For anyone interested but don’t want to click the link:
Incident occured in Texas, USA.
“The homeowners used a common charging device to charge and discharge lithium batteries for their remote-controlled hobby vehicles.
“My husband had gone rock crawling that morning. After he returned home that afternoon, he set them to discharge,” the fire victim said.”
Unsupervised battery left charging while they went to the gas station. Smoke alarms detected smoke, homeowners’ mother phoned the homeowners and checked upstairs to discover smoke. Fire department responded.
All evacuated fine, lots of damage to their house though .
Thanks for the cliff notes.
He crushed it under a rock crawler then tried to discharge it, never charged it at all? What is a “common charger”?
RC-cars usually run on LiPo batteries. We use Li-ION, LiFePO4, or NiMH batteries. Those are safer. Regardless that, NEVER put/let them unattended in a charger.!
Honestly, this is why I prefer not even touching lithium ion pouch cells.
The form factor and constructions differences make them not as safe.
Li-po batteries can be super dangerous! They don’t have the same safety that li-ions in cans do (ptc, thermal fuses), less sensitive to over charging. They do have bms boards, but those can fail easily, especially cheap li-pos. Could have been worse