"Hoverboards" catching fire

[Chuts]

What is up with those Hoverboards catching fire.  I've heard of at least 3 incidents recently of them blowing up and causing substantial fire damage to the owners home.  Are these people just charging them without keeping an eye on them or over charging them?  Or are they just buying the cheapest one they can find and expect them to be of the same quality as the expensive ones?

[SlowMo]

One major factor could be the unattended charging of batteries coupled with poor BMS design leading to overcharging. 

[esaj]

I'd suspect cheap poor quality chargers and battery cells probably play a role here too, but hard to say anything for sure... The cells are probably the most expensive parts on those things, so wouldn't expect them to be of any name-brand for the cheapest units.

[SlowMo]

I bought a generic no-name hoverboard before locally for USD250.00. That was the first electric vehicle that I bought. I was curious and opened up the board since the left led lights are dimmer than the right. What I saw labelled at the battery pack was LG batteries which maybe the low quality ones.

[Andy_T]

Are there other ways to charge the batteries? 

There are dedicated chargers / balancers available for RC racing that can do a lot of things with the RC 3S and 4S LIPO packs (which do have some added logic components I must admit)...

[drmrw]

Catching fire, not just a hunger games movie anymore. Those hoverboards are way more dangerous than the uni's I have one and fell on my ass multiple times. The two motors have to be coordinated with your foot movements and at top speed it is SO easy to press one foot down more than the other and you're flying. When you turn sharp it throws you to the outside hard. The uni you can go full speed and it's just like a motorcycle.

[Jason McNeil]

At the HK Tradeshow in October, there were about 20 vendors offering visually identical boards. When questioned about what differentiated them from each other, the typical response was about that they used 'authentic' components like batteries. There have been many cases, however, of a battery pack containing a 'LG' or 'Samsung' label, but once the protective film is pealed away, reveals some cheap & nasty generics. 

The problem with the generic cells is that they don't go through the rigorous QC manufacturing process of the big brands, so that the cell variability, even within the same production batch, is pretty inconsistent.

Market is partially to blame, most distributors & consumers are profoundly ignorant of component inputs, or what constitutes a reasonably safe board, their single all consuming obsession seems to be about shaving another dollar or two at the increased risk of safety.     

[SuperSport]

1 hour ago, drmrw said:

Catching fire, not just a hunger games movie anymore. Those hoverboards are way more dangerous than the uni's I have one and fell on my ass multiple times. The two motors have to be coordinated with your foot movements and at top speed it is SO easy to press one foot down more than the other and you're flying. When you turn sharp it throws you to the outside hard. The uni you can go full speed and it's just like a motorcycle.

+1

I've tumbled off the Hoverboard, but not the Uni.  I've topped both out at about 10mph, but the Uni feels So Much safer!

[carniflex]

Might add that the Lithium batteries are high energy-dense battery system that just like a grenade contains a large amount of energy (all here are adults and I assume that none mistakes Lithium batteries for ticking grenades between their legs). But that has been known since 1991 when they first came. But back to topic you can google or search on youtube for lithium batteries on fire or exploding and you'll find alot of different products catching fire.

 

Might add that airboards or segboards or whatever you call it, is presumed to be one of this years best christmas presents in Sweden. So media will blow it up when they finally start googling it.