If you ride an e-bike with a LITHIUM battery, Mike Sokol of RV Electricity recently shared (via his email newsletter) an incident where the owners of a motorhome experienced a fire that virtually destroyed the camper. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed. The RV’s owners were not home at the time.
What happened? The e-bike’s lithium batteries suffered some water damage a couple of weeks earlier. After two incident free weeks, they overheated and caught fire. At the time of the fire, the batteries were away from the bikes being stored under the dining table. They were NOT connected to the anything or being actively used in any way.
Consumer reports, techradar, and techcrunch ALL have written articles about these UNSAFE batteries and fires that have occurred as a result of their use. I checked Amazon and found there exists FIREPROOF e-bike battery bags.
The mere fact that someone had to invent a fireproof bag for these batteries tells me that the issue is significant and fairly widespread.
Future Solutions
My bet is the lithium batteries in e-bikes are a similar formulation to those used in electric vehicles (cars.) I would exercise caution with ALL of these lithium batteries. Fortunately, there MAY be light on the horizon. I recently read of Samsung developing a solid state battery for electric vehicles that is silver based instead of lithium. The mining of silver is less environmentally destructive than lithium. Further, the silver batteries are purported to charge faster and hold a charge longer than lithium.
Incidentally, the Samsung battery reportedly requires (for EV’s) 1kg of silver PER BATTERY! That’s 32 ounces. This is just one more reason I expect silver’s price to rise (big time) in the (near) future! Contact me if you want to talk about what I buy and from whom. (NOT financial advice.)
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What about Lithium “house” RV batteries
The formulation for RV house batteries made from lithium is fundamentally different from the batteries made for EV’s. To my knowledge, there is no record of lithium house batteries overheating and flaming out. That said, I STILL prefer “good old” lead acid batteries. I wrote a full report on house RV batteries HERE.
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Thanks Alan for this very important information. I have been working with LifePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries for an emergency backup for my furnace. My understanding is that these are safer than the lithium batteries for ebikes. What is scary is that when these lithium batteries kick off, there’s virtually no stopping them. All you can do is separate the battery from the house or whatever you are trying to protect from the fire. Not an easy or safe task to say the least. Safe travels to you and Merry Christmas 🎄🎁.
Ed,
Good point. A normal fire extinguisher can NOT address an alkali metal fire – and lithium IS an alkali metal.
Al
Great timing, I just bought our first ebike for my wife which hasn’t arrived yet. Great info Alan.
Have a merry and blessed Christmas.
The Makowski’s
Adamsville, TN
Thanks and right back at ya!
Al
Just got 2 e- bicycles, thanks for the tip
timely news, eh?
Wow
yep, wow! i ordered one of those fireproof bags for a laptop charging brick… not sure of the battery technology involved, but for the cost of the bag, its worth it! al
Thanks for the information Alan, I appreciate it!
Glad to be of service and put it out there.