Thermal runaway—the boogeyman of electric vehicles, including electric motorcycles. You’ve got one battery cell heating up, catching fire, and setting off a chain reaction until you’ve got a fiery disaster. It’s rare, but when it happens, it’s all over the headlines. Cars, buildings, everything nearby—up in flames. No wonder some parking garages are banning EVs. Insuring something that might burn the whole place down? Good luck.
Thermal Runaway Might Be Solved for Good
But LG Chem, the brains behind many EV batteries, thinks they’ve cracked the code. Their idea? A simple layer between the battery’s critical parts that acts like a fuse.
When things heat up too much, this material changes, cutting off the current and stopping the fire before it spreads. It’s kind of like a mood ring for batteries—blue when calm, red when things get too hot to handle. In tests, even when a fire did start, it burned out quickly without taking down the whole battery pack.
LG Chem plans more tests next year and, if successful, could roll this out in future batteries. If it works, it could make EVs a lot safer and a lot easier to insure. Maybe we’ll finally get that fire-free, anxiety-free electric future we’ve been promised.
Source: InsideEVs
