My Project Lithium Battery Caught Fire

ouch

 

I have been anxiously waiting for this day not because of failure just to see if it could be in the Prius and definitely it can and definitely not cool but thank God you're okay The car is reasonably okay I imagine that must have been quite the scare I cannot even imagine.

 

There's at least one good thing about this. It potentially shows this chemistry is safer than most Lithium-Ion, since whatever fire (or arcing) that was present actually appears to have self-extinguished once current flow was turned off. We've all seen videos of BEV cars where the Lithium battery basically just burns until there's nothing left, unless you have an ocean of water available.

 

Yes... Lower energy density failures like LifePo4 compared to Lithium-Ion is the difference between having to get a new pack and scrubbing the interior to get rid of that awful acrid smell versus having to replace the entire car because you couldn't stop the batteries from burning the car down to nothing but a metal shell...

As in the subject heading that calls it a fire is not accurate, just enough heat to melt and smoke, but no use quibbling over that detail, close enough...

As someone with 41 months on the original prototype cells and being in regular contact with the owner, I hope this problem is a very rare occurrence. The owner indicates it was the factory failing to plug the wires into the board on the module and that to address that he will be inspecting every module to verify they are plugged prior to shipping. This is same quality control he did at early stages when working with the factory, so a big step back in the relationship he has with his manufacture.

 

This is a manufacture issue where the special blade connector was left disconnected from the factory, we are opening up every single pack to ensure the connector got secured properly.

 

Unsafe. Needs a proper lithium bms.

 

One of my biggest regret of my life was listening some comments on Reddit and YouTube saying our balance board is inadequate and need proper BMS, we tried exactly that with V2.0 and now the V2.0 recall is destroying the company and my personal life, big lesson learnt...

On the other hand, we are opening up every single blade to check for the connection, the manufacture issue stop today!

 

So in those gray plastic containers with the red wire there the battery is literally what like a gel pack like something in a plastic bag breast implant comes to mind kind of thing they're not like round lion battery cells

 

That looks like a potential HUGE liability. A bit scary for a business owner.

 

You may want to either hot glue or silicone glue that connector into place. This issue may not be the manufacturers fault. Those connectors work their way loose when they're air freighted. They don't heat the freight compartment of planes. I've seen this happen before, when I used to work for and electronics R&D company. Ten to fifteen percent failure rate and a specific connector always popping lose. The solution was to place a few dabs of hot glue on the fitted connector. No more issues.
Unfortunately, you'll have to check all your current stock, until your manufacturer can make this adjustment.

Hope this helps....

 

I have the top comment on the Reddit thread that has the same text as this PriusChat Post. This goes far deeper than just a manufacturer error where the special blade circuit board wasn't connected. This is a PR move.

The Signal Soother is likely the primary reason the Battery caught fire and is the worst most dangerous idea imaginable and never should have been implemented to mask the underlying issue that was occuring. The fire that occured is the end result of the Signal Soother... not the disconnected Circuit Board being unable to balance the Battery module cells.

My linked comment on Reddit below explains this:



Here is my reply to Jack later on in the Reddit thread:

 

Reposting my reddit comments here for better visibility. Unfortunately, I cannot include hyperlinks due to my low post count; if you want the links, you'll need to view my original comments on reddit (which I also cannot link to, for the same reason):

 

NO, this is a DESIGN DEFECT, because your product should fail safe when a critical connector is disconnected. Every SIL2 design principle in the book is violated if your system doesn't fail safe. Based on both this misunderstanding and also our prior conversations last year, it is astonishingly obvious that your product needs an independent design review ASAP. Based on our prior conversations, I am no longer interested in providing that service, but you certainly need it.

 

Also if anyone thinks I'm making stuff up... I posted about my original failure over a year ago where I ran good PR for Jack:

I Think My Project Lithium Battery Failed After 3-days. | PriusChat

Things have changed. I need to say honestly what I think and put this information out there so the Prius Community can be informed of potential dangers and realities of using the Battery in it's current state.

 

I wouldn't say anybody is necessarily lying. I would just say their thought processes and due diligence may not be in order and when you're in business and trying to sell something and all this and that that can get you into some mess It's one thing to be playing around with your own car at the house whatever quite different to get a bunch of people to try your methodology of thinking when something happens well something happens and then what maybe you're thinking is not so good not necessarily that you were lying you were just hoping that you're thinking was more than it was oops oh well. It's one thing for somebody at the house to build up a big nice person bad battery the correct voltage so on and so forth etc and stuff it in his car and play games and do what he wants It's quite another to try and get 500 people involved or a hundred people involved or whatever it is things will get tricky.

 

Sounds eerily like the Boeing disaster(s). Poor quality control.

 

Thank you for posting. This is what I felt was happening when I was a Beta Tester... I just didn't have the technical abilities to make a direct assesment of the Battery Modules and their various versions. But I knew the Signal Soother was an absolutely insane idea.

If you are unable to post the source links for your Reddit comment, I will post them for you if necessary.

 

At the very least, if that's a six-pin connector to the board, make it an eight-pin, with the two extra pins shorted in the plug.

On the board, expose those two in a connector at the top of the module. Include a little harness to lay across the top of the module stack, plugged into the 14 modules, and with a male and female connector at the end where you'd unplug the car's safety-interlock harness connection and insert this harness so all those module connections are in series with the car's own interlocks. If any of the internal plugs comes undone, you get the P0A0D safety interlock code.

It would be a weird code to get for that, not as nice as if you could give a different specific code. But the implementation would be dead simple.

(Con: it would be bringing HV and 12V wiring awfully close together.)

 

Here is the direct link to @mudder's Reddit Post Below:
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