My Project Lithium Battery Caught Fire

Salesmen continue to be suspect. I don’t see the Principal on here helping anyone understand the issues or even offering his qualifications.

I have been here since 2008.

 

I feel like I'm in an alternate reality when I read such things.

 

@Tideland Prius:
First, thank you for taking the time to clarify your position. I appreciate that being PriusChat's sole active moderator (by my understanding) is a difficult task.

...

Second, regarding me "putting words into your mouth", how else would you expect me to interpret the following interaction (via PM)?:
mudder wrote (in part):

Tideland wrote (in part):

mudder wrote (in part):

You did not reply to this message, hence my understanding that the statement I wrote was interpreted correctly.
You also did not reply to the public thread I created to further discuss this issue. I sent you a link to this thread in our private conversation.

Given the above, I publicly commented the statement you are now taking issue with:

...

Regardless, now that we are discussing this issue again (albeit off-topic in this thread IMO), I would like @Tideland Prius to address how it is that I'm supposed to go about continuing a public discussion on this thread, when all it takes is a couple bad actors on the opposing team to lock down my thread? That was your previously stated reason as to why I "will not create a new thread" (because "it will simply devolve again as you are well aware that certain members will participate and I will have to close it again").

So how do you propose I continue discussing this contentious matter? Again, thank you for taking the time to further clarify this forum's position regarding discussing controversial safety related claims.

...

Finally, I am amazed that this forum's sole moderator's official response is that "@mudder I'm sorry your behavior online is appalling". I am bringing up these issues because there are safety-related design deficiencies in a product being offered for sale to this forum's members. In the process, I'm getting attacked by what I call 'Team Jack Members' (IMO a more appropriate name than 'trolls'). I simply can't comprehend why some members on this forum are allowed to post; they add nothing constructive to the discussion, agitate 'fair' actors (including Jack himself), and are able to sabotage real scientific discourse so much so that we are unable to continue conversing.

I certainly expected pushback from my inconvenient claims regarding NexPower's several products, but I didn't expect the moderation stance that has kneecapped my ability to further discuss these claims.

I suppose it's time for me to bow and exit this forum, which I anticipate will make Team Jack happy. Congratulations to Team Jack for once again running off a person issuing dire warnings against NexPower's products. At the end of the day, I tried. I suppose I won't be missed, and won't let the door hit me on the way out. Thanks for all the fish.

 

Personally, I don’t think any scientific data and evidence should be censored in any way.
Maybe just delete the personal posts?

 

mudder, is it possible at all for you to chill a bit? You have valuable technical content to contribute, but if you can't imagine a response to having annoyed our one volunteer moderator other than to do it some more and turned to 11, I can't help wondering how that's going to work out.

 

This is an important fact that can’t just be dismissed simply because the companies representatives want to squash informed discussions.

 

Is there a specific reason people should find out about a product's safety issues only from other customers who experienced a certain failure mode?

Is there a specific reason why people should not find out about safety issues from a detailed technical analysis describing possible failure modes?

Does it really matter who posts a given bit of information if that information is accurate, can be easily and repeatably verified? That mudder has a financial interest in developing a BSU is very public information that he openly volunteered in one of his earliest posts, and it allows us the freedom to choose how heavily to color our judgements regarding his findings, but it should not change the validity of his assertions unless someone can prove them to be incorrect.

Mudder's rules seem pretty reasonable to me:

From the other closed thread:

A product is not a person, and describing the flaws of a product is not the same as attacking the person who designed it. I did not see any instance of mudder breaking any of these rules. However, there definitely are couple of members who did—repeatedly—and closing off the thread just because "troublemakers will cause trouble" seems unnecessarily heavy-handed to me. I'm not even proposing banning troublemakers outright, but maybe just block "troublemakers" from posting in that thread?

I guess I fail to see why posting technical information, especially that related to potential safety issues, is prohibited, while pushing coupon codes, indulging in ad hominem attacks, drawing users off to third party sites for personal profit, and derailing threads in general gets a free pass.

 

We are all interested in safety because we care about each other... But to conflate concerns for safety with concerns for reliability and longevity is not ok.

To be clear Jack has roughly four thousand packs on the road right now. I put my pre-production proto-type in my Prius in October of 2020 and it's still going as strong as it was the day it was first installed. I've also had access to details to almost all the failures of a small percentage of Jack's packs that are on the road and I can assure you that no one has ever been injured, nor has anyone's vehicle ever been destroyed from his work and all those failures have led to improvement in the overall design over time.

Point being this would be a far more productive discussion if we were to drop the fear mongering and focus on build quality and reliability of these low density cells that can't start a major fire, unlike high density cells (lithium-ion) that can catch fire and very easily kill you or destroy your car and in some cases if charging in an attached garage, burn your house down. Seven years ago Jack learned enough to make the decision to not put lives and property at risk and only research low density cells for his product line.

As I've said many times, each battery chemistry requires a different management standard and too often the standard for the most dangerous high density battery chemistry is being unfairly applied to lower density cells that require less thorough standards.

And because low density sodium-ion is a new chemistry entering the market there is much to talk about rather than troll about. It would be nice to have that discussion rather than what we're having now.

 

I have been a lurker here so far, but I will now use my first and possibly last post before I am banned to say I am very disappointed in the way the moderator has addressed this situation.

The fact that Azusa, Jmyntrn and others are allowed to post the things they post (read their post history and decide if these posts are "appalling" or "flattering") with immunity while Mudder gets the ban hammer is upsetting. In addition to that, Jack's video has completely alienated me from the person I thought he was when I started following his project lithium video years ago.

I encourage the mods to moderate, rather than censor scientific discourse or I fear for the future of this site where science is looked down upon in favor of this flavor of response:

 

You accused me of putting words in your mouth.
My reply in #224 refuted that claim.
Do you still propose that I misinterpreted your statement? If so, how would you expect a reasonable person to interpret it?

As of late, closing entire threads wasn't my desired outcome.

Unfortunately, these two statements are contradictory, hence it is impossible to agree to both terms. Specifically, if I continue this discussion on PriusChat, that by its very nature will create more work for you, unless everyone else follows those rules, too. And by your words, "you are well aware that certain members will participate and I'll have to close it again".

Therefore, I will not continue this discussion on PriusChat, as I have no confidence in the moderation team.
Mudder edit: I retract the following incorrect claim I made previously in this post:

Root cause: I misinterpreted how the forum software was presenting data to me. It appears user @Stencil_Box has chosen to hide their entire profile. It seems very obvious (to me, at least) that I wouldn't make a claim like this unless I actually believed it was true... it takes less than a second to click on @Stencil_Box's profile and see that they are not in fact banned. Therefore, given how easy it is to refute my now retracted statement, I hope we can all agree this was an honest mistake on my part. Apologies for the false accusation.

 

I retract this statement. See my edit to post #232. This was an honest mistake.

Standing by for answers to my other questions.

 

Thank you more.
You are dealing with this against your will, whereas I'm choosing to proceed.
Moderating is a thankless task. That's why I stopped doing it.
Sorry you're having to deal with the fallout from my safety-inspired crusade.

No rush, take your time. I've got plenty to do right now.

That is fine.
Have you received any legal notice that would require you to interpret US law?
Or are you referring to the method in which I'm airing my concerns (i.e. that it might implicate this website somehow)?

At this point I'm all but certain Jack's team intends to proceed with a legal case. For example, I have zero intentions of complying with the frivolous demands laid out in his C&D. For example, I fully intend to continue testing this pack until I am content with the data.

Unless I begin to feel his team is dangling a carrot, I'll let Jack decide if we're going to court. $500/hour in legal fees isn't something I worry about any more, particularly if I win on the merits. I certainly wish we could have worked this out months ago (e.g. as a consultant, or as a beta tester, etc). But here we are.

 

Initially, it was entertaining to watch, but now, mudder, your comments have become increasingly disrespectful and hurtful to everyone in your path. Could you try being friendly for a change? Not everything needs to be a conspiracy and not everyone has to be your enemy.

 

How much do I, or any other random PriusChatter, need to hear about who does or doesn't worry about $500/hour fees? It kind of comes across as boastful and blustering and not adding a lot to the scientific discussion (e.g. supporting, refuting, or stating a new a claim).

 

Doesnt seem like he cares what he says.

 

Excellent point! Some people simply lack the capacity to be able to self-reflect, let alone value how other people experience their behavior. As long as they can convince themselves that that part doesn't matter to them, everyone in the world is at fault except them.

Most important, I trust Mudder is not actually the person I just described and that he's able to reverse course and prove that to everyone reading this.