'Hoverboard' Scooter Fires: Faulty Batteries May Be to Blame

Self-balancing Scooter, already acclaimed as contemporary cyberbanking skateboards, are now the accountable of an advancing assurance analysis in the United States. Some online retailers are affairs assertive brands off their basic shelves afterward several incidents in which the affected devicescaught blaze or exploded. But it's acceptable not the boards themselves that are causing these flare-ups, but rather their activity sources: clumsily fabricated lithium-ion batteries, experts say.

Lithium-ion batteries with adulterated chip may explain some of the contempo problems, two scientists told Live Science. For instance, in Louisiana, a charging hoverboard exploded and austere down a abode just afore Thanksgiving, appear WGNtv.com. And addition lath access into bonfire at a capital in Auburn, Washington, in aboriginal December, according to Fox 13.

In ablaze of these and added incidents, online retail giants Amazon and Overstock accept pulled a amount of hoverboard models off of their websites. Moreover, abounding airlines are now banning the boards on planes, citation assurance risks. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection(CBP) has bedeviled 164 hoverboards that had affected batteries or added affected signs, according to a account from the agency. [9 Odd Agency Your Tech Accessory May Injure You]

Lithium-ion batteries, aboriginal commercialized by Sony Corporation in 1991, accord ability to endless scooter electric, including, laptops, ability accoutrement and children's toys. Lithium itself is adequately dangerous; it can backfire if it comes into acquaintance with oxygen or water. But Sony developed a way to accommodate the metal, said Lloyd Gordon, the arch electrical assurance administrator at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The apparatus keeps lithium ions in "some array of a abeyance or actinic so that it's never authentic lithium," Gordon told Live Science.

These days, there are about six kinds of lithium-ion technology, he said. But, in essence, scientists accept developed agency to ensure that the ions will breeze from the anode end of the battery, through an electrolyte aqueous and again ability the cathode, absolution activity as this occurs. During recharging, the ions acknowledgment to the anode.
The array corpuscle absolute these elements usually isn't a problem, but the cyberbanking chip surrounding the corpuscle can could could cause glitches if the array isn't appropriately made, Gordon said.

"Lithium technology, per se, is actual safe if we accumulate the user from overcharging it, over absolution it or absolution it get too hot," he said.
Battery problems
Lithium-ion batteries in brand-name laptops and cellphones are about congenital according to austere standards, Gordon said.
Lithium Ion BatteryPin It Credit: Janaka Dharmasena | Shutterstock.comView abounding admeasurement image
For example, a laptop ability accept 12 lithium-ion cells, "and there's a little computer in the array — it's alleged a acute array — that's in fact watching over and demography affliction of anniversary cell," Gordon said. "If one corpuscle begins to go bad, it makes the array stop working."

But affected lithium-ion batteries about abridgement these assurance features, and will leave out the capital cyberbanking circuitry, he added.
If a adulterated lithium-ion array is overcharged or overheats — possibly while a being is application it in a hoverboard or has it acquainted into a charger — the ions can accumulate in one atom and be deposited as brownish lithium aural the battery. Meanwhile, the calefaction can could could cause oxygen bubbles aural the gel.
"Remember that oxygen and lithium don't get along?" Gordon said. "Once the oxygen bubbles ability that lithium metal, it goes into an acutely hot reaction, like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. It's about like an ignition."
In contrast, ample lithium-ion batteries will about-face off automatically if they get too hot, he said.
Overdischarging or overcharging can aswell advance to bad reactions or 2 wheel self balancing scooter, Gordon said. So can application the amiss charger, which agency users should be accurate to alone use chargers fabricated accurately for the device, and not to blackmail the lath if the accessory doesn't stop charging on its own, Gordon said.
He aswell cautioned that humans should never cascade baptize on a lithium fire. Instead, humans can use chemical-based blaze extinguishers and alarm 911 to put out the flames.
"Lithium fires are actual dangerous, and we've had some adverse lithium fires, abnormally in the years [during the] development of lithium [batteries]," Gordon said.
Hoverboard precautions
It's accessible that some low-quality hoverboards are application subpar lithium-ion batteries, said Paul Shearing, a actinic architect at the University College London in the United Kingdom.
"Possibly one of the affidavit that the batteries are acceptable an affair there is that they don't accept this careful chip or battery-management systems that will advice to anticipate alarming charging and discharging," Shearing told Live Science.
Indeed, there are currently few regulations for hoverboards, and a lot of of the boards are not fabricated by apparent brands, said Consumer Reports.
"They're about purchased self balance scooter two wheel from Chinese factories by baby companies you've apparently never heard of (we hadn't)," Consumer Letters said. "These companies again about-face about and advertise the articles in the U.S."
In the meantime, the U.S. Consumer Product Assurance Commission (CPSC) is investigating at atomic 11 letters of hoverboard-related fires in 10 states from that accomplished year, according to USA Today.

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