Throwing things out of anger is never a smart move, but it can also lead to more serious consequences. Especially when you’re at an airport and what you’re hurling at the ground is an explosion-prone lithium battery.
This week’s edition of Batteries Are Dangerous brings us to the great state of New Jersey, where a Bluetooth speaker recently started burning on a girl’s bed and then exploded. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, and the house didn’t burn down. The incident still serves as a cautionary tale for us all.
Yesterday we saw the first videos of a fatal crash of a Tesla Model S in downtown Indianapolis. We had read reports that firefighters had to dodge individual battery cells exploding out of the car’s burning lithium-ion batter pack. Now you can see them, indeed, shooting like fireworks.
Gareth Clear was biking in Sydney this past weekend with his new iPhone 6 riding shotgun in his back pocket. After taking a “minor fall,” the 36-year-old cyclist says his iPhone exploded in his back pocket, melting away his biking shorts and causing third degree burns. Clear eventually needed surgery and a skin-graft.
When a lithium-ion battery begins to overheat, it can get caught up in a vicious cycle known as thermal runaway—causing it to explode and catch fire. Now, researchers have imaged what happens inside and out the battery to understand the process.
Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous—as is their gradual degradation over the lifetime of a gadget. Now, using a new imaging technique, a team of researchers shows what happens deep within li-on cells as they charge and discharge.
A team of researchers in Singapore have developed a next generation lithium-ion battery that can recharge a battery to 70-percent in just two minutes. That means it would charge an entire electric car in just 15 minutes. And here's the kicker: it lasts over 20 years.
Every time you recharge your lithium-ion batteries, their storage capacity decreases just a little bit. That is why your mobile gadgets won't stay on nearly as long as they did even a year ago. But thanks to research by the US Department of Energy, we finally know why exactly that occurs and, more importantly, how to…
Electric car maker Tesla wants a cheaper, faster way to produce the lithium ion batteries that power its cars, and the company has settled on a gargantuan solution: the so-called "gigafactory" that, if all goes as planned, will crank out more lithium ion batteries than the entire world produced in 2013.
Lighter, less expensive and more energy dense than other secondary battery technologies, lithium-ion has become the dominant form of rechargeable battery today. It powers everything from mobile phones and laptops to cars and commercial jets. But there is one little problem—these batteries don't just short circuit,…
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was recently grounded across the world because its lithium ion batteries would self-combust in a blaze of glory (aka the batteries melt). What's interesting is that Boeing knew about all the battery problems in the 787 before any flight was grounded.
Nobody thinks about batteries—until they've run out of juice, of course. But this humble and surprisingly ancient technology has done far more for human civilization than most people realize.
Electric car maker Tesla Motors is teaming up with the solar panel leasing company SolarCity to make what might be the first complete, packaged electrical system for an off-the-grid solar home.
While gadgets improve by leaps and bounds every year, the technology that powers them hasn't. Batteries still suck, unless something comes of this research at Northwestern University that promises new lithium-ion alternatives that charge ten times faster with ten times the capacity.
I was about to call this Ideo electric commuter bike the best, well, something, but that's just not the case. It won an important competition in Oregon, the Manifest bike building competition, and that's where the accolades stop.
Lithium-ion batteries! They're in your phone, your laptop and pretty much every consumer electronic device that uses rechargeable batteries these days. How should you take care of them? Old wives tales of charging batteries don't apply here, so forget everything you thought you knew. According to Ars Technica, this is…
Inside almost every gadget lurks a ticking time bomb. In two years, or maybe three or four, it will die, rendering your gadget useless. Possibly permanently. So, what are these awful little bastards? They're called batteries.
Those looking to minimize desk clutter will be pleased with HyperMac's entrant to the iPad stand rodeo, offering a built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery for 16 hours of extra life.
Yamaha just introduced the EC-03, their new Zero-Emission Electric Scooter that's primed to save the world. Well, at least Asia. The EC-03 is cheaper than most its competitors and apparently highly desirable in Asia's crazy-for-scooters market.
A large mineral deposit worth an estimated $1 trillion has been discovered in Afghanistan, Pentagon officials revealed today. The find could change the nation's economy, alter the war, and contains vast amounts of lithium—found in many of today's batteries.
