Another gotway fire

[xiiijojjo]

I woke up early this morning to family members screaming and when I got up and opened the door to the rest of the house there was zero visibility because of thick smoke everywhere. 

That moment I knew this was a lithium fire and ran to wet a towel to throw over the EUC so I can pull it outside without burning my hand too badly. 

Thankfully I had parked the EUC right next to the only entrance without blocking it, and the gardenhose was right outside the front door. 

Only one of the two battery packs ignited and by the time we were drenching it in water, 90% of the pack had already been consumed by the fire so we put it out using less than 50 liters of water. 

Had to run back into the smoke several times to get all the animals out of the hazardous smoke. 

I lost a bunch of other things in the fire and will be taking a long break from EUCs until LiFePO4/semi solid state becomes the norm. 

Had that happened in the middle of the night I would have seen flames when I opened my door instead of smoke. 

 

It was a gotway RS 19 v1, batch 1 if anyone's interested. Haven't crashed it, didn't leave it charging overnight, haven't ridden in rain recently,roughly 3700km total range. 

I did notice the last time I charged it before going to bed the night prior to the fire, that the default charger was acting up in the final hour of charging. 

One light will always be green if the cord is connected to power, the other is red when charging, green when done.. Well during the final hour of charging the light would start flickering from red to green many times a second so I disconnected the charger to prevent damage and a potential fire. 

Didn't really help much. But I'm never buying lithium ion products again so something good did come from all this. 

[Magman116]

Glad you caught it before it became out of hand. I have been there.

From my understanding, V1 of the RS19 had the volatile LG M50T batteries that were know for catching fire. 

 

Here is an example:

 

Check out the Fire History thread on this forum; lot of good information there. https://forum.electricunicycle.org/topic/21506-fire-history/

 

https://www.ewheels.com/recall/

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Magman116

[meepmeepmayer]

10 minutes ago, Magman116 said:

volatile LG M50LT batteries

M50T are the notorious, dangerous ones. No issues with the M50LT as far as I know.

Yea but those affected MSP/Nikola/RS(?)  wheels are a ticking time bomb apparently.

[5Cauac]

Glad to hear everyone made it to safety in time including the animals.  

If you have the means of storage outdoors you don't need to give up on owning a wheel. Investment in a vented  steel storage/on site tool box could safely store your wheel/s.

 

 

[xiiijojjo]

4 minutes ago, 5Cauac said:

Glad to hear everyone made it to safety in time including the animals.  

If you have the means of storage outdoors you don't need to give up on owning a wheel. Investment in a vented  steel storage/on site tool box could safely store your wheel/s.

 

 

At this point I'm completely over lithium ion battery ownership but it's a great solution for those who haven't been burned yet, I agree. 

[5Cauac]

34 minutes ago, xiiijojjo said:

At this point I'm completely over lithium ion battery ownership but it's a great solution for those who haven't been burned yet, I agree. 

I completely understand. PTS is no joke. Let's all hope we don't have to wait to long before a new form of SAFE energy is released to the public. (damn greedy bastards!!)

[Bizra6ot]

2 hours ago, xiiijojjo said:

I did notice the last time I charged it before going to bed the night prior to the fire, that the default charger was acting up in the final hour of charging. 

One light will always be green if the cord is connected to power, the other is red when charging, green when done.. Well during the final hour of charging the light would start flickering from red to green many times a second so I disconnected the charger to prevent damage and a potential fire. 

It's normal, it flickers during the balancing phase

[Chriull]

3 hours ago, Bizra6ot said:

It's normal, it flickers during the balancing phase

Just with some very bad design (no hysteresis), a dead cell or a bms or charger malfunction.

Changing to green means that the charging current drops below some threshold. During "normal" constant voltage charging with decreasing current the led cannot flicker - it just changes to green and stays green.

Just once the bms cuts of due to single cell overvoltage (some 4.25-4.28V) the led changes again. Once the cell is discharged to some 4.19-4.2V again charging (could) resume and led changes back.

With a functioning bms, charger and cells this change is far away from flickering - more in the range of tens of minutes and/or hours!

 

[CrabChampion]

The v1 RS with LG battery cells is known to blow up. Sorry to see you quit the hobby. For what its worth, there havent been any other reported fires with wheels using the samsung 50E cells, but I guess you're done for good. Unlucky and bad situation all round

[xiiijojjo]

Thankfully my European house is made of cinder blocks and not drywall/wood so after cleaning the walls, priming and painting them the only damage that remains (other than things lost in the fire and a bit of skin damage) is a hole that was melted into the clay tiles in the floor possibly from molten metal. 

[Frolic0415]

I have an MSP sitting in my room (11xxx KMs). Every time I see these posts I get more and more anxious

[Mango]

9 minutes ago, Frolic0415 said:

I have an MSP sitting in my room (11xxx KMs). Every time I see these posts I get more and more anxious

Why are you holding onto a thousand dollar wheel that could end up costing you tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage and/or your life?

These wheels are a known risk.

Get rid of it!

[Punxatawneyjoe]

28 minutes ago, Frolic0415 said:

I have an MSP sitting in my room (11xxx KMs). Every time I see these posts I get more and more anxious

 

17 minutes ago, Mango said:

Get rid of it!

or at least cover it with a welding blanket when not in use and keep a smoke detector nearby. That's what i would do if i couldn't afford to replace it.

[xiiijojjo]

1 hour ago, Frolic0415 said:

I have an MSP sitting in my room (11xxx KMs). Every time I see these posts I get more and more anxious

It's exactly posts like my own about fire after fire (especially from gotway) that made me plan for a potential fire. 

I started only parking it in places where a fire could be contained/not spread rapidly, and where the wheel could be moved outside of the building at a moment's notice. Even the installation of the outdoor water hose was for the specific reason of putting out a potential fire. 

I used to sleep next to it for months without a fire detector before the bulk of gotway fires started being reported. 

If you want to keep that wheel I think the bare minimum is having an outdoor metal enclosure for storage/charging that is distant enough from other flammable materials that a fire could never spread. Because even with a welder's blanket or a fire detector these fires are incredibly rapid and become uncontrollable almost immediately, so those things might give you enough time to evacuate but not enough time to actually quench the fire. 

 

Edited August 5, 2023 by xiiijojjo

[EternalEnigma]

On 7/31/2023 at 6:56 PM, Chriull said:

Just with some very bad design (no hysteresis), a dead cell or a bms or charger malfunction.

Changing to green means that the charging current drops below some threshold. During "normal" constant voltage charging with decreasing current the led cannot flicker - it just changes to green and stays green.

Just once the bms cuts of due to single cell overvoltage (some 4.25-4.28V) the led changes again. Once the cell is discharged to some 4.19-4.2V again charging (could) resume and led changes back.

With a functioning bms, charger and cells this change is far away from flickering - more in the range of tens of minutes and/or hours!

 

Hmm, I bought a charger from YZPower for my Inmotion V8F and it flickers rapidly from red to green for about a minute during the last bit of charging, with the fan ramping up and down.

I contacted them to ask if it's normal, and they said it's expected behaviour  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Rawnei]

When you really think about it it's absurd that we have these old Gotways still catching fire but everyone is so focused on next wheel being released from Begode without them taking any action to remedy these ticking bombs, Begode really got away with this one huh?

Edited August 6, 2023 by Rawnei

[Robse]

not to defend GW, and not because i myself is a RS owner ( i have taken a few preacurations🙄)  but since nobody knows the exact number of sold (problematic) units, and the fire problems also is somehow related to the riding style, no-one can say that GW did get away with it. I think the lesson has been learned, at least for those digging in the community.   If it's only 1 in 1000 that goes up in flames, then what? 1 is one to many, but how about all the other lithium battery powered stuff that catches fire? Especially ebikes, now sold en massé (in Denmark the sales are sky rocketed the last 2 years) , i think the future will bring a lot of fires, its just a matter of time for all these news deviced to get old and often misused (e bike users dont have smart chargers and knows sh*t about balancing....)  so ? 😐

[Rawnei]

37 minutes ago, Robse said:

not to defend GW, and not because i myself is a RS owner ( i have taken a few preacurations🙄)  but since nobody knows the exact number of sold (problematic) units, and the fire problems also is somehow related to the riding style, no-one can say that GW did get away with it. I think the lesson has been learned, at least for those digging in the community.   If it's only 1 in 1000 that goes up in flames, then what? 1 is one to many, but how about all the other lithium battery powered stuff that catches fire? Especially ebikes, now sold en massé (in Denmark the sales are sky rocketed the last 2 years) , i think the future will bring a lot of fires, its just a matter of time for all these news deviced to get old and often misused (e bike users dont have smart chargers and knows sh*t about balancing....)  so ? 😐

The cells in question is known to be problematic, it's a fact, gotway/begode quietly changed cells in newer packs knowing this and chose to not do anything about the packs already out in the wild, no amount of statistics or rationalization will change that and it's beyond me why someone would defend this practice.

[Robse]

2 minutes ago, Rawnei said:

The cells in question is known to be problematic, it's a fact, gotway/begode quietly changed cells in newer packs knowing this and chose to not do anything about the packs already out in the wild, no amount of statistics or rationalization will change that and it's beyond me why someone would defend this practice.

agreed , it's not the correct way to do business, however i don't expect a Chinese company to handle situations like this to take care of the customer. Only thing that matters is money.

[Rawnei]

18 minutes ago, Robse said:

agreed , it's not the correct way to do business, however i don't expect a Chinese company to handle situations like this to take care of the customer. Only thing that matters is money.

Yes I agree, money and reputation, but their reputation doesn't seem that dented from all of this, maybe because so many riders just move on from old models fast wanting the newest thing and most youtubers giving them so much praise ignoring the negatives, one benefit (for Begode) of their fast iteration of new models I guess.

[Chriull]

8 hours ago, EternalEnigma said:

I contacted them to ask if it's normal, and they said it's expected behaviour  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Expect the unexpected;)

[Paul g]

Was it because of Begode waterproof technology 🤣 or because of Begode safety inclined fan doing something “safe” 😛 , maybe both? Begode and Begode fans will always remain a mystery 😂

Edited August 9, 2023 by Paul g

[0000]

On 8/5/2023 at 4:32 PM, xiiijojjo said:

It's exactly posts like my own about fire after fire (especially from gotway) that made me plan for a potential fire.

I mean it sounds like you already knew about the M50T cell fire risk and decided to gamble anyway. I feel like that was hard to miss on the forum as there have been numerous posts warning about these cells specifically. Especially given your hundreds of posts, and rocking a V1 RS, I would think you would've already been hip to the situation. I don't want to seem unsympathetic, but the only reason I bring this up is that you said in your original post:

On 7/31/2023 at 4:34 PM, xiiijojjo said:

Didn't really help much. But I'm never buying lithium ion products again so something good did come from all this. 

Which is not a fair reaction, although understandable to be pissed about the damage.

As @meepmeepmayer& @Rawnei said, the high, nigh-inevitable fire risk is specific to the M50T cells, and specifically in the 4P/900wh configuration on the now older Begode/Gotway wheels. It's not useful nor accurate to condemn all lithium-ion cells. Still, clearly you had some idea given what you said above, if not the full picture, so I think the people who really deserve the most sympathy are the family members you seemingly knowingly put at risk by gambling on the safety of a known-unsafely configured product IMO.

Yes, Gotway-->Begode sucks for not doing a full recall and people who want to disparage them and not buy their products are totally justified in doing so. However, the risk with these cells has been public knowledge in the community for at least a couple years now, so people who know this risk and still choose to gamble, that's 100% on them.

And speaking of risk, @meepmeepmayeror @Rawnei can we please get a stickied post in the Begode forum topic warning owners of the Nikola/MSP/MSX/RS(V1) models about their "ticking time bomb?" It doesn't do anyone any good to keep this information hidden in random threads as the possibility of more fires in the future making the news doesn't help the community whatsoever, to say nothing of the individuals unknowingly risking property damage and loss of life.

Whether it's a matter of under-spec'd max current capacity, recycled (mismatched battery resistance) cells, shoddy cell interconnections/spot-welds, or a combination of factors, I think we've long since passed the threshold of being able to definitively say older Begode wheels with LG M50T cells in the 900wh format are inherently unsafe, and I think people should be warned and encouraged to remove and dispose of these packs ASAP if they don't have the means to determine their safety independently.

On 8/5/2023 at 4:32 PM, xiiijojjo said:

If you want to keep that wheel I think the bare minimum is having an outdoor metal enclosure for storage/charging that is distant enough from other flammable materials that a fire could never spread.

Unfortunately non-temperature controlled outdoor storage invites another risk for battery packs, one that is exacerbated by larger temperature swings (day-night + seasons) due to the ever-present cell electrolyte leakage phenomenon where this vapor tends to condensate on the metal battery and interconnect surfaces which can eventually lead to conductive bridging, electrolysis, and thermal runaway on a long enough timeline. This interview explains the process among other things.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Vanturion

[meepmeepmayer]

@VanturionNo need to be rude/blame someone who just had a battery fire. Not all of the M50T wheels have caught on fire, after all, and not everyone can just throw a $2000 investment away, and some people have other things to worry about than just thinking about their old electric unicycles all of their time.

I can make a sticky warning if people think it would help. I know affected wheels are the RS, MSP, and Nikola. Are the Monster Pro and EX.N safe, or might they be affected, too? Does someone know for sure?

[techyiam]

38 minutes ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Not all of the M50T wheels have caught on fire

You should not be looking at that way. When dealing with risks, you need to truly understand the probability and statistics. 

Gotway/Begode LG M50T cells based battery packs were deemed dangerous, so much that ewheels were forced to do a recall by CPSC.

The likelihood and stakes are so high, owners should consider the expense to be an equivalence to paying an insurance premium. 

The problem is that the stakes are so high.

Edited August 10, 2023 by techyiam