Worth clarifying that ebikes are not restricted to 15.5mph they just only assist up to 15.5mph. You can pedal as fast as you like. Not that most people dont know this but the unfamiliar might see it as a distinct disadvantage.
I still occasionally see people smoking while getting gas at the gas station.... whenever I see that, I just drive to another gas station. when I was a kid(probably 6th grade?), I saw a gas station blow up two blocks away from my school. Even at that distance, it looked scary.
4 years ago my ebike caught fire. It happened on New Years eve around midnight, and the sound of the fire igniting and flaring sounded like a firework, so I ignored it until the sound got louder. I went downstairs to investigate and saw a small fire coming out of the motor. Luckily I had a powder fire extinguisher to use to put it out. An investigation on it determined there was some faulty wiring and it had caused a short in the motor; it wasn't the battery itself that failed, but the high current it released through faulty wiring that caused the motor to burn up. The replacement bike from the manufacturer failed after only a few weeks, so I never went back to that brand again (Wisper Bikes)
Most people wouldn’t buy no name car and thus you should probably should stay away from no name bikes without a ton of good reviews and good customer service.
@@TheSnowwraith I know most the big e-bike brands, other than the big, big names like trek, giant, canyon there is flx, aventon, heybike, samebike etc but I never heard of that one. Maybe because it’s British though.
3:14 40% of fire burnt bikes had aftermarket chargers, but also 43% of bike owners questioned have aftermarket chargers. Maybe its nothing to do with the charger. And more to do with people removing their BMS or building their own packs from used cells.
Aftermarket/sketchy chargers MIGHT be an issue, but it rarely will be, except we talk about crazy stuff like i did, put a 7A fast charger on a 10Ah battery. I mean it charges quick as fk, but the also small BMS for sure screamed hard and the batteries itself get warm while charging. Tho i am aware of a potential fire hazard and either look often if nothings burning yet or just pick the slow, original 2A charger where i am pretty sure, lets say 99,9%, that it wont go up in flames. Most of the time, its low quality cells, used/unmatched ones, very old, abused cells etc, and i dont even mind people building such "big" battery packs without any BMS or proper charging electronics at absolute least, thats just dumber than dumb.
@@papalegba6796 I mean it depends. A friend had a electric cargo trike which LiIon battery got bad. There was like 1/10 of the space under the seat used by the battery, the rest was storage. To make it on a budget, we took 5 AGM/Lead batteries, connected them in series to match the 52V original LiIon battery and installed a cheap but also reasonable fast charger for those batteries. Those AGM batteries are 100% safe, at worst they leak acid, and this cargo trike is that heavy, it doesnt matter if it weights 100kg or 115 kg, just much space lost under the seat. In fact since we increased the capacity to nearly double its size, it goes even further than with LiIon before!
The simple answer is that the manufacturers of e-bikes and conversion kits should include the chargers to go with them. That way nobody will have to buy the universal chargers and that could help to lower the amount of fires in the home. It is the same with mobile phones as well. The manufacturers need to start including chargers to go with the phone, and it will bring down the amount of house fires that will happen.
Nonsense. Especially after the part with the "phone chargers"... i hope you have realised already it doesnt matter much anymore which charger you use, USB-PD charging protocol etc, ever heard of? There is no overcurrent or overvoltage possible on modern USB devices getting charged, the charger and charged device "communicate", either digital via data pins or via resistors so the power supply/charger supplies only the demanded voltage (charging speed limited by the phone/charged device) and current (where the charger becomes the limit when you are current limited) Chargers are NOT the issue. Bad quality batteries and cheap cells are the reason. Chargers on basically every scooter and most e bikes are SIMPLE/DUMB, they have a target voltage, mostly slightly above the fully charged battery voltage and they deliver ALWAYS the same current until they "turn off" when no load is detected (aka battery full) I charge my 10Ah scooter battery with a DIY charger, i can set the voltage and current manually depending on the needs, and the only thing which burnt off once was this DIY charger itself, where i overestimated its power capacity, so it was my fault somehow. Its the same as with my "charger", the DC DC converter i use btw, BAD QUALITY. After looking closer at my burnt dc dc converter, it turned out the big power MOSFET burnt down (and only this component!), result of a weak thermal solution, cheap thermal pads stacked together to make contact to the (otherwise big and effective) heatsink with fan. I rebuilt this DC DC converter with my own, lighter/smaller cooling solution and guess what... it can handle even slightly more power than advertised without burning now! Even a cheap charger wont harm a good quality battery in a way that it catch fire. Most batteries are old, had a mechanical damage shortly before they are burning/gassing or are just bad quality. And even with "bad quality" batteries you can be safe - just know they are more risky and treat them like this.
the battery chemistry with poor thermal runaway characteristics should have much greater regulations focused on these faliure modes over a certian capacity and LFP should be used in these products far more, which does not have a thermal runaway risk
My ebikes battery died on me and it was covered by the warranty but the damn shop is dragging its feet by not replacing it. They offer no advise how to get rid of it. The problem with ebikes batteries if its damage it could be the battery management system as well. In my view ebikes batteries must have fire proof batteries, a fire poof case, a explosion proof case, and they must be water proof not water resistant. What i advise is for people to take their battery out/off the bike and put it in fire/explosion proof bag. If the battery is on the bike and cannot be removed, i would cover it with a fireproof and explosion proof sleeve. If you live in the UK or northern Europe where there is it rains a lot do not buy ebikes, as i have said before they are not waterproof and if water gets into the battery it could damage it. The goes for controller, display unit and motor in the rear wheel. Also there issues of the battery may be being unstable if they are damaged. They are also in impossible to dispose of as Royal mail will not handle them in postage. This means you have to go to a specialise disposal postal service and its not clear where you get take them once damaged. I would ask the fire brigade or your local council what to do. Bike shops are useless on this, they should not be as they are selling ebikes without proper customer care. If you do not follow my advise you could lose a lot of money and potentially lose your home in a fire or worse. Do not get me wrong ebikes are great when they work but its a new tech and we the customer are not being told the whole truth about them. One day ebikes will be very common and very safe, (due to improve tech and laws) and their range and power will be brilliant but at the moment they are not safe in my view or worth the money. Also check out your bike type, can you get a replacement battery if the one you have goes bad, how is disposal etc and how good is the shop you bought them from? If a shop has a just a mobile number avoid them like the plague, do not get cheap Chinese batteries off amazon also put them in a fire bag.
Agreed; get a purpose made e-bike, which comes with a battery (with BMS) from reputable brand such as Bosch, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and ensure the charger which comes with the battery matches the voltage. Not worth your life or family’s to get it wrong and skimp.
I often wondered if most of these Ebike explosions where from miss use, in other words using the wrong charger, Im in a facebook ebike group where i was arguing with a guy who was recommending a charger for a brand of ebike, the charger was 4.5amp but the batterys max charging was 3amps, He was boasting about how quicker he can charge his battery over standard chargers, even when i pointed out his errors he was quick to jump on me and tell me how wrong i was, end of day if thats what he wants to do then fair enough, but dont recommend dangerous activity's to others who are alot less educated in the care of lithium batterys I almost think we are now at the stage where the Government needs to step in and start educating people on the risks of incorrect use of batterys, cause from my experience majority of the population are completely unaware of it
You did a good thing. Also with e-bike and e-scooter theft they are usually resold without the charger of course. Big problem for both theft and battery safety.
V sound battery advice whatever the PLEV. Manufacturers using sub standard or sub spec batteries on their products are putting their entire brand at risk, as consumers will generally blame the brand itself rather than the make / type of batteries installed. Alas even with reputable PLEV / battery brands, serious issues can also be a result of rider abuse, crashes, inadequate or no regular maintenance checks 😕 Keep up the great work Electroheads! 👍🙏
Some amount of required certification would help. There are extensive electrical codes for houses and the EU regulated motors severely but that's not where the hazard lies. A modicum of regulation for batteries and chargers is appropriate.
Make sure your eBike comes from a reputable brand & dealer. Make sure the battery is UL (NA) CE (EU) UKCA (UK) certified. As well as having a proper IP rating for the rain. Make sure the battery has cells from Samsung, LG... If unsure contact the dealer or the bike company directly. I have an Eskute Pulluno eBike and it's rubbish the battery died after 6 months & the charging brick got dangerously hot. It got CE certified but I don't trust the cheap Chinese eBike brands. Ultimately watch the battery when charging and stay safe. ⚡
You can get a fireproof bag to charge them up in for £20-£30. I've got 2 of them & they give some piece of mind but I still don't leave them unattended when charging. Could you guys test some to see what happens if the battery goes on fire inside the fireproof bags. £20-£30 is way cheaper than your house.
For the record, I wrote an informative response to this, and it disappeared. I've had enough of youtube's comment-deleting shenanigans and won't be writing any more detailed comments because of it. The short answer is, don't expect your £30 bag to stop an e-bike battery fire
Seems a safer solution would be one of those sturdy steel cabinets made for storing flammable materials. Most come with a vent option for routing fumes outside (you have to also get the appropriate ducting).
Rubbish, its better to charge them in a bag that is bang and fireproof than without. If the battery is prone to getting over heated in such a bag, then dump the bike completely and get rid of the battery its not safe.
I have an electric bike, and it came from Halfords. It was also very expensive! It takes only 6 hours to charge and I keep a fan near it to cool the charger, which it came with by the way. However, I think this is a very worrying thing for us all, because people have regretted buying E-bikes and EVs and now are no longer buying them. The news also made people say on social media they wont buy an EV. Look at Luton airports fire. People blamed an EV! But it was a diesel, no, hybrid Range Rover! Diesel isn't flammable! I do think EVs and E-bikes are becoming a worry, even my mum said first thing to me after the Luton airport fire, I don't want an EV, but thankfully i had an E-bike before the news!
167 battery fire incidents is actually pretty bad. Going by your numbers, that means 1 in 9,000 e-bike batteries caught fire that year. For context, the UK saw 1 road death per 20,000 vehicles in 2019. Obviously, you can't really equate deaths to fires since a fire is technically survivable, but the point still stands that you have a higher chance of your e-bike catching fire than dying in a car in the UK. Even with your example of laptops, modern laptops and cellphones have a 1 in a million chance of catching fire. So the rate of e-bike battery fires is over 100x that of mobile devices. I'm still a firm believer that e-bikes are the future of mobility, but lets not try to downplay the numbers to forward the agenda. They can and must be made safer. There's currently a wild-west situation going on with no-name Chinese manufacturers pumping out low quality batteries with incompatible charging equipment.
I just sold my e-scooter. There have been so many fires and I don’t have a safe place to charge it. The lithium batteries have a long way to go before they are safe for use in vehicles. There has to be an internal system which will cool down a hot cell before thermal runways occurs.
An important note that can cause would also be e-scooter and e-bike theft. They will be resold without the charger causing the incorrect chargers to be used.
Battery management systems only regulate voltage in groups of cells if one cell is high and another is low, the group is defined OK and voltage is still applied to the high voltage cells. Only the groups are balanced
I wasn't going near any of them things. But since you say Lithium batteries are mostly safe, I'll give it a go. My job at the firecracker factory, is a sweaty pain in the ass, and I'm just pissed off, by quitting time everyday. But there's a plug in the break-room. Thanks for your advise.
Amazon floods the market with ebikes (and other household appliances) that do not comply with any safety regulations, and they cost less than half of the ebikes that can be bought in stores. This is not acceptable, because it is not possible to place the responsibility on the buyer to know the technical differences between a quality battery, and a dangerous battery.
Some fire response agencies use walls they can erect around a lit BEV then fill the resulting container with water to keep the vehicle submerged long enough to cool the pack below a self-sustaining temperature. Uses a lot less water and keeps the fire from reigniting. So the metal box filled with water to submerge the pack isn’t a bad idea.
A big Also...all the warnings that vape users are given to only carry spare Li ion batteries in approved cases, I wonder how many think it'll never happen but enough people have had their pocket explode for it to pop up on news occasionally
Consumer advice for battery safety should included "likelyhood", "severity" and "detectable" i.e. FMEA risks analysis. 1 - It dangerous to brush aside the 40% of ebike fires came from 3rd party universal charger and not addressing the 60% 2 - Battery technology with higher than 100WH were considered dangerous by airline. so it not wright to say laptop is now safer. When dell battery fire happened in 2005 due to no air circulation to laptop blocked when using thick table cloth causing the 60nm chip to overheat affecting battery to overheat. 3 - UL standards for battery and charging safety requirement for BMS have only been introduced this year. So it take time for this design change to take place for consumer to see. Rather than relying Samsung to self regulate battery safety, note 8 remembered?
40,000 vehicle fatality in America every year For +300 million people, That means it's the same number of people dying every year in a car. Is that are e-bike fires total. So one in 10,000 chance every single year that you could die in a car Versus one in 10, 000 e-bikes catching fire and most likely not killing you Personnel, I'll just take my regular bike
The difference between laptops and e-bikes. E-bike batteries have way more lithium therefore way more explosive. Anything I would recommend is buying a decent brand name battery.
I would recommend EM3ev for batteries, they make great batteries and they are produced in China by an English man. Homemade batteries could be a fire risk if you dont know what you are doing. I purchased a cheap 52v lithium battery and the on off switch on it didn't work, there was no power coming out of the battery. I carefully took the case off of it and discovered that one of the wires wasn't even connected, but it did have a bms,so I fixed the wire and use it on my ebike here in Thailand.
A video so abominably stupid or blind-foldedly evil - it could almost be sponsored by the battery industry. He sounds like the Drs who said cigarettes were safe. Over-charging, an impact or a hot summer and you can say goodbye to your house and your departed family.
Using the info just from Zurich, an insurer that covers possibly less than 1% of the market is not good. So the first step is to get proper accurate information. That way WE the public and experts can properly assess the issues. Is the problem less than 0.1% or greater than 5%? Alas your core data grab is not sufficient to give any clear answers. You could well have hit on two key areas. 1) There may be faulty manufacture of certain batteries. We know the quality control of laptop, tablet and phone batteries works, so is it a new manufacturer? Only having accurate data on which bikes have caught fire and what batteries they had, can this be assessed. 2) Using inappropriate chargers. It could be most of the problem, but due to the lack of data, we do not know. The EU do do good things sometimes and bringing in a universal charger for phones is one of them. Although the phone industry itself may argue. Having a single standard charger type for phone completely rids the problem for inappropriate chargers. Should this legislation not be the same for E bikes? If every E bike had the same sort of charger, if that is the catalyst for many of the fires, that would be a simple fix. E bikes are definitely part of the future, but with accurate data, then that future can be safer.
@@Mitchell-lc5kj I doubt the E-Bike industry is dying off. It's alive, and well where I live. I figured there might be 2-3 additional E-Bikes in the rural town I moved to. More like 3-4 dozen.
@@Mitchell-lc5kj And no, not all E-Bikes "explode." Of course there's occasional fires but the vast majority are due to suspicious circumstances. You're not gonna have a serious issue with a quality bike, and battery pack unless you go screwing with them.
Why? Why are universal chargers even for sale? Clearly far too many people are far too dumb to be trusted with things that can go boom. I'm beginning to think that those calls about needing a licence to ride a bicycle aren't as ridiculous after all.
You have not shown any other than say fire bags do not work. Where is your evidence they do not? I have asked twice now. Even if the bag only lasts 30 seconds its 30 seconds extra to get out the house. So while your batteries are not protect, if that what you want then fair game its your life. Me i have a peace of mind.
I've been building lithium battery packs for years now. I'm building one now as I write this. There is nothing wrong with using. Cheap third party battery chargers LOL. It goes without saying it needs to be the same voltage as the battery pack. If charger has wrong voltage & higher amp rating. Than BMS is rated It doesn't matter if you got expensive OG charger or cheap Chinese knock-off. It's still going to over or under charge battery pack. Fires normally happen with cheap fake cells. With cheap BMS board some cells got out of balance. And other cells get over charged. Also lot of battery builders don't build them properly. And cells rub against each other. then damage then fires
I watch a certain TH-camr who has an EV car and he was trying to get quotes to insure his EV car and some insurance companies are refusing to insure EV cars. Apparently his insurance has doubled since last year
Worth clarifying that ebikes are not restricted to 15.5mph they just only assist up to 15.5mph. You can pedal as fast as you like. Not that most people dont know this but the unfamiliar might see it as a distinct disadvantage.
I still occasionally see people smoking while getting gas at the gas station.... whenever I see that, I just drive to another gas station. when I was a kid(probably 6th grade?), I saw a gas station blow up two blocks away from my school. Even at that distance, it looked scary.
4 years ago my ebike caught fire. It happened on New Years eve around midnight, and the sound of the fire igniting and flaring sounded like a firework, so I ignored it until the sound got louder. I went downstairs to investigate and saw a small fire coming out of the motor. Luckily I had a powder fire extinguisher to use to put it out. An investigation on it determined there was some faulty wiring and it had caused a short in the motor; it wasn't the battery itself that failed, but the high current it released through faulty wiring that caused the motor to burn up. The replacement bike from the manufacturer failed after only a few weeks, so I never went back to that brand again (Wisper Bikes)
Most people wouldn’t buy no name car and thus you should probably should stay away from no name bikes without a ton of good reviews and good customer service.
@BlackTnGurl The thing is that Wisper isn't a no name company when it comes to ebikes
@@TheSnowwraith I know most the big e-bike brands, other than the big, big names like trek, giant, canyon there is flx, aventon, heybike, samebike etc but I never heard of that one. Maybe because it’s British though.
I had a Wisper ebike years ago, and I never had a problem with it.
@@BlackTnGurlI still have my Whisper eBike, since 2017. It doesn't get the amount of use it used to. But they're a well established brand.
I do deliveroo on my ebike and one of the apartment buildings I regularly deliver to has a notice about no ebikes being allowed within the premisies.
3:14 40% of fire burnt bikes had aftermarket chargers, but also 43% of bike owners questioned have aftermarket chargers. Maybe its nothing to do with the charger. And more to do with people removing their BMS or building their own packs from used cells.
There's a whole cottage industry of unqualified mechanics tinkering with ebikes to keep them going on the cheap. Probably has something to do with it.
Aftermarket/sketchy chargers MIGHT be an issue, but it rarely will be, except we talk about crazy stuff like i did, put a 7A fast charger on a 10Ah battery. I mean it charges quick as fk, but the also small BMS for sure screamed hard and the batteries itself get warm while charging.
Tho i am aware of a potential fire hazard and either look often if nothings burning yet or just pick the slow, original 2A charger where i am pretty sure, lets say 99,9%, that it wont go up in flames.
Most of the time, its low quality cells, used/unmatched ones, very old, abused cells etc, and i dont even mind people building such "big" battery packs without any BMS or proper charging electronics at absolute least, thats just dumber than dumb.
@@papalegba6796 I mean it depends.
A friend had a electric cargo trike which LiIon battery got bad. There was like 1/10 of the space under the seat used by the battery, the rest was storage.
To make it on a budget, we took 5 AGM/Lead batteries, connected them in series to match the 52V original LiIon battery and installed a cheap but also reasonable fast charger for those batteries.
Those AGM batteries are 100% safe, at worst they leak acid, and this cargo trike is that heavy, it doesnt matter if it weights 100kg or 115 kg, just much space lost under the seat. In fact since we increased the capacity to nearly double its size, it goes even further than with LiIon before!
@@HubbHubbs not many people are going to build their own batteries you’re dreaming
Another example, the Boeing 787 was grounded in 2013 for problems with its Li-ion battery having a thermal runaway.
The simple answer is that the manufacturers of e-bikes and conversion kits should include the chargers to go with them. That way nobody will have to buy the universal chargers and that could help to lower the amount of fires in the home. It is the same with mobile phones as well. The manufacturers need to start including chargers to go with the phone, and it will bring down the amount of house fires that will happen.
Nonsense. Especially after the part with the "phone chargers"... i hope you have realised already it doesnt matter much anymore which charger you use, USB-PD charging protocol etc, ever heard of? There is no overcurrent or overvoltage possible on modern USB devices getting charged, the charger and charged device "communicate", either digital via data pins or via resistors so the power supply/charger supplies only the demanded voltage (charging speed limited by the phone/charged device) and current (where the charger becomes the limit when you are current limited)
Chargers are NOT the issue. Bad quality batteries and cheap cells are the reason.
Chargers on basically every scooter and most e bikes are SIMPLE/DUMB, they have a target voltage, mostly slightly above the fully charged battery voltage and they deliver ALWAYS the same current until they "turn off" when no load is detected (aka battery full)
I charge my 10Ah scooter battery with a DIY charger, i can set the voltage and current manually depending on the needs, and the only thing which burnt off once was this DIY charger itself, where i overestimated its power capacity, so it was my fault somehow.
Its the same as with my "charger", the DC DC converter i use btw, BAD QUALITY. After looking closer at my burnt dc dc converter, it turned out the big power MOSFET burnt down (and only this component!), result of a weak thermal solution, cheap thermal pads stacked together to make contact to the (otherwise big and effective) heatsink with fan.
I rebuilt this DC DC converter with my own, lighter/smaller cooling solution and guess what... it can handle even slightly more power than advertised without burning now!
Even a cheap charger wont harm a good quality battery in a way that it catch fire. Most batteries are old, had a mechanical damage shortly before they are burning/gassing or are just bad quality.
And even with "bad quality" batteries you can be safe - just know they are more risky and treat them like this.
I think Electroheads should compile a list of the safer Chinese e-bikes to buy i.e. the brands that have never exploded.
the battery chemistry with poor thermal runaway characteristics should have much greater regulations focused on these faliure modes over a certian capacity and LFP should be used in these products far more, which does not have a thermal runaway risk
My ebikes battery died on me and it was covered by the warranty but the damn shop is dragging its feet by not replacing it. They offer no advise how to get rid of it. The problem with ebikes batteries if its damage it could be the battery management system as well. In my view ebikes batteries must have fire proof batteries, a fire poof case, a explosion proof case, and they must be water proof not water resistant.
What i advise is for people to take their battery out/off the bike and put it in fire/explosion proof bag. If the battery is on the bike and cannot be removed, i would cover it with a fireproof and explosion proof sleeve. If you live in the UK or northern Europe where there is it rains a lot do not buy ebikes, as i have said before they are not waterproof and if water gets into the battery it could damage it. The goes for controller, display unit and motor in the rear wheel. Also there issues of the battery may be being unstable if they are damaged. They are also in impossible to dispose of as Royal mail will not handle them in postage. This means you have to go to a specialise disposal postal service and its not clear where you get take them once damaged. I would ask the fire brigade or your local council what to do. Bike shops are useless on this, they should not be as they are selling ebikes without proper customer care.
If you do not follow my advise you could lose a lot of money and potentially lose your home in a fire or worse. Do not get me wrong ebikes are great when they work but its a new tech and we the customer are not being told the whole truth about them. One day ebikes will be very common and very safe, (due to improve tech and laws) and their range and power will be brilliant but at the moment they are not safe in my view or worth the money. Also check out your bike type, can you get a replacement battery if the one you have goes bad, how is disposal etc and how good is the shop you bought them from? If a shop has a just a mobile number avoid them like the plague, do not get cheap Chinese batteries off amazon also put them in a fire bag.
Agreed; get a purpose made e-bike, which comes with a battery (with BMS) from reputable brand such as Bosch, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and ensure the charger which comes with the battery matches the voltage. Not worth your life or family’s to get it wrong and skimp.
It took me a while to realise this channel is just a marketing sales channel.
I often wondered if most of these Ebike explosions where from miss use, in other words using the wrong charger,
Im in a facebook ebike group where i was arguing with a guy who was recommending a charger for a brand of ebike, the charger was 4.5amp but the batterys max charging was 3amps,
He was boasting about how quicker he can charge his battery over standard chargers, even when i pointed out his errors he was quick to jump on me and tell me how wrong i was, end of day if thats what he wants to do then fair enough, but dont recommend dangerous activity's to others who are alot less educated in the care of lithium batterys
I almost think we are now at the stage where the Government needs to step in and start educating people on the risks of incorrect use of batterys, cause from my experience majority of the population are completely unaware of it
Definitely.
You did a good thing. Also with e-bike and e-scooter theft they are usually resold without the charger of course. Big problem for both theft and battery safety.
V sound battery advice whatever the PLEV. Manufacturers using sub standard or sub spec batteries on their products are putting their entire brand at risk, as consumers will generally blame the brand itself rather than the make / type of batteries installed.
Alas even with reputable PLEV / battery brands, serious issues can also be a result of rider abuse, crashes, inadequate or no regular maintenance checks 😕
Keep up the great work Electroheads! 👍🙏
Some amount of required certification would help. There are extensive electrical codes for houses and the EU regulated motors severely but that's not where the hazard lies. A modicum of regulation for batteries and chargers is appropriate.
BMS Battery Mgt Sys also check the CE stamp of approval. That way along with the correct 💯 charger will minimise the risk.
Make sure your eBike comes from a reputable brand & dealer. Make sure the battery is UL (NA) CE (EU) UKCA (UK) certified. As well as having a proper IP rating for the rain. Make sure the battery has cells from Samsung, LG... If unsure contact the dealer or the bike company directly.
I have an Eskute Pulluno eBike and it's rubbish the battery died after 6 months & the charging brick got dangerously hot. It got CE certified but I don't trust the cheap Chinese eBike brands.
Ultimately watch the battery when charging and stay safe. ⚡
Excellent! Clear information about the level of risk, causes and how to avoid it. Thank you!
You can get a fireproof bag to charge them up in for £20-£30. I've got 2 of them & they give some piece of mind but I still don't leave them unattended when charging. Could you guys test some to see what happens if the battery goes on fire inside the fireproof bags. £20-£30 is way cheaper than your house.
I would NOT rely on or use a "bag" to charge a battery in. Placing the battery in a bag will cause it to be MORE LIKELY to overheat. Not good.
For the record, I wrote an informative response to this, and it disappeared. I've had enough of youtube's comment-deleting shenanigans and won't be writing any more detailed comments because of it. The short answer is, don't expect your £30 bag to stop an e-bike battery fire
Seems a safer solution would be one of those sturdy steel cabinets made for storing flammable materials. Most come with a vent option for routing fumes outside (you have to also get the appropriate ducting).
Rubbish, its better to charge them in a bag that is bang and fireproof than without. If the battery is prone to getting over heated in such a bag, then dump the bike completely and get rid of the battery its not safe.
@@Mulberry2000 it simply isn't going to work, so it's completely pointless
I have an electric bike, and it came from Halfords. It was also very expensive! It takes only 6 hours to charge and I keep a fan near it to cool the charger, which it came with by the way. However, I think this is a very worrying thing for us all, because people have regretted buying E-bikes and EVs and now are no longer buying them. The news also made people say on social media they wont buy an EV. Look at Luton airports fire. People blamed an EV! But it was a diesel, no, hybrid Range Rover! Diesel isn't flammable! I do think EVs and E-bikes are becoming a worry, even my mum said first thing to me after the Luton airport fire, I don't want an EV, but thankfully i had an E-bike before the news!
A d.i.y worx battery self combusted and set my garage on fire it wasn't even plugged in! 20k damage 🎉😢
167 battery fire incidents is actually pretty bad. Going by your numbers, that means 1 in 9,000 e-bike batteries caught fire that year. For context, the UK saw 1 road death per 20,000 vehicles in 2019. Obviously, you can't really equate deaths to fires since a fire is technically survivable, but the point still stands that you have a higher chance of your e-bike catching fire than dying in a car in the UK. Even with your example of laptops, modern laptops and cellphones have a 1 in a million chance of catching fire. So the rate of e-bike battery fires is over 100x that of mobile devices.
I'm still a firm believer that e-bikes are the future of mobility, but lets not try to downplay the numbers to forward the agenda. They can and must be made safer. There's currently a wild-west situation going on with no-name Chinese manufacturers pumping out low quality batteries with incompatible charging equipment.
I just sold my e-scooter. There have been so many fires and I don’t have a safe place to charge it. The lithium batteries have a long way to go before they are safe for use in vehicles. There has to be an internal system which will cool down a hot cell before thermal runways occurs.
An important note that can cause would also be e-scooter and e-bike theft.
They will be resold without the charger causing the incorrect chargers to be used.
Battery management systems only regulate voltage in groups of cells if one cell is high and another is low, the group is defined OK and voltage is still applied to the high voltage cells. Only the groups are balanced
It's because idiots keep tampering with the bikes and trying to bypass the limiters. Same story with e-scooters.
I wasn't going near any of them things. But since you say Lithium batteries are mostly safe, I'll give it a go. My job at the firecracker factory, is a sweaty pain in the ass, and I'm just pissed off, by quitting time everyday. But there's a plug in the break-room. Thanks for your advise.
Amazon floods the market with ebikes (and other household appliances) that do not comply with any safety regulations, and they cost less than half of the ebikes that can be bought in stores.
This is not acceptable, because it is not possible to place the responsibility on the buyer to know the technical differences between a quality battery, and a dangerous battery.
I charge my bike battery in a metal box. If it catches fire all i got do is fill with water to put it out. Although very unlikely.
U cannot put ebike battery out with water only sand etc or specialised equipment.
Some fire response agencies use walls they can erect around a lit BEV then fill the resulting container with water to keep the vehicle submerged long enough to cool the pack below a self-sustaining temperature. Uses a lot less water and keeps the fire from reigniting.
So the metal box filled with water to submerge the pack isn’t a bad idea.
Li-ion batteries can burn underwater ...
A big Also...all the warnings that vape users are given to only carry spare Li ion batteries in approved cases, I wonder how many think it'll never happen but enough people have had their pocket explode for it to pop up on news occasionally
Consumer advice for battery safety should included "likelyhood", "severity" and "detectable" i.e. FMEA risks analysis.
1 - It dangerous to brush aside the 40% of ebike fires came from 3rd party universal charger and not addressing the 60%
2 - Battery technology with higher than 100WH were considered dangerous by airline. so it not wright to say laptop is now safer. When dell battery fire happened in 2005 due to no air circulation to laptop blocked when using thick table cloth causing the 60nm chip to overheat affecting battery to overheat.
3 - UL standards for battery and charging safety requirement for BMS have only been introduced this year. So it take time for this design change to take place for consumer to see. Rather than relying Samsung to self regulate battery safety, note 8 remembered?
40,000 vehicle fatality in America every year
For +300 million people, That means it's the same number of people dying every year in a car. Is that are e-bike fires total.
So one in 10,000 chance every single year that you could die in a car
Versus one in 10, 000 e-bikes catching fire and most likely not killing you
Personnel, I'll just take my regular bike
The difference between laptops and e-bikes. E-bike batteries have way more lithium therefore way more explosive. Anything I would recommend is buying a decent brand name battery.
I haven’t had a single problem with my electric transport.!! I’ve been riding the electric bike for a year and driving the electric car for four!!
I would recommend EM3ev for batteries, they make great batteries and they are produced in China by an English man.
Homemade batteries could be a fire risk if you dont know what you are doing.
I purchased a cheap 52v lithium battery and the on off switch on it didn't work, there was no power coming out of the battery.
I carefully took the case off of it and discovered that one of the wires wasn't even connected, but it did have a bms,so I fixed the wire and use it on my ebike here in Thailand.
What happens...if u get sued ..,
If your frightened of lithium ion you want to fly drones with lithium polymer, got to keep them outside
A video so abominably stupid or blind-foldedly evil - it could almost be sponsored by the battery industry. He sounds like the Drs who said cigarettes were safe. Over-charging, an impact or a hot summer and you can say goodbye to your house and your departed family.
Dear Lekkiyeds another great vid, sound advice, totally R E P U T A B L E 😂 - is he from Rochdale 😂 well done Champ!
Using the info just from Zurich, an insurer that covers possibly less than 1% of the market is not good. So the first step is to get proper accurate information. That way WE the public and experts can properly assess the issues. Is the problem less than 0.1% or greater than 5%? Alas your core data grab is not sufficient to give any clear answers.
You could well have hit on two key areas.
1) There may be faulty manufacture of certain batteries. We know the quality control of laptop, tablet and phone batteries works, so is it a new manufacturer? Only having accurate data on which bikes have caught fire and what batteries they had, can this be assessed.
2) Using inappropriate chargers. It could be most of the problem, but due to the lack of data, we do not know. The EU do do good things sometimes and bringing in a universal charger for phones is one of them. Although the phone industry itself may argue. Having a single standard charger type for phone completely rids the problem for inappropriate chargers. Should this legislation not be the same for E bikes? If every E bike had the same sort of charger, if that is the catalyst for many of the fires, that would be a simple fix.
E bikes are definitely part of the future, but with accurate data, then that future can be safer.
Although I have both an electric car AND an electric bicycle, I don’t have any problems with either of my electric vehicles.
Luckyheads? Did you just leak an upcoming thing? :P
He said Leccy heads, leccy= electric (slang) - youre welcome.
E Bike not safe , anything electrical will cause fire.
it doesn’t matter what percent they still all exploded. Keep your number to yourself your industry is dying, accept the fact.
You mad, bro🤔 You sure sound mad, bro.
@@williambray4134 I’m not mad about nothing. I’m just telling the truth.
@@Mitchell-lc5kj I doubt the E-Bike industry is dying off. It's alive, and well where I live. I figured there might be 2-3 additional E-Bikes in the rural town I moved to. More like 3-4 dozen.
@@Mitchell-lc5kj And no, not all E-Bikes "explode." Of course there's occasional fires but the vast majority are due to suspicious circumstances. You're not gonna have a serious issue with a quality bike, and battery pack unless you go screwing with them.
@@williambray4134 I’m not mad I feel sorry for you
Easy don't buy one
Why? Why are universal chargers even for sale? Clearly far too many people are far too dumb to be trusted with things that can go boom. I'm beginning to think that those calls about needing a licence to ride a bicycle aren't as ridiculous after all.
What having a licence go to do with with bad chargers that are on sale?
@@Mulberry2000 it shows a degree of competence?
You have not shown any other than say fire bags do not work. Where is your evidence they do not? I have asked twice now. Even if the bag only lasts 30 seconds its 30 seconds extra to get out the house. So while your batteries are not protect, if that what you want then fair game its your life. Me i have a peace of mind.
I've been building lithium battery packs for years now.
I'm building one now as I write this.
There is nothing wrong with using.
Cheap third party battery chargers LOL.
It goes without saying it needs to be the same voltage as the battery pack.
If charger has wrong voltage & higher amp rating.
Than BMS is rated
It doesn't matter if you got expensive OG charger or cheap Chinese knock-off.
It's still going to over or under charge battery pack.
Fires normally happen with cheap fake cells.
With cheap BMS board
some cells got out of balance.
And other cells get over charged.
Also lot of battery builders don't build them properly.
And cells rub against each other.
then damage then fires
Same thing happens to the EV world. Car insurance going through the roof 😢
It factually doesn’t.
I watch a certain TH-camr who has an EV car and he was trying to get quotes to insure his EV car and some insurance companies are refusing to insure EV cars. Apparently his insurance has doubled since last year