Shift Magazine - November 25, 2019 - 24

FIRE DRILL
Many lessons learned - and some still
underway - on battery safety
BY PETE BIGELOW

henever it comes, an influx of millions of electric
vehicles on the nation's roads will bring with it new
safety challenges.
Battery behavior remains a vexing subject, one
that mechanics and first responders to collisions will need to be
well versed in. But the industry need not wait until the electric
future arrives to make such preparations.
Lessons learned about battery safety
proliferate. Here's a quick rundown of
some past and present safety challenges
related to batteries and how they've been
handled.

CATCHING FIRE,
THEN ATTENTION

the potential for fire hazards to develop, sometimes weeks
after crashes, with little to no warning.

REAL-TIME MONITORING

Monitoring drivers for fatigue and distraction has been an important
component of driver-assistance features. But now there may be
more attention turning to battery-monitoring.
Years after those Chevy Volt fires, keeping an eye on individual cells could help
avoid such thermal-runaway instances,
which occur with little or no warning.
"That's the issue; we need to monitor
them," says Anna Stefanopoulou, director
of the Energy Institute at the University of
Michigan. "We need to monitor cell activity
and interrogate them to know how they're
doing and what they're doing."

I would not say
an EV fire is any
more challenging
or dangerous
than a fire in a car
with an internalcombustion
engine. It's a
different set of
tactics.

It was the fire that awakened the industry
and federal safety regulators. Three weeks
after a government crash test in May 2011,
787 DREAMLINER GROUNDED
a fire started in the lithium ion battery of a
The potential concerns of lithium ion batterChevy Volt.
ies aboard aircraft became all too real when
A subsequent investigation revealed the
a short circuit in a battery aboard a Japan
battery compartment had been penetrated,
Airlines flight in 2013 resulted in a thermal
and the battery's liquid cooling system
runaway that began in one of the battery's
ruptured. Starting the next year, General
eight cells and spread to the adjacent cells.
Motors made structural changes to better
The incident led to a temporary grounding
protect the Volt's battery packs.
of the fledgling 787 Dreamliner fleet.
But at the onset of an era of plug-in hybrid
A subsequent investigation conducted by
and battery-electric offerings, NHTSA
Michael Gorin, emerging issues
the National Transportation Safety Board
wanted to know more. In the months that
program manager at the National
found that shortcomings in both design
followed, the agency crash-tested four
Fire Prevention Association
and certification processes led to the fire.
more Volts and conducted impact tests on
Boeing had ruled out the possibility of cellsix Volt battery packs. Three separate tests
to-cell propagation during development, and as a result, "therresulted in a "sustained fire," per a report.
mal runaway was not thoroughly scrutinized by Boeing and FAA
Though the agency cautioned that the conditions that caused
engineers," an NTSB report found.
the initial fire were never replicated, the testing results showed

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Shift Magazine - November 25, 2019

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