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[Richard230]

Well it is Christmas time and Hover Boards are the latest hot gift. As you may have heard, they are catching on fire all over the country. (One just caught on fire in a local Bay Area city last night when it was charging for the first time, sending a 9-year old girl screaming into the street in panic).  Amazon and the airlines have banned them from being sold to the unsuspecting public and flying above 200 feet. The talking heads on TV and the radio are having a field day this morning.  I just finished listening to a "safety expert" suggesting that all Lithium batteries are dangerous (including the ones in vehicles) and should be investigated by the government before your children are turned into toast, homes are burned down and airplanes and drones start falling out of the sky. Nothing mentioned about cheap Chinese batteries and knock-off toys, though.  Gotta get on that bandwagon quick before it changes tracks and moves on to something else.   

[Erasmo]

Well to be honest lithium-ion cells can be dangerous when charged/handled incorrectly.

[Cortezdtv]

So is gas..... Espically while smoking.....


You can't spontaneously combust a lithium battery even if you were smoking around it......




Pretty obvious which is safer while sitting at a stagnant state

[Richard230]

On the other hand, as far as I know, the Chinese are not supplying gasoline to our local gas stations that will self-combust. However, they seem to have the tendency to do so with lithium batteries on occasion. 

[Cortezdtv]

Face---> Palm




I know it's bad now

Truth in label truth in product shouldn't be a thing of the past

[Justin Andrews]

We've had a couple of board fire's over here as well.
The news have been quite good about highlighting the fake product side of the story, warning customers to be careful about purchasing cheap too good to be true deals.

Tis the season to be ripped off I guess.


However when I comes to battery fire concerns, I like to link / tell people about this video.

[CrashCash]

Plus I don't think it's all the batteries fault, it's also the incredibly crappy ultra-cheap chargers that abuse the hell out of them until the magic smoke comes out.

Most of the laptop & other computer battery fires I've seen have been traced down to knockoff chargers, or sometimes a bad batch of factory chargers where an out-of-spec component led to overcharging.

Of course trying to EXPLAIN this to anyone...

[Richard230]

Burning hoverboards made the front page headline of my newspaper today, followed by a long article discussing the hazards of lithium batteries and listing all of the airlines that are banning them from their aircraft.     Nothing about cheap (or no) BMS circuits in the cheap hoverboards many of which are not UL listed.