while I was at work tonight, my wife called me, saying the house smelled like smoke. She walked into the garage which was filled with black smoke and melting plastic. The fire department was called, and discovered that my FD battery which was being stored in a bin, in its cover, not plugged in, had exploded, melted through the tupperwear, covering the garage in black smoke and soot. Really scary situation
Pics the Battalion Chief sent me. Not sure what to say, but obviously be really careful.
How many cycles on the battery? Was it stored wet? What temperature was the garage? Still going to keep using the other battery and foil drive?
Glad you, your family, and house are okay!
Battery 1 year old, stored dry. Hadn’t been used in a few weeks. Spooky stuff
FD have done a pretty good job as I haven’t heard of many failing, but they are inherently very dangerous
Storing in an ammo box at the minimum, ideally outside
Wow. Very scary. Which model batteries were these?
Assist Max.
I come from flying FPV for years and had to deal with LiPos all the time. I only store batteries in metal ammo cases with part of the seal removed for venting. Better yet if you have a small concrete box where you can put those cases in.
I’ll add… LiPo bags don’t do much. They only slow down the process a bit.
Sketch! I was on a trip and a buddy had one start smoking and got super hot right after his session. He was barely able to remove it from the housing/board as it was rapidly expanding. Managed to get it out and there was a burn scar on the board and then the battery just continued to smoke and deform for the next hour. Not sure which battery it was. Be careful dealing with high powered Li batteries.
Looks like it handled it quite well compared to a lot of other battery fires, very lucky!
It looks like started at the plug end of the battery so not a BMS fault.
efoils/assist/ battery powered marine products seem to catch fire at a rate 10X that of other battery products - a well designed ebike for example. No real data is out there because everyone seems to keep it secret because of brand damage risk which isn’t great for the consumer.
My guess is that most of them come down to salt water finding its way into the battery leading to internal shorts and heat. A salt water internal shorts could cause a single cell to be charged above 4.2V from adjacent cells leading to a fire.
Just want to follow up and say FD has been very responsive with identifying the source(s) of failure and issuing replacements. This battery failure was likely related to some possible damage from a minor drop and some water intrusion that likely contacted the battery terminal.
All of these lithium battery types are susceptible to catastrophic failure. The fire department mentioned this happening fairly often with e bikes, hover boards.
I was not as meticulous with battery hygiene and storage as I should have been.
This was a hard lesson for me. Now, everything is on surge protectors. Smoke alarms have been updated and placed in the garage, near batteries, and in every room in house. Fire extinguishers mounted in garage, kitchen, grill area etc.
Lesson learned for sure. Respect these high powered batteries. Store them in the bags and I like the ammo container suggestions. Make sure to keep the terminals clean and well greased. Grease, clean, and seal the o rings regularly.
Again, appreciate foil drive being very responsive and supportive working through this episode. It’s a really amazing piece of equipment and has been truly game changing in enabling my progression. It’s shaved YEARS off my learning curve and I still recommend to anyone looking to exponentially increase foil time.
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Totally agree with all your points.
I’m glad you’re ok. I see stuff like this and have some regret about not really paying attention when I first got into larger lipos a few years ago.
Honestly nothing else but an ammo container outside is really worth anything.
Hopefully your lesson is a shared one.
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I’ve looked into LiPo specific storage boxes, and they are crazy expensive. If ammo boxes are indeed a good alternative, what should I look for? I see on here something about ventilation. What else?
Don’t think it matters too much. I’ve left them watertight as I leave them outside. Presumably bullets exploding is part of the design… They are pretty cheap too
I’m 90% sure that Foil Drive batteries are Li-on (Lithium Ion), the kind that laptops have used for decades, and might catch fire, but no where near the danger of Li-po (Lithium polymer) batteries. Posting about Li-po batteries here isn’t helpful.
Again, Li-on batteries are for sure dangerous, but they are about 1/4 as dangerous as a Li-po battery.
Well done Foildrive Support, identifying the reason for the failure and providing replacement batteries is excellent customer service. I wish all companies were so proactive in supporting their products.
I’ve been using one of these to store and charge my foil drive batteries and lithium batteries for other hobbies too. It’s pricy, but is well regarded and worth the peace of mind for me.
Battery meltdown while not even charging is very concerning! I charge many lithium rideables and have been gradually reconsidering and improving my fire containment practices. Outside storage is clearly the best solution if possible but I don’t currently have a dry and warm enough location for everything. I’m currently using this big ammo can during charge for foil drive batteries and a metal toolbox for portable storage.
I plan to improve it by drilling a hole for charger cord to enter and another hole for a vent hose that I can run outside garage. The lid has a seal, but likely wouldn’t last during an actual fire event so maybe instead I should build a metal hood to go over the whole thing with vent hose to exhaust outside.
Another good idea is to get a lithium specific fire extinguisher to have nearby charging area. Maybe even a five gallon bucket or 2 of dirt thrown over the fire would buy some time if discovered quickly by smoke detector.
