The batteries used today did not exist 15 years ago.
The first commercially viable Lithium ion batteries were introduced by Sony in 1991.
I had a half a pallet of the damn things fall off another pallet inside a half size shipping container. They were adopted early by the oilfield industry for remote and emergency backups for all manner of system controls. This was back in 2006 or 2007, I'd have to look at my logs to know for sure, happened right around new year's day...so "give or take" 15 years. One of them fell onto a sharp pipework guard of other piece of cargo, pierced the case and started a thermal runaway fire that was contained ultimately by snagging the container sling and having the crane operator pick it off the deck and submerge it into the ocean until cooled.
Not the same batteries. These batteries are smaller than D cells..and similar configuration. and hold 3.6 volts each.
No, of course not, Tesla...all EVs in fact, have much larger batteries with
thousands of cells.
Here is a small cross section of a Tesla battery pack.
We're picking engineering nits here brother.
Yes, they are not flat "plates" as in a lead acid battery, they are wrapped coils, sandwiches, of electrolyte and anode and cathode and insulator materials.
But they still call transistor anodes "plates" from vacuum tube technology, same as battery cel "plates" in that they are chemical receivers and pitchers of electron flow across an electrolytic or semi conductor membrane.
Only problem with these ones is over heating when Over Charging.. and most Fires had been caused by that.. improper Charging.
You can't over charge them as far as I can tell.
The charging process is completely automated and out of the operator's control.
Tesla Batteries are in a liquid Water Jacket that both Warms or Cools batteries as necessary.
Yes and that seems to be part of the problem with the ones that have spontaneously combusted while charging...they seemed to suffer some failure of the cooling system.
Hi voltage Arcs are lighting other materials on fire,,, not the batteries themselves..
Overcharging enough to cause a fire takes some pretty deliberate Stupidity.
Failure of the cooling system and external shorting would not account for the repeated instances of re-ignition of the battery pack.
That amount of heat is caused by one thing only: the runaway chemical/electrical reaction going in
inside the battery and it's individual cells.
And it will continue to go on, until the fuel is exhausted, the cells all discharged or the whole thing swamped with enough water to cool and stop the runaway reaction.