These days, you don't need to be an engineer to know what a lithium-ion battery is. Half the country now knows that lithium-ion chemistries played a role in fires aboard Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. The term has been used in newspapers, on television news programs, and on tens of thousands of websites around the world.
So it's probably inevitable that much of the public is now making the connection between Boeing's fires and electric vehicles. And news organizations are helping make that connection.
A recent NBC News story asked whether Boeing's woes would "short-circuit" electric cars. Numerous other news sites have tracked the stock market effects of the debacle on electric vehicle manufacturers. And a Chicago Tribune story about imported products even used a graphic depicting burning bread in a toaster with Boeing's name on it. A caption under the photo asked, "...what might be expected of lithium-cobalt oxide batteries?"
Boeing's batteries overheated and burned (left) onboard a 787 (right), but that shouldn't be an indictment of lithium-ion chemistries. (Source: NTSB, left; Boeing, right)
If all of that is beginning to sound like an indictment of lithium-ion batteries, then that's a shame.
Yes, it's true that today's electric cars and plug-in hybrids use lithium-ion batteries. And it's true that lithium-ion is more prone to overheating than, say, lead-acid or nickel-metal hydride chemistries. But the term that too often gets left out of these discussions is "engineering." This is what engineers do. It's what they're good at. They take energy sources and make them do work. And if they do their jobs right, then they do it safely.
"No matter how you slice it, a lithium-ion battery, or any high-performance battery, is a package of energy," Elton Cairns, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California-Berkeley, and a designer of fuel cells for NASA's Gemini flights, told Design News. "If they had put a similarly-sized vessel of gasoline in place of that Boeing battery, it would have been an even bigger fire hazard."
To be sure, the lithium cobalt oxide chemistry used by Boeing is even more energetic than other lithium chemistries. But that's not really the issue. The issue is that engineers are supposed to determine the energy level, and then build in mechanisms to make the situation safe for users.
That's why engineers at General Motors put 144 plates filled with liquid coolant between the lithium-ion cells on the Chevy Volt. It's why Toyota uses 42 sensors to monitor temperatures of the Prius PHV's lithium-ion batteries, as well as three fans to cool the cells. It's also why engineers use special electrical connectors to prevent against shorts inside and outside their batteries. And why they employ battery management ICs to monitor performance. It's all part of the process of learning to manage the energy.
The point is, lithium-ion is energetic, but with proper engineering, not dangerous. Over many decades, engineers have learned how to safely operate internal combustion engines with gasoline, stoves with natural gas, and jets with jet fuel. Yet, we don't fret about the gasoline, jet fuel, or natural gas. Why? Because we expect engineers to manage the risks. And engineers will do the same with lithium-ion batteries, assuming our risk-averse society doesn't block the way.
"As long as you have a battery that contains a lot of energy, you'll never have 100 percent protection against some kind of failure," Cairns told us. "It's all a matter of proper design and acceptance of a certain amount of risk."
WOW, you right on. They can not live without crisis. This also adds preasure for immediate solution, when it really has to be done methodically without errors.
The problem here isn't with Boeing having to fix their mistake or electric cars. The problem here is with a media who reports this nonsense. The media seems to think it cannot survive without moving from crisis to crisis and manufacturing a few along the way. These so-called journalists need some basic training in logic. Oh wait, that's why they are journalists. They couldn't handle the math!
Must be nice, William K. The accountant comes up with the idea to outsource the engineering and gets a pat on the back for saving the company money. If the outsourced engineers mess up, though, no one blames the accountant. What a great deal.
Charles, One of my bosses years ago had a policy of never admitting to making a mistake on record. Verbally he would acknowledge errors and failures, but never in any form that left a detectable record. So that is one way of never getting nailed for ones errors. I think that is how it works with outsourced engineering, which is that accounting points at how much money they saved and how the incompoetent in-house engineers just messed things up. And very few are ever willing to admit to a failure, because it is bad for one's career.
Good point, William K. Fears about outsourced aircraft maintenance get talked about a lot (Michael Crichton wrote a book about it called "Airframe" many years ago). But for some reason, there's little talk about the effects of outsourced engineering.
A group of compromises , flying in close formation."
what a beautiful quote!!
i'm sure this will come to me as i'm high above the water, crossing the atlantic or pacific, courtesy of an airline and aircraft company on my way to another great travel experience. and the thought will also arise that this quote as much as any i've heard characterises the whole industrial system.
The oft-repeated mistake manufacturers make, is not doing enough due diligence on the product design. While this is easier said than done, the pressures within the oragnization and external market forces decide how much or how little test validation gets done on the product before being deployed in the market. This is not restricted to the aircraft or automotive industry. Look at the pharmaceutical industry making new drugs as well as generic versions. The amount of bad side-effects and deaths caused by the drugs itself have increased over the years. The escape valve that industry has developed, is to have disclaimers that taking that drug will cause all kinds of side effects like puffing of lips, diarrhoea, kidney damage, internal bleeding etc., which protects them from liability claims in our highly litigious society. Many a times the ingredients they use are at fault or the formulations they produce are deficient. They push the performance envelope, so much so that the FDA cannot keep pace with all the developments and yet are under pressure to certify those drugs. Engineered products have the same set of challenges. Even when the product by itself may perform very well, when put into use in a certain application and/or environment they could fail, sometimes with disastrous/fatal outcomes. That is the price we pay for technological advances - but we all love i-anything. Getting back to Boeing, they have had their own problems to deal with, with lost contracts to Airbus Industries, due to delayed delivery dates for their Dreamliner. I am sure that this put pressure on Boeing as a company as well as their internal stakeholders including their excellent engineering team. What has drastically changed in the age of the internet, is that bad news reaches the four corners of the earth faster than it ever did before. News media need to increase their ratings, so under the guise of investigative journalism, we get disconnected facts enough to make everybody nervous to get up in the morning to go to work. We seek instant gratification, so these kinds of failures are to be expected as a matter of routine. While the learning curve can be reduced by applying lessons learned from automotive or space industry, certain proceses in life are linear. Performance validation is certainly one of them. Now let's just shut out the noise, and get back to work!
Not to sound like a conspiracy nut, the EV was suppressed for many years. Despite battery tech levels of the past, they were there. I am sure some corporate type somewhere will try to spin this as a reason to avoid electric cars. Oil corps, I'm looking at you...
I, for one, will buy an EV as my next car, without a doubt.
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