Looks like some more Volt battery fires.

But it seems so un-American to wait for those results when we can make some panicky policy decisions, and a lot of money from the bad publicity, right now.

 

What a revolting development this is.

 

GM offering loaner cars to worried Chevrolet Volt owners!

GM offering loaner cars to worried Chevrolet Volt owners

 

That'll burn gas.

 

Shouldn’t there have always been a de-powering protocol?


De-powered: GM's Chevy Volt fire begs serious questions | Hybridcarblog

 

The article complains that the car needs an automatic de-powering capability, in event of an accident. But that will not work, because the de-powering feature could be destroyed in the accident; there's just no telling. The best solution is for people to be aware of the issue and ensure that a technician takes care of the battery within a day of an accident.

 

Funny, I own a Pinto, and a Fit!

I hope that, if there's really a problem with the Volt batteries, it's addressed and the media moves on. It's already been said, we're all driving around with a highly volatile liquid on board our cars (except for those few Tesla or Volt or Xebra drivers), and no one thinks about it—like it's a given.

But somehow a battery is this new thing which not every car has, and so it's painted to be dangerous and unknown.

I know that a number of R/C hobbyists have had garages, sheds, workshops and even houses catch fire when the batteries used to power their aircraft burst into flame unexpectedly. Apparently those folks store the batteries in fireproof containers to limit the danger.

As far as the Volt, yeh, if it's been in an accident, have it inspected. That doesn't sound like too big of a deal to me. I'll bet those Volts crash tested by the NHTSA were probably undrivable, too.

 

It is clear that de-powering procedure was developed after the first fire in June (after May crash test). When the news came out, GM was spinning that NHTSA did not follow procedure.

We now know why the production of Volt was slower than planned.

I am not familiar with the packaging of the Volt battery pack. What electronics are within the battery?

Source

 

I don't know about the Volt pack specifically. Handheld and portable consumer products with Li-ion packs have internal electronics to disconnect the battery terminals in case of overvoltage / overdischarge / overcurrent.

 

There is an emergency kill switch located under the console in the rear seats. First responders have been trained on where it is and to kill the battery first when responding to an accident. That is not new, its been there since the first production models.

GM says to remove the pack if it has been compromised in a crash.

You wouldn't leave a wrecked ICE full of gas with cracks in the fuel system and wait to see what happens.

The worst part is now my co-workers saw it on the news and they are asking if I'm taking the loaner car. I've tried to explain to them that the fires are only after crash testing and then only when the cars were rotated and then nothing occurred for significant amount of time.

I have no more concern for my Volt catching fire at the time of a crash than any other car with a fuel tank. I am not concerned that it may catch fire if left upside down and cracked for a long time, because a) I won't be in it, and b) I would not leave the car upside down, and c) I would never drive around on a pack that had been damaged in that way (assuming any of the cars that caught fire were drivable).

 

That's the current known method to reproduce the fire. There may be other ways it can happen. Until we know the root cause and a recall to fix it, you can't be sure.

I find it interesting that there is no Leaf involved in garage fires, just with the Volts. What are the chances?

Volt's battery coolant is easy to leak also. All it takes is a pebble on the road and the battery can overheat. You get home and charge it up in the garage. I should stop with my imaginations.

GM think it is the electronics in the battery that is causing the fire. I looked up how it works and found the below article. There is high voltage (360v) heating element that may get activated when the control valve is stuck (due to the lack of coolant?). It is just a wild conjecture and the system is very complex so a lot of things are possible.

 

I can agree with that.

That seems pretty unlikely to me. The power for that heating element should need to flow through at least one contactor (heavy duty relay) that would be disconnected automatically during a severe accident and the connections to the heating element should be quite isolated from the other high power cabling on the pack.

I assume GM was speculating about the circuit boards that run along the top of the battery case above all of the individual cells. These boards monitor and control the battery and have connections to the cell groups used for monitoring their separate voltage levels during charging and use. The power bus bars that carry the full power across all of the cells are also located along the top of the pack. Something near the top of the pack might be indicated since reproduction of the problem seems to require that the battery is rotated upside down. I don't think any of us are in a position to judge what's going wrong.

 

So how many people have ACTUALLY wrecked their new Volt? Of that number how many had a delayed battery fire? Is Chicken Little running loose again? Maybe we should make the battery box a little bit stronger and pierce resistant. If I drive a nail in a LiPo pak, I KNOW it's gonna burn. If a piece of metal pierces the battery compartment, I KNOW it's eventually gonna be trouble. Back to square one, How many separate incidents of fire have actually happened? What was the root cause, charging, or wrecking?

 

I've only read about one real world severe crash -- a Volt was rear-ended by a bus and the two adults up front and the two children in back walked away without injury.

Chevy Volt Totaled After Collision with Bus: All Occupants Escape Unharmed | PluginCars.com

The only Volt battery fire resulting from a crash is from the original side-impact pole test many months ago. After that I think I read that GM and NHTSA failed to recreate the battery fire after additional crash tests. The Volt has also gone through and passed the EuroNCAP testing which also include a side-impact pole test (I think NHTSA derived their new pole test from EuroNCAP). The U.S. insurance industry lab also crash tested the Volt. No other battery fires occurred as a result of those tests.

The latest battery fire tests apparently involve directly recreating the mechanical damage seen on the original pack that caught fire using new battery packs in the lab. Out of 3 new packs tested by NHTSA earlier this month they got one of them to catch fire a week after the damage was done.

My understanding is that the pack may not catch fire in these tests until it is turned upside down to simulate a vehicle roll-over (even though this is unlikely to happen with a Volt after a side impact because of the low center of gravity).

 

I'd not be overly concerned by this if I were a Volt owner; GM will fix it. It's embarassing GM has a long track record of these sort of issues but they'll fix it and hopefully buyers will move on and continue buying Volts. I might've ponied up but it was more money than I was comfortable with. It seems to be a superbly engineered car otherwise, although it won't save most drivers much, if any money on their commutes. Hopefully, Chevy will sell enough that GM will keep developing the technology to leverage in future models. It would be a real shame if the Volt fails.

 

I don't know that.

Li-Ion and LiPo refer to a broad family of chemistries. Many will burn in this circumstance, but some will not. Other EVs tend towards the versions that don't.

 

It depends what you do with them -

I'm sure if you turn the car upside down, douse it in orange juice in gasoline and light it the batteries will burn even in the prius

The issue I see is getting the batteries discharged after a crash that damages them. The volt seems very safe after these crash tests.

 

CR123A has a single use Lithium Manganese Dioxide chemistry, different than the rechargeable Li-Ion / LiPo family of chemistries under discussion.

 

Here is a video of a LiPO fire....

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DcpANRFrI4"]World's Most Dangerous Battery! - YouTube[/ame]

True the Volt does not use LiPo, but it does have a high capacity high current package that will exhibit same symptoms when pierced smashed or shorted. Like I mentioned earlier, maybe a little, OK a lot, of Kevlar reinforcement of that battery pack is in order. Upon an impact, the car should have a automatic disconnect system against severe shorts.
I actually hope GM figures this out and sticks with it. I would really consider a Volt with 4 years of driving research behind it! By 2015 when I will be ready for a new cartoy, it might just be a Volt!
If it stops smoldering by then!!

 

Unfortunately, this is still using a generic term for a broad family, leaving out crucial detail about which member of the family is being displayed.

While I'm not very familiar with RC toys, it seems the displayed unit was likely very heavy on Cobalt content, at the unstable end of the family, and not from the Iron-Phosphate group on the more stable side of the family.