[WARNING] Gotway Nikola 100v 1800WH Battery Fire

[xorbe]

If the wheel went up in flames after turning it on, I'm personally inclined to think it was a board failure.  Or, sudden catastrophic cell failure from bad manufacturing (aka Samsung S7 phones).

> When I got on it, it immediately shutoff and threw me off the wheel. It was only then after mysteriously powering off did the wheel go into thermal runaway and the wheel caught on fire.

What this tells me is that it wasn't likely a single cell failure. Something shorted out the entire pack end to end, all power is lost to the board, and the entire pack goes up in smoke as temp rises rapidly.

Edited June 1, 2020 by xorbe

[alcatraz]

The amount of refurbished tesla motors sanyo/panasonic 21700 cells that are circulating in China now I'm surprised that we aren't seeing more packs with those cells.

If they are the reason then this fire is only the tip of the iceberg.

Corrosion could perhaps also be the reason. Metal shavings. Bad spotweld. Hmm... what else?

Whatever the reason, better pack monitoring is the medicine. I wouldn't mind to ride a pack like that at all, as long as I know the cell voltages are fine.

[mrelwood]

7 hours ago, Michael Tucker said:

If simply charging to 80% were the problem in this particular case, replacing the battery pack would just result in another fire. If charging to 80% caused fires regularly it would be known.

No matter what the actual cause(s) for the fire was, it’s obvious that it doesn’t always cause the fire. Otherwise we’d have read about 500 fires. The incident was a rare outlier, not a sure outcome from anything. We will probably never know the actual cause, but this thread has brought up the most probable causes.

7 hours ago, Michael Tucker said:

If charging to 100% were mandatory, from which place would we be required to get that information.

This is currently a huge issue. It should be clearly printed in the front page of the user manual. In bold. But the way the community has been able to gather this information has required reading about hundreds of descriptions on EUC battery issues of all wear levels, learning about li-ion batteries in general, dissecting several packs and examining their BMS behavior from photos (which by itself nearly requires an EE degree), etc. I see all this as a huge accomplishment! Now it’s time to feed the information and the graveness of distributing it to the retailers and manufacturers.

7 hours ago, Michael Tucker said:

Not one of these measuring devices agrees with the other.

Voltage measuring devices are generally not all that precise in the price range of the components being used in an EUC. Or even in a $100 multimeter. Hopefully the BMS does a better job though, since the upper limit is a hard one. But surely there are outliers in the BMSs as well.

7 hours ago, Michael Tucker said:

I don't think charging only to 80% or 90% on a perfectly healthy battery pack connected to a perfectly healthy control board causes a fire in a wheel with so few miles on it.

I believe you are correct. But we don’t know how much variation there was in the cell group voltages from the start, or if the control board even had an issue that ended up shorting the MOSFETs and the battery.

 What we do know is that if the cell groups were badly balanced from the start, rigorous balance charging could have prevented the whole episode. And that is why every EUC customer must be informed about correct battery handling guidelines.

7 hours ago, Michael Tucker said:

Why would Gotway be so quick to replace the battery pack with different cells if charging was the problem?

The issue could be just that the Panasonic cells had more than the usual variation in cell capacity. Or the cell provider turned out to be sourcing used cells. Or they got a better deal. Or even something completely unrelated. Either way, giving in to Jason’s replacement claim makes all the sense no matter what the actual cause was, and whether they even know the cause themselves or not.

[fbhb]

The following video is Not a Nikola, but a 100v Monster V3 with 3rd party battery upgrade which may well have been suspect 21700 cells! Posting this here to also help make people aware of the increasing fire risk with some of these large, "Seller" upgraded battery packs!!!

"This is why i won’t do third party battery upgrades. another monster with added battery packs from some third party deal. just spontaneous combustion as rider was riding"

Note: The above text is quoted from the actual Facebook post.

Note: Recent comments on the Facebook post have since stated this Monster was a 3108wh 21700 from Ali seller Loomo.

Below is another short clip that shows the wheel ignite with the rider still onboard, just before he got dumped in the road! Scary, Scary scenes!!!

 

Edited June 1, 2020 by fbhb

[Lefteris]

Hope that guy is ok.... :-/

[D3m0nzz]

Might be smart to start shying away from these third party mods as a community. Fires like this are what got "hoverboards" banned in most places. EUCs are always one major news story away from the same fate. 

Edited June 1, 2020 by D3m0nzz

[xorbe]

57 minutes ago, D3m0nzz said:

Might be smart to start shying away from these third party mods as a community. Fires like this are what got "hoverboards" banned in most places. EUCs are always one major news story away from the same fate. 

Not really, hoverboards were insanely popular and much easier to acquire.

[Delmeekc]

It maybe my phone but can't seem to find a Nikola plus on the gotway site anymore either. Can find the 84v model only.

[xorbe]

1 hour ago, Delmeekc said:

It maybe my phone but can't seem to find a Nikola plus on the gotway site anymore either. Can find the 84v model only.

Scroll down http://www.kebye.com/productinfo/371591.html

(But seems like a lot of websites serve different content for desktop vs mobile though, I was looking via desktop. Possible the mobile site is different ...)

Edited June 1, 2020 by xorbe

[Delmeekc]

Just now, xorbe said:

Scroll down http://www.kebye.com/productinfo/371591.html

My phone then, cheers.

[Archee Jan Bloch]

On 5/30/2020 at 2:43 PM, Chriull said:

I know. That's why i asked you, if you'd like to add adfitional information missing/correct rumours or false information(1)

But back to the topic - i fear that in this case there is a high chance that it has nothing to do with the batteries.

Most likely low speed overburden killing the mosfets/causing molten insulations snd by this shorted wires (to the motor).

Maybe a BMS/contact fault heating up the batteries. Or any other QC issue causing heatup/shorting.

This in combination with the missing short circuit protection led to a thermal runaway.

Could be any other problem with bad cells from the beginning or whatnot, but above cases would be my first guess.

Definitely the described charging behaviour of @davinche would be my very last guess.

Edit: i started this topic in the hope that it evolves into some kind of knowledge pool for the community sometimes...

he said he did it for half year and maybe if he didn't ride during cold winter rainy days.  things could get bad.  Not like the guy yesterday in NYC who I told don't charge it, don't ride it last week... he didn't listen.. has surgery today, broken fibula

[davinche]

I received the Nikola around Christmas time. I started riding it once I got back from vacation. Moved to a new place in Feb, hence why the longer commute starting from then.

 

[davinche]

18 hours ago, mrelwood said:

This is currently a huge issue. It should be clearly printed in the front page of the user manual. In bold. But the way the community has been able to gather this information has required reading about hundreds of descriptions on EUC battery issues of all wear levels, learning about li-ion batteries in general, dissecting several packs and examining their BMS behavior from photos (which by itself nearly requires an EE degree), etc. I see all this as a huge accomplishment! Now it’s time to feed the information and the graveness of distributing it to the retailers and manufacturers.

Is there a post somewhere on this forum stickied with this information? If there was then there is no excuse for me and I should've read it. But if there isn't one, maybe we can do our part and make one? Just so newcomers know to charge their devices to 100%.

[mrelwood]

1 hour ago, davinche said:

Is there a post somewhere on this forum stickied with this information? If there was then there is no excuse for me and I should've read it. But if there isn't one, maybe we can do our part and make one? Just so newcomers know to charge their devices to 100%.

There are several topics that touch the subject, but nothing stickied. I do think the tips should be presented better with a beginner in mind. I wouldn’t blame you for missing the topic altogether, but I do blame Ewheels for not including this crucial bit of information with their chargers that enable partial charging. I just sent them an email about the subject yesterday, so hopefully it will change.

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by mrelwood

[Ivan Zemlyachenko]

On 6/1/2020 at 3:18 AM, davinche said:

The battery recall as of right now is only for EWheels customers, not Gotway or other distributors AFAIK.

Ecodrift announced recall for their customers.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Ivan Zemlyachenko

[WI_Hedgehog]

  

9 hours ago, davinche said:

Is there a post somewhere on this forum stickied with this information? If there was then there is no excuse for me and I should've read it. But if there isn't one, maybe we can do our part and make one? Just so newcomers know to charge their devices to 100%.

 

7 hours ago, mrelwood said:

There are several topics that touch the subject, but nothing stickied.... I do blame Ewheels for not including this crucial bit of information with their chargers that enable partial charging. I just sent them an email about the subject yesterday, so hopefully it will change.

 

@mrelwood, I think @Jason McNeil doesn't know. The forum has a wide knowledge base from engineers, extensive R/C designers*, multi-PEV owners, and members who are super smart and researched the internals of their wheels and shared their knowledge here. An EUC design company doesn't even have that broad expertise base.

EUCs are new to the market and tended to be obsolete before having battery issues. (We learned "what didn't work" from the hoverboard fires.) Newly introduced "fast" wheels are only recently being used as commuter vehicles putting on lots of miles. Batteries used to be small, so standard chargers were fine, it's only recently fast fast-chargers with 80% charge capability were introduced. This is all new! Just a few years ago top speed was 12 miles per hour with limited range, now EUCs have gone from "toy" to serious investment! (Who ran their Luffy this hard? )

---

*A bit of history: R/C guys used to run NiCd, when the hobby switched to LiPo they went through this leaning curve. At first there weren't a lot of people running lithium, so there wasn't a lot of risk. As more people ran lithium they had more ideas, not all of them good, and the LiPo fires became a huge topic, as it still is. EUCs are now getting into massive batteries and very-parallel with huge current draws as R/C did, so charge time shortcuts are inevitable, as are lithium fires. The experienced R/C guys warn about parallel charging risks, and use high-end parallel charging boards where every every cell is fused, on smart chargers that hook to laptops and record everything. If anything looks wrong it alarms and shuts down, the packs are removed from parallel charging and are single-charged to see where the problem lies. Smart BMSs would certainly help the EUC situation.

---

Note we don't know the cause of the fire, and don't want to imply charging was/wasn't part of it (we have no way of knowing that). This thread should probably be split into a second battery charging thread. @Unventor @Chriull @meepmeepmayer

Edited June 2, 2020 by WI_Hedgehog

[Rafal]

This is definitely not associated with BMS / Charger. Otherwise, the battery would burn while charging

Edited June 2, 2020 by Rafal

[RagingGrandpa]

3 hours ago, Rafal said:

This is definitely not associated with BMS / Charger.

Don't rule it out. While the fire did not occur during charging, charging is the activity that created the state of the pack (whether perfect or imperfect) that was present at the time of the fire.

We are unlikely to get a definitive root-cause for this one, so please use it as a reminder to exercise best practices:

On 5/6/2020 at 11:41 AM, RagingGrandpa said:

Life can be simple...

"Charge overnight before a ride"

Don't charge after a ride, unless you're going to ride again immediately. (Minimizes storage SOC.)

I truly think this is all that would be needed for most EUC owners to keep their packs happy. If they knew this and nothing else, I think we'd be in a better place than today.
Perhaps some Z10's would self-discharge during long-term storage and need manual recovery... but if you put a Gotway in the basement at 3.3V/cell (unridable), come back 6mos later and I think you'll find it happily resting at 3.0 and ready to recharge.

The only remaining concern is fire safety... I'm comfortable charging indoors overnight (with me sleeping upstairs), for unmodified EUCs, that aren't soaking wet, using OEM chargers.
Start adding jenky untested custom stuff, and 'sleeping upstairs while charging' would stop.

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by RagingGrandpa

[.....]

On 6/1/2020 at 3:13 AM, fbhb said:

Note: Recent comments on the Facebook post have since stated this Monster was a 3108wh 21700 from Ali seller Loomo.

Below is another short clip that shows the wheel ignite with the rider still onboard, just before he got dumped in the road! Scary, Scary scenes!!!

 

Sweet, this video has it all! Well, maybe missing a few ingredients, but great vid! Sucks this happens and I may be bold by riding with little gear, but I'm not bold enough to modify packs or sleep with a wheel charging in my home while I sleep. Do these 3rd party 'installers' carry insurance on their business'? You know, the kind that pays the consumer, when the builder loses a lawsuit? Imagine riding in the woods when something like this happens. It'll only take ONE forest on fire, ONE car on fire, ONE house or ONE gas station on fire, to bring the hammer down on all this stuff we are enjoying so much. And whats up with the crowd of eucs, being a detriment to the flow of traffic? Playing in the street is fun, but gone are the days when youll find lots of streets with no traffic. Imagine what people in cars are muttering under their breath, as euc riders impede their flow and THEN see one ignite as a rider hits the pavement!

Edited June 2, 2020 by ShanesPlanet

[Michael Tucker]

2 hours ago, ShanesPlanet said:

Sweet, this video has it all! Well, maybe missing a few ingredients, but great vid! Sucks this happens and I may be bold by riding with little gear, but I'm not bold enough to modify packs or sleep with a wheel charging in my home while I sleep. Do these 3rd party 'installers' carry insurance on their business'? You know, the kind that pays the consumer, when the builder loses a lawsuit? Imagine riding in the woods when something like this happens. It'll only take ONE forest on fire, ONE car on fire, ONE house or ONE gas station on fire, to bring the hammer down on all this stuff we are enjoying so much. And whats up with the crowd of eucs, being a detriment to the flow of traffic? Playing in the street is fun, but gone are the days when youll find lots of streets with no traffic. Imagine what people in cars are muttering under their breath, as euc riders impede their flow and THEN see one ignite as a rider hits the pavement!

Cigarettes have caused forrest fires,  gas station fires, and house fires...should cigarettes be band because they can sometimes start fires? People are wild and reckless on bikes, skateboards, scooters and even cars in traffic. People have caused death and destruction with all forms of transportation. Should all these forms of transportation be ban because they can sometimes irritate others and be dangerous. The behavior of the average impatient suburban commuter in a car or SUV( speeding, texting, running red lights and aggressive vengeful driving) is far more concerning and dangerous compared to any EUC activity that can ever be achieved. Also let's be courteous to drivers as we wish they are to us.

[PLEASE_DELETE]

Deleted.

Edited March 18 by PLEASE_DELETE

[Ben Kim]

I've owned 5 EUCs, and 4 scooters.  Each one was thrown on the charger the second I got home (unless it was at or below freezing outside then I wait a few hours) and pulled out when fully charged to 100%.  My Nikola and Monster are/were over a year old and still charges to 100.8V each and every time and I still get the expected range out of them.  My Mten3 fully charges to 83.6V, but this appears to be normal for 84V wheels. 

Gotway is extremely conservative with its low voltage cutoff (~3.3V per cell), so that alone will atone for increased cycle life; no need to cut the charge off at whatever lower arbitrary voltage.  Given the 3108Wh custom Loomo Monster battery fire, and this Nikola fire having the same common denominator (harvested Tesla cells) any wheel with these cells should be a cause for concern.  

Edited June 3, 2020 by Ben Kim

[Planemo]

3 hours ago, Ben Kim said:

 and this Nikola fire having the same common denominator (harvested Tesla cells) any wheel with these cells should be a cause for concern.  

If true, this is and always has been my concern with harvested cells and I said as much many months ago when the rumours went around that some suppliers were using used Tesla cells. My issue is not even so much that they are used, it's more to do with the fact that I don't imagine (and call me sceptical) that the Chinese would spend any real time making sure the used cells are matched. At least with new cells, they come out batched which means they are pretty well matched without even being tested. Theres every chance that the Tesla cells have been taken from different cars, having done completely different mileages/uses and then thrown into a wheel with no checking of individual cell performance.

[UniVehje]

12 minutes ago, Planemo said:

If true, this is and always has been my concern with harvested cells and I said as much many months ago when the rumours went around that some suppliers were using used Tesla cells. My issue is not even so much that they are used, it's more to do with the fact that I don't imagine (and call me sceptical) that the Chinese would spend any real time making sure the used cells are matched. At least with new cells, they come out batched which means they are pretty well matched without even being tested. Theres every chance that the Tesla cells have been taken from different cars, having done completely different mileages/uses and then thrown into a wheel with no checking of individual cell performance.

Yes, pretty much this. Sounds very plausible. Used cells that are not matched coupled with a belief that batteries last longer if charged only to 80 % and do that for 6-12 months, they will certainly be very unbalanced and the risk of fire is high. Lack of proper BMS does not help either. 

[Unventor]

I have not read the entire there here so feel free to bash me if I am posting something other have pointed out already. 

I am glad this has not happened to me. But the again I am not buying special build/modified GW wheels anyway. 

That said I think that despite what people think of Inmotion (from a GW point of view) AS an EUC community and customer I am glad that Inmotion choose to addressee things like this so it should not happen with the V11. Should not and cannot is 2 very different things. But at least one manufacturer are trying to minimize the risks. 

So what doe they do in the V11? in short as I understand it they monitor the entire pack (2 parallel connected packs individually, but not on cell level)So if something goes working in one battery pack it can be shut down and wheel should be able to operate on 1 battery pack with out a cutoff. Now I am not sure but they why they described this in their Q&A it should also have a thermal safety mechanism, and this means if true that they should be able to prevent things like thermal runaway in cells. 

As a customer we all have a vote if it is more important to get huge cheap "iffy" battery or if we want product safety. I don't think I need to write much more on what I choose. I can only hope the community see this too. Otherwise I could see EUCs being banned as firetraps.