Podcast: eBike fire hazard, batteries are included

Hi Jimmy

I listened to the podcast and almost jumped through the speaker at you.

I have some technical experience and knowledge of lithium batteries, so I think my comments are relevant

If one looks at the incidence of lithium battery fires its more common in “cheap” personal vehicles and less likely on more expensive vehicles and consumer goods

The issue is not the batteries. The issue is the chargers. The cheap personal vehicles (hover boards, escooters, ebikes) are built to a price. Whilst the manufacturing quality of the batteries is obvioulsy lower, the chemisrty they use is shared with most other uses.

However lithium batteries need carefully designed chargers (You can consider a good charger to be essentially a number of chargers, one for each cell in the battery)

The cheap chargers dont have this facility and its one cells that fails and causes the incident.

As well people do not use the matching charger for their battery and the same incident occurs.

Lay people (that is strata committees , strata managers and building managers) have no hope of working out what the right charger for a battery is.

But banning battery operated appliances is not the solution.

First solution is to get the government to most closely regulate the imported appliances, making sure that a compatible charger is supplied

The second solution is to educate the greater public to only use the supplied charger for their device

Sorry Jimmy

I had no issue with what you said.
It’s just that I got excited about the topic, and that the general media ( not you) don’t understand where the problem lies and misreport the incidents.

If one was to believe the general media , all electric vehicles ( cars, bikes, scooters) should be banned, when in fact the issue is the chargers and their use.