Lithium-ion batteries—in phones, in cars—sometimes blow up

Of the several rechargeable battery technologies we have, lithium-ion batteries run a whole bunch of stuff. Your phone almost certainly has one in it. Electric and hybrid cars largely rely on them.

This makes sense. Lithium-ion batteries are reasonably durable and perform well, with good capacity, charge times, and so forth.

There’s just one thing about them, though. It, uh…well…it seems sometimes they blow up. Probably you’ll never have one that does, but the chance isn’t zero.

And we’re not talking about an “extremely small but non-zero” sort of chance, like whether something will spontaneously disintegrate and reintegrate at some other location in the universe. It’s a small chance, but maybe not one you’d hang “negligible” on. Got me? I mean, after all, there have been a number of high-profile recalls to deal with this issue. Should we ask Samsung about their Note 7?

Now, a spontaneously igniting smartphone could cause you a significant problem. But you can also imagine a number of scenarios in which it would happen but be self-limiting. If you’re using it, you’d probably feel it heating up. You can throw a smartphone to the ground or floor.

Demonstrably, we consider the smartphone risk an acceptable one.

Now check out this Tesla captured on video in a garage in Shanghai:

Dramatic, yes? Would you be OK if that happened with you in it? If it happened at speed, would you detect it before hurting yourself or someone else? Want to chance it?

Are there other Tesla fires? Yeah, quite a few. Is it a small percentage of all of the Tesla vehicles out there? It is.

But I bet it’s still much larger than spontaneous fire percentage numbers for any other modern car with a conventional powertrain.

Lithium-ion batteries—in phones, in cars—sometimes blow up

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