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by GuB-42 331 days ago
I am not sure that no-name batteries are that more dangerous. A common reason batteries catch fire is when things are too densely packed, causing shorts. A famous case is the Galaxy Note 7, which is Samsung, not Chinese tech.

No-name batteries are often way lower capacity than advertised, which means less stuff, and therefore less densely packed and less stuff to burn.

I am not saying that these batteries are safer, or that it is not a scam, but the fact that these batteries are lower capacity can compensate for the sketchy build. Power electronics is another story, so while the battery may be ok, the charging circuit may not.
2 comments
TiredOfLife 330 days ago
> A common reason batteries catch fire is when things are too densely packed, causing shorts. A famous case is the Galaxy Note 7, which is Samsung, not Chinese tech.

Note 7 thing was a faulty velding line. And no x-ray quality checks.

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mook 331 days ago
These days there's lots of news about no-name ebikes and battery-powered scooters catching on fire, so maybe it depends on how you get that battery?
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namibj 330 days ago
That's mostly related to them being rather dumb across the connection to the charger, instead of having the charge controller integrated with the battery management system. Plus probably cheaper overall construction because a higher percentage is spent on just energy capacity from economy of scale at the pack level (more cells per pack: less overhead from other components when normalized per-cell). Doesn't help that they'd prefer to keep the grid voltage out of the metal framed vehicle, and there's economic incentives to regulate the charging voltage/current at the transformer directly without any intermediate voltage like USB.

Maybe using USB-PD signaling for the finely adjustable voltage modes (PPS/AVS) could help though, at least if USB-PD coding has reasonable range left in the protocol fields there to communicate the entire voltage and current range that such an e-vehicle charger would want. Though there's other readily suitable communication protocols to pick from if USB-PD isn't suitable.

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