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Lithium Ion Battery Fallout
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Lithium batteries don't appear to work very well in extremely cold weather. Some travelers using rented Telsa's in the area where the temperature was very cold from the vortex bubble reported not being able to get very far on a charge.The batteries supposedly fare better in very cold weather compared to other kinds of batteries, but there is a limit, which isn't that cold, where the recharging process fails to work because the battery is too cold. For small batteries you can warm them up before charging. For car batteries, you are out of luck if the charger is outside or in unheated locations.
The lithium batteries quit working at -4 degrees F, or -20 Celsius because you can't recharge them. This is because the chemical reaction that recharges the battery is temperature sensitive. Below freezing temperatures the charging performance starts falling off until it quits recharging at -4F.
It looks like the lithium batteries need to be very well insulated from the cold to be able to recharge. At this time batteries are not well insulated. If they have just been discharged the batteries should be warm enough to recharge.
Another problem with cold weather is keeping the interior of the vehicle warm. With a combustion engine the engine creates excess heat that has to be carried away from the engine. This is free heat energy.
For electric cars, the heat has to be generated directly from the electrical system, which uses up some of the battery charge. There is no alternator because it would only draw power off the battery, otherwise it would be a perpetual motion machine.
However, if an alternator was set up so it only ran when the car was going downhill it could be used to charge the car battery. So far this has not been done. It might be difficult to properly maintain and would require another level of electronics to be added to the vehicle.
The cold temperature limit might also put a damper on bolting lithium batteries to the outside of houses for all electric houses. The batteries would have to be inside and might still need to be well insulated if the batteries run out of power, the temperature drops, preventing the batteries from being recharged.
Large scale alternative power systems using large battery systems might need additional protection for the batteries in colder locations. Where the ambient temperature is always above freezing no special considerations would be needed.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/brother-si...
https://batteryuniversity.com/article...
https://www.toolstop.co.uk/blog/knowl...
https://www.batteriesplus.com/blog/po...
Electric vehicles the same model as the original combustion engine model can weigh 2,000 to 3,000 more pounds because of the batteries. There are lighter weight batteries but they are not economical to use at this time.There are lightweight compact cars on the road that weight between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds. A collision between one of these cars and a large size electric vehicle would cause a lot of damage to the lighter weight car.
The companies that run controlled test crashes are having to redesign their equipment to handle the heavier vehicles.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-officia...
Fires sparked by lithium batteries are confounding firefightersStarting out almost like spontaneous combustion fires, hard to put out, emitting poisonous gasses, lithium batteries are like random bombs scattered around everywhere.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fires-spar...
Mod
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/06/21/e...
"Fire chiefs have issued a warning after an e-scooter was blamed for a devastating blaze that tore through a row of seven houses. The Telegraph has the story.
Families in Gosport, Hampshire, were forced to flee their homes on Wednesday evening, after a fire broke out at a three-storey property before spreading to surrounding buildings.
A spokesman for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service said: “The initial reports and the preliminary fire investigation has found that an e-scooter is the most likely cause of the fire.
“The main danger occurs when e-bikes and e-scooters are left on charge and unattended in homes or in communal areas such as hallways and stairwells.
“Charging lithium batteries indoors increases the fire risk, especially if charged overnight when occupants are sleeping.“
A total of 10 fire engines and 60 firemen worked through the night to control the blaze, which spread through seven out of the eight houses in the terrace."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024...
NYC has been trying to get companies and businesses to comply with their ordinance that only certified batteries can be used or sold in New York City. With no real effective enforcement there has been little success.This is a statement from Amazon after months of going back and forth:
"In response to questions from THE CITY, Amazon spokesperson Heather Layman emailed a statement, asserting, “We continuously monitor our store, and if we discover a product was undetected by our automated checks, we address the issue immediately and refine our controls. We take action to maintain a safe selection for our customers, including removing non-compliant products, and outreach to sellers, manufacturers, and government agencies, such as DCWP, for additional information, when appropriate.
“We ensure our selection meets industry-accepted standards, and we develop innovative tools to prevent the sale of unsafe products,” Layman added."
The only thing that amazon does is put a label on the product's advertisement that says:
"In March the mega-platform finally began posting a notice on some items red-flagged by DCWP: “This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. Please choose a different delivery location.”"
Please choose a different delivery location, no mention that is prohibited to purchase or use the product in New York City.
https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/05/16/eb...
Mod
Its a good idea to keep track of lithium batteries.There probably has to be a better way.
Not advisable to leave lithium batteries laying around.
A dog mistook a lithium battery used to charge cell phones as a chew toy and started chewing on it. The dog crunched the battery casing hard enough to cause some of the plates in the battery to touch each other which caused a short inside the battery which ignited the lithium in the battery which ultimately started a house fire.
The video shows how quickly it all happened.
https://apnews.com/article/dog-house-...
Two dogs and a cat escaped out of a pet door but the house had serious damage.
Mod
There have been more fires since then. It appears that the bigger batteries for e-bikes are the primary cause for concern. People using e-bikes and scooters are storing the machines inside their residences.
New York City public housing authority is thinking of banning lithium battery powered e-bikes from being stored or charged inside the housing units after the latest fire with fatalities. They are also contemplating banning the use of secondary market lithium batteries.
This has people with wheel chairs and scooters for medical reasons asking for exceptions to the rules that haven't been made yet. People using the e-bikes for personal use and delivery use would have to store and charge their bikes outside of their residences.
The people using the e-bikes and scooters want a safe, community oriented place to charge and store their machines to go along with the banning. This makes a lot of sense. The batteries are like gas cans, a lot safer but still possessing the same hazards.
It is just another example of the digital's community half baked, half completed productions that put profits ahead of safety, again and again. People think that because they are electric powered they don't carry the same risks as gas powered vehicles.
There needs to be a public infrastructure for these machines because of their construction and use, they are unsafe at any speed and need to be treated that way. Which means that someone has to pay for it. It's just another form of pollution that gets overlooked because it eats up the manufacturers profits.
The NY news is reporting double the numbers the fire dept has put out. The news says it is 104 fires, which is the 60 known cause fires plus another 44 that were investigated by the fire dept which apparently were or still are unresolved. The problem is that once the batteries start burning they are highly destructive burning with a temperature of 2,000 degrees Celsius/3632 degrees Fahrenheit. This requires a lot of fire fighting material to put out the fire which probably makes it very hard to know which started first, the battery fire or a fire that started it burning.
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/...-