.

View attachment 112957

 

[AHicks]

long before i got into eBikes, i built and flew drones with big 20-30AH 6S1P lipo batteries - the kind made from big flat slabs rather than premanufactured 18650 cells. these batteries are literally just the cells wired together. no balancing hardware, no cutoffs, nothing. often rated for 25-100C, the whole thing can be discharged in a 20-30 minute flight, literally down to zero if you’re extremely stupid or uninformed. plug that thing back in to “charge” and the risk of a fire is probably better than 50/50. ditto using a dumb charger which just keeps on going past a safe cutoff level. people also often charge them FAST, to get back in the air fast.

i charged those batteries in the concrete basement of the high rise (concrete) building i live in, in battery bags in a corner 5 feet or so away from anything else. debated an ammo box but decided what i was doing was enough. even with extremely careful flying, charging, and storage two of them ($600/ea) got badly puffed up after a few months of use.

on the other hand, the 18650 packs in my eBikes, which have brand name and state of the art BMS systems to manage their voltage, discharge rate, charge rate, and battery health (presumably including their impedance, hopefully on a somewhat cellular basis) give me zero worries whatsoever. there’s really nothing i can do to them that is going to hurt them, and i trust that major manufacturers (and their lawyers) have taken basic precautions. the batteries aren’t even removable.

between those two extremes there’s a wide range of danger levels. i think the real problem is that people don’t always know where they sit on that continuum.

Agreed. Some don't care, some want to know more. Hope here is, they'll be familiar with the practices spelled out in their owners manuals.

Long RC background here as well. That provided a huge leg up on battery tech going into the bike side of things...

 

[john peck]

Aluminum foil as a liner to contain a fire is a terrible idea. Al foil burns through in seconds. High temperatures will vaporize the foil.

Back in the early 60s some of us in the NAR(National Assoc of Rocketry) used powdered
aluminum in rocket fuel. It is especially flamable mixed with powdered rust.

 

[bexamous]

long before i got into eBikes, i built and flew drones with big 20-30AH 6S1P lipo batteries - the kind made from big flat slabs rather than premanufactured 18650 cells. these batteries are literally just the cells wired together. no balancing hardware, no cutoffs, nothing. often rated for 25-100C, the whole thing can be discharged in a 20-30 minute flight, literally down to zero if you’re extremely stupid or uninformed.

That musta been a huge quad, but yeah I got piles of lipos for quads.. they get abused all the time, 2 minutes to overdischarged..

I only charge packs at 3-4C, but I know lots of people who charge 5-10C to help heat pack up before flight. Its crazy how much you can abuse packs and I'm not sure I've really had a lipo faily poorly. Fact you don't have a BMS kinda makes things safer almost.. With lipos every time I charge them I keep an eye on cell's IR. Soon as I see cell's IR doing worse than rest of pack, like I mark it as this pack is trash. Next time I fly it I discharged it way down and toss it. Not that BMS makes it less safe, but using BMS lets everything going on to be hidden from you.

Actually I had an ebike pack with a bad cell, initially I didn't even know. But then got app on phone to connect to BMS over bluetooth and could see while charging one cell's IR was higher than the rest. BMS never really complained and let me cycle the pack. Realistically I could likely continue to cycle it for a long time and chances are it wouldn't actually fail catastrophically.. but it could. I guess one issue is I'm sure lots of packs are built with junk cells.

 

[tomjasz]

But then got app on phone to connect to BMS over bluetooth and could see while charging one cell's IR was higher than the rest. BMS never really complained and let me cycle the pack.

Wow! Very cool! Who built the battery with a BT BMS capable of IR readings? Which app?

Thanks!!!

 

[mschwett]

That musta been a huge quad, but yeah I got piles of lipos for quads.. they get abused all the time, 2 minutes to overdischarged..

I only charge packs at 3-4C, but I know lots of people who charge 5-10C to help heat pack up before flight. Its crazy how much you can abuse packs and I'm not sure I've really had a lipo faily poorly. Fact you don't have a BMS kinda makes things safer almost.. With lipos every time I charge them I keep an eye on cell's IR. Soon as I see cell's IR doing worse than rest of pack, like I mark it as this pack is trash. Next time I fly it I discharged it way down and toss it. Not that BMS makes it less safe, but using BMS lets everything going on to be hidden from you.

Actually I had an ebike pack with a bad cell, initially I didn't even know. But then got app on phone to connect to BMS over bluetooth and could see while charging one cell's IR was higher than the rest. BMS never really complained and let me cycle the pack. Realistically I could likely continue to cycle it for a long time and chances are it wouldn't actually fail catastrophically.. but it could. I guess one issue is I'm sure lots of packs are built with junk cells.

not a quad, a heavy lift hex. a couple of them over the years, close to 30 minutes flight time holding a full frame DSLR with gimbal and fast lens…

and yep, you definitely have to pay close attention when you don’t have a BMS lol.

 

[Handlebars]

Power strip has circuit breaker? Better than extension cord. Your chargers probably get hot like most chargers w/o fans. Don't put the chargers on carpet, etc.

As someone else said, "always charge in a place where you wouldn't mind a fire."

Just don't go to bed with ebike chargers at work on your batteries. I never do. I make sure they're done. I won't leave a battery charging if I leave the house either.

That's good advice. I expect powerbars to not even function, so I feel less secure than I might if I trusted power bars.

 

[bexamous]

Wow! Very cool! Who built the battery with a BT BMS capable of IR readings? Which app?

Thanks!!!

Oh sorry, not that cool, just the Xiaoxiang BMS app (actually there are a few versions of it, just one that lets you watch per-cells voltages). When cells are basically balanced either putting big charge load seeing one cell read much higher than the rest, or putting on big discharge and seeing same cell sagging much more. Eg got 13 cells in series, all balanced, then apply load and you have 12 cells within 0.01v of eachother and one outlier 0.07v high/lower depending on type of load. That is basically a difference in IR you're seeing, if they started at same voltage within a 5 seconds they're effectively still at same state-of-charge, its just IR differences showing up. Annoying thing with ebikes is you can't just easily pull apart cells in parallel and figure if you just happen to have 5 below avg cells in parallel or if you've got 4 avg cells and one piece of garbage making them look bad.

 

[Handlebars]

We’re fellow curmudgeonly posters.
Go ahead and call me Tom.
And thank you for your permission.
Scare? No, use common sense. deciding an OEM hasn’t had a fire based on forum posts seems supercilious.

adjective: supercilious

1. behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others

Is that really what you mean? Wrong word choice?

 

[tomjasz]

. Annoying thing with ebikes is you can't just easily pull apart cells in parallel and figure if you just happen to have 5 below avg cells in parallel or if you've got 4 avg cells and one piece of garbage making them look bad.

i’d been following this fellow begiining his first experiments in late 2014.
i can no longer safely weld as the welder can interfere with my pace maker. Check out the link. There’s another kit by Vruzend. Several issues and growing pains but latest kit parts are much improved. I have a few unused Vruzend kits. But am done using them for anything more than small projects like outdoor led landscaper lighting. Or auxiliary 2-4 cell accessories. Like my battery heater. 2s and 4s BMS are uber cheap.
Jehu Garcia dis a Youtube review but I cannot hang through the slow paced presentations. Long winded...

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[Ravi Kempaiah]

Another tragic incident and one more reason why people should look for safe, CE/UL-certified batteries and not look for a bike that is simply the lowest price.

E-bike battery fire destroys inside of South Florida bike shop

CUTLER BAY, Fla. (BRAIN) — An e-bike battery charging unattended at a longtime South Florida bike shop caught fire and destroyed the interior and much of the inventory, but no injuries were reported.Andante Bike Shop — located south of Miami at 20277 Old Cutler Rd. — was engulfed in flames...

www.bicycleretailer.com

 

[vincent]

that sucks

 

[Mike TowpathTraveler]

Another tragic incident and one more reason why people should look for safe, CE/UL-certified batteries and not look for a bike that is simply the lowest price.

E-bike battery fire destroys inside of South Florida bike shop

CUTLER BAY, Fla. (BRAIN) — An e-bike battery charging unattended at a longtime South Florida bike shop caught fire and destroyed the interior and much of the inventory, but no injuries were reported.Andante Bike Shop — located south of Miami at 20277 Old Cutler Rd. — was engulfed in flames...

www.bicycleretailer.com

Not good news for the battery rebuilder out in Nevada; which I believe is a fairly well known business in that field.......

"The shop learned a replacement battery was unavailable, so it sent the battery to a company in Nevada to be rebuilt. After receiving the battery back from Nevada, the shop left the battery charging overnight before the fire."

 

[Marci jo]

Another tragic incident and one more reason why people should look for safe, CE/UL-certified batteries and not look for a bike that is simply the lowest price.

E-bike battery fire destroys inside of South Florida bike shop

CUTLER BAY, Fla. (BRAIN) — An e-bike battery charging unattended at a longtime South Florida bike shop caught fire and destroyed the interior and much of the inventory, but no injuries were reported.Andante Bike Shop — located south of Miami at 20277 Old Cutler Rd. — was engulfed in flames...

www.bicycleretailer.com

I always charge the bike outside, away from the house. In the rare event I take the battery off for charging, it's on my kitchen counter, as I putter around the house. Still, nothing is 100% and there's a small extinguisher nearby. Hubby thinks I'm a bit over cautious.

Hey Ravi,
Is the CE/UL certification number normally indicated on the battery?

 

[tomjasz]

Eunorau and BTN will likely remain untouched and the US citizens involved will have their insurance put on notice and likely pay. Been there and have seen just that. Sadly there’s going to be some painful tragedies before end users wake the frick up.