- #51
Ptero
- 16
- 2
"Didn't that Volt catch fire 2 weeks after it had been crash tested?"
In this instance, the battery pack had sustained damage and the battery coolant had drained out. The fire occurred, I think, as you state, two weeks later and was blamed by all investigators on a mechanically-damaged cell that initiated the thermal runaway, likely due to a combination of physical damage and a lack of coolant. GM subsequently retrofitted the battery armor on the Volt, beefing it up, and the US DOT accepted this as an effective fix and canceled the investigation. Personally, I do not consider this anything but a kludge based in inadequate investigation. But this was the accident where GM and the NHTSA learned that these battery packs could not be left to sit idle after an accident like their conventional kin, so I am inclined to cut them some slack as a giant and ponderous organization, despite the fact that they failed to listen to some of their more knowledgeable people. However, I am also not satisfied that the entire truth has been told - because of politics - yet there have been no more fires, and no deaths or injuries that I know of, so perhaps I am being too skeptical in regard to magnesium-type Li-Ion, regardless of the fact that it, too, contains flammable electrolyte. Gasoline, diesel, ethanol, propane, natural gas and hydrogen, after all, are also flammable and can ignite in accidents. But spontaneous ignition and thermal runaway, as has occurred in smaller consumer cells and in aviation cargo, or ignition during charging or discharging, or most dramatically with the thermal runaways of Cobalt Li-Ion that resulted in the B-787 fleet grounding, should not be acceptable, imo. Cobalt Li-Ion remains a unique and frightening story. There are serious and unresolved physics problems here - perhaps even fundamental physics barriers that cannot be overcome and extend across the gamut of Li-Ion (this is my personal belief - what do you think?). I do not understand why Cobalt Li-Ion was not entirely abandoned by the aviation industry when the currently insurmountable problems came to light, unless politics played a role. In commercial transport history, it has become de rigueur that virtually all latent design threats to aircraft operations have been immediately addressed and resolved. The implementation of design features with known dangerous faults is unusual in the extreme. That said, I remain suspicious of undetectable dendrite formation in all (flammable electrolyte) Li-Ion battery types so I am keeping a close eye on pure EV as well as hybrid batteries as they age.
In this instance, the battery pack had sustained damage and the battery coolant had drained out. The fire occurred, I think, as you state, two weeks later and was blamed by all investigators on a mechanically-damaged cell that initiated the thermal runaway, likely due to a combination of physical damage and a lack of coolant. GM subsequently retrofitted the battery armor on the Volt, beefing it up, and the US DOT accepted this as an effective fix and canceled the investigation. Personally, I do not consider this anything but a kludge based in inadequate investigation. But this was the accident where GM and the NHTSA learned that these battery packs could not be left to sit idle after an accident like their conventional kin, so I am inclined to cut them some slack as a giant and ponderous organization, despite the fact that they failed to listen to some of their more knowledgeable people. However, I am also not satisfied that the entire truth has been told - because of politics - yet there have been no more fires, and no deaths or injuries that I know of, so perhaps I am being too skeptical in regard to magnesium-type Li-Ion, regardless of the fact that it, too, contains flammable electrolyte. Gasoline, diesel, ethanol, propane, natural gas and hydrogen, after all, are also flammable and can ignite in accidents. But spontaneous ignition and thermal runaway, as has occurred in smaller consumer cells and in aviation cargo, or ignition during charging or discharging, or most dramatically with the thermal runaways of Cobalt Li-Ion that resulted in the B-787 fleet grounding, should not be acceptable, imo. Cobalt Li-Ion remains a unique and frightening story. There are serious and unresolved physics problems here - perhaps even fundamental physics barriers that cannot be overcome and extend across the gamut of Li-Ion (this is my personal belief - what do you think?). I do not understand why Cobalt Li-Ion was not entirely abandoned by the aviation industry when the currently insurmountable problems came to light, unless politics played a role. In commercial transport history, it has become de rigueur that virtually all latent design threats to aircraft operations have been immediately addressed and resolved. The implementation of design features with known dangerous faults is unusual in the extreme. That said, I remain suspicious of undetectable dendrite formation in all (flammable electrolyte) Li-Ion battery types so I am keeping a close eye on pure EV as well as hybrid batteries as they age.
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