[HN Gopher] X-ray scans reveal the hidden risks of cheap batteries
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X-ray scans reveal the hidden risks of cheap batteries
Author : CharlesW
Score : 115 points
Date : 2025-10-04 18:37 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| xnx wrote:
| 14 days ago | 120 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45364932
| alberth wrote:
| Lots of dupes lately.
|
| I've personally commented on lots of dupes lately.
|
| Makes me wonder if HN dupe detector is broken/changed recently.
| T3OU-736 wrote:
| (Not disagreeing that this is a dupe), but this is The
| Verge's coverage of Lumafield's findings.
|
| Not sure if there is any additional value in the re-coverage,
| though it does feel like the message is important enough to
| be spread, and I suspect there is more readers of The Verge
| than the original source.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I've been seeing this link as a promoted post on Reddit.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| To Lumafield or TheVerge's reporting of it?
| diob wrote:
| I actually had a battery for a drill meltdown on me earlier this
| year. If I hadn't been home (and it hadn't been on my stone
| counter when it happened), I probably wouldn't have a home.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| As a new homeowner that's one of my fears. I'm surprised there
| aren't more fires with how many lithium batteries are kicking
| around.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| Then you are obviously overestimating how dangerous they are,
| are you not?
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's not necessarily a bad thing though. There's few
| things in life where an over abundance of caution becomes
| the worse outcome.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Was it in the charger?
| diob wrote:
| Yes! One of the lessons I learned with this, which is if
| you're charging it you're supposed to supervise it or charge
| it somewhere "safe".
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Mind sharing brand name?
| yupyupyups wrote:
| What was the brand/model?
| diob wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LFWN86Q
|
| Joiry
| yupyupyups wrote:
| Thanks for that.
|
| As a sidenote, Amazon is truly a dumpster.
| dylan604 wrote:
| At the risk of victim blaming...you had to have known the
| risk was >0% with that purchase though, right?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Was it a brand name battery, or a discount battery? When you
| look at the price of the price of replacement
| Ryobi/Milwaukee/Dewalt etc batteries, and then see third-party
| knockoffs on Amazon for 1/3 or less of the price, it's tempting
| to save money.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| If you understand that the battery management controller is
| built into the battery pack and not the tool itself, the
| temptation to save money is replaced entirely by the fear of
| burning down a building. Not worth it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > fear of burning down a building
|
| or the plot line to an arson investigation procedural
| diob wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LFWN86Q
|
| Joiry
|
| Yep, big mistake.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| I've tried to stop buying stuff on Amazon.
|
| I really scaled back when I started going back and looking
| at old purchases, only to find out 8 of my last purchases
| were all counterfeit stuff. These were not just random
| electronic resellers. They were Lucky jeans, a Microsoft
| keyboard, a JBL bluetooth speaker, Under Armour shorts,
| Adidas work out tshirts and some other stuff. But
| altogether, I thought I was buying brand name, safe stuff
| that was priced in the same range as stuff you'd buy retail
| and I still got burned.
|
| Just made me distrust everything I was seeing on Amazon.
| macintux wrote:
| ~15 years ago I was visiting New Orleans, and I had an old
| Canon 1D DSLR with me. I was a little nervous about leaving my
| camera batteries charging in the small b&b where I was staying,
| fearing I'd unintentionally destroy a historic house.
| tzs wrote:
| If the internet is to be believed that would have used NiMH
| batteries. Those are a lot less likely to cause fires than
| lithium based batteries.
| macintux wrote:
| You're correct. I didn't know much about the various
| battery technologies at the time, but they were pretty old
| batteries.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I know the electrical cord is a nuisance, but I prefer the plug
| in versions.
| whycome wrote:
| It's kinda crazy that we don't yet have an approval process for
| "flight safe" batteries.
| oulipo2 wrote:
| Our company is building batteries that are easy to repair, and
| therefore you can remove and put back the cells easily. This
| allows you to fly with them :)
|
| https://infinite-battery.com
| criddell wrote:
| Aren't carry ons limited to 100 Wh total for batteries. For
| more you need airline approval, no?
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Kind of crazy that retailers of these things don't get
| absolutely hammered into the ground by national testing
| agencies.
|
| It's called a CE mark or equivalent, there is already a system,
| penalties and tests.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why the retailers instead of the manufacturers?
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Because retailers take the legal responsibility for what
| they sell to the public. In the same way statutory returns
| go to the retailer, not the manufacturer (unless the
| manufacturer has volunteered an extra warranty to use on
| top). They can take it up with the manufacturers if they
| want.
|
| The customer doesn't enter into a contract with the
| manufacturer when they buy an item from a retailer. They do
| so with the retailer.
| mastax wrote:
| UN 38.3? https://www.intertek.com/batteries/un-38-3-testing/
| tristor wrote:
| Reading the original report in the dupe from 14 days ago, it
| seems pretty clear that the conclusion is that counterfeit/low-
| cost lithium batteries are a safety hazard, and we should
| probably have stricter import regulations for batteries to
| shutdown the counterfeit/gray-market operations, as they are a
| serious fire hazard.
| metalman wrote:
| There will always be a realy fucking bad failure mode attached to
| any energy dense storage medium. This is basic physics. The
| diffrence between a roaring fire in the wood stove, your car
| engine, an ultra high tech rocket motor and a bomb, is only the
| speed of the "flame front" A battery has the same issues, in that
| the higher the energy density and the greater the expected rate
| of energy transfer, the greater the chance of finding a way to
| detonate all the energy at once, which is actualy possible ,with
| a wood stove, if things go exactly wrong.Exceptionaly large
| explosions have happened with nothing more than dust, or flour. 4
| things, you can pick 3. fast, powerfull, cheap, safe.
| justlikereddit wrote:
| A Lithium iron phosphate battery is significantly more stable
| and less likely to go thermal runaway in a fireshow-like
| fashion. The battery chemistry is important for this.
| jandrese wrote:
| Yes, but this article is mostly talking about TEMU or Amazon
| fly-by-night brand batteries, so you have to take their word
| that they are using Lipo4 cells and not just _blatantly lying
| like they do for every other aspect of the product_.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| There are lithium ion chemistries that are less likely to
| thermal runaway, LMO (Lithium Manganese Oxide) is used in
| power tools and they don't seem to go up. Tradeoff is lower
| capacity.
| oulipo2 wrote:
| The main risk factor is cells, you have to source them from
| reputable manufacturers. After having monitored a few battery
| fires, we went on to design a casing with multiple features to
| contain fires, you can check it here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0NXXfCA2CY
|
| If you're interested, you can order them here https://infinite-
| battery.com
| gertlex wrote:
| How much is this mitigated by well-behaved charging circuitry?
|
| I.e. my understanding is most devices are not like the 3s lipos
| I put in my hobby robots, but instead have integrated charging
| circuitry that you just give an appropriate voltage to... and
| that proper charging behavior avoids a lot of the dangerous
| scenarios with lipos?
|
| I ask because, loosely, the # of battery fires seems like a
| function in part of: (1) use of good charging logic; (2) cell
| manufacturing quality; (3) # of cells in the wild. While the
| growth of 3 probably dominates the improvements to 1 and 2, I'm
| guessing the number of battery fires has grown but not
| "exponentially".
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > I.e. my understanding is most devices are not like the 3s
| lipos I put in my hobby robots, but instead have integrated
| charging circuitry that you just give an appropriate voltage
| to... and that proper charging behavior avoids a lot of the
| dangerous scenarios with lipos?
|
| I'm not sure your understanding is correct. There are
| assembled packs with a BMS on them, laptop batteries this is
| usually the case. The cells themselves can be lipol,
| prismatic, or cylindrical (like 18650's). The cells almost
| never have active BMS built-in. It's always external (either
| on a board on the pack or on the device itself charging it).
|
| I really think the battery fires are mainly qc issues and
| running bad qc cells beyond limits (either fast charging or
| discharging). If capacity is staggered a ton between cells
| then even charge balancing the cells isn't going to do much
| good. Pouch cell fires probably more related to physical
| damage due to expansion in places they aren't designed well
| to expand (so it pushes the jellyroll down and causes a
| short/thermal runaway).
| cko wrote:
| I once watched a video of a man holding what looked to be a
| bicycle battery walking into an elevator. After the doors closed,
| it seemed to have exploded and burst into flame in his hands, and
| the aftermath was charred remains.
|
| After seeing this I refuse to sleep near my 20,000 mAh power
| bank. I saw this Jackery power station for sale for an ultra
| discounted price and noticed it was not lithium iron phosphate
| and I noped so fast.
| camkego wrote:
| Is this on YouTube ?
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