Battery Insiders Reflection - Battery Safety

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights in the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. And welcome back, everyone. Welcome back to Battery Insiders, the podcast about batteries with Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. And yeah, for today, we had a really exciting session on battery safety, and I'm excited because that's also one of these topics Bhavya knows quite a bit about. So Bhavya, what did you think about today's session? I thought it was interesting to hear from people from all over the world because, you know, one question I think was brought up specifically from one of our listeners from India who was, you know, like, okay, other than standardization, which is also one of my favorite things, like, what else can we do? And I think there are like two aspects that I think we have to talk about when we talk about battery safety. And one of them is the actual safety of, like, producing, managing, and recycling this massive, massive battery.

1:07And then the second part, which is, and the two are intertwined, is, you know, some of the more, like, one-off things that do happen. And we've unfortunately seen more of it in the news. It's like thermal runaway. And, you know, just random one-off things that I think require more than the manufacturer to know about safety. So in the cases of, like, thermal runaway, I think, you know, when we were in, when I was in California, it often involved making sure, like, local fire department knew what to do. Local, you know, like, other safety, like, third-party teams required, are required to know how to handle these as well. And I think what this really brings me to is that at the end of the day, battery safety is, like, everybody's problem. But it has to be led either one by the manufacturer and or two by local government policies. And I think the two need to, you know, really collaborate for something feasible to actually happen.

2:04And so to talk about that more concretely, like, when you go and buy your electric vehicle, for example, I guess I haven't personally been a purchase my own Tesla, unfortunately, yet. But what kind of education are you providing to the consumer? Like, that's the level to which the micro level to which I think about battery safety. You know, there's so many UL standards. And there's a lot of talk out there about maybe some type of blockchain, some type of label that needs to be put on the battery so that when it does eventually end up in a recycler's pile, like, they know what to do with it. And those are all great and I think necessary and all part of that standardization component. But what do I, as a customer, need to know about the risks of the battery in my car? What do I need to know about how to handle it at the end of the day when 10, 15,000, or sorry, 10, 15 years later, this battery, you know, just dies?

2:59Or is there a way that I can be more aware of the health of my battery? You know, when I talk to people, friends and family who have purchased EVs, I'm not sure they're necessary. You know, it's all very cool and exciting at the start. And I'm not sure that they've really been given the tools and the information to, like, equip them to, like, know what to do when these circumstances arise. And just like any other technology, this does happen. And so, not to say that this is, like, EVs are bad or anything, but the consumer education component is the part that I tend to, that really comes up for me a lot when I talk about battery safety, even though I know many, many focus more on policy and what manufacturers are doing. What do you think? No, I think it's a super valuable point. And I think, you know, really thinking about the ecosystem and not just, you know, this is one kind of, not just focus on the battery itself, but really understand, you know, how people are going to interact with it.

3:57And especially from a safety standpoint. I mean, it was interesting. I think also from our conversation startup, I see him for ARC, who's more from, you know, from an OEM perspective. And, you know, it's quite busy there to make sure they're safe. You know, where I think two things we spoke about also in the session was one on, and we know that your car has to warn you from a better regulation perspective and from European, you know, safety standards. So say the car, I think it was five minutes or so before doing runaway or something like this comes, the car actually has to warn you something like this will come. So that's kind of the car has to educate you as a user. So I think that's quite fascinating. But then also I think kind of, yeah, kind of how to make sure that, you know, you as a user kind of act with, work with it the way you should. I think you also mentioned, you know, that this is essentially impossible to get your user to behave the way you want as an OEM perspective.

4:46The user will do their way. And of course you can use incentives and things like that. But, you know, unfortunately not every user behaves maybe in the best interest of the battery, let's say, or the AV. So I think that's also interesting to take into account. Which also kind of led to the point you just mentioned, right? You have to then make sure, you know, the fire departments and things like that also know what to do. And I think we discussed this before, I think it was one of the previous sessions where we spoke about, you know, that a lot of the fire trucks would still just use lots and lots of water because there may be smarter ways to handle it, but they don't have it right now, right? They're not equipped. But this, of course, is also going to be interesting to see what happens when all cars, as we know, they're going to be electric. I mean, it's going to happen at some point or at least 99, whatever percent.

5:31So to see when is this transition point, right? Like when things are actually going to be tailored to AVs rather than ICEs. And I think it's going to be interesting to see this maybe as well. And like as we get different chemistries, do we have to handle them differently when these incidences do occur? Is our buckets of water going to work every time? Will we be able to, you know, reduce the amount of flammable substance in these batteries? Kind of ties into that white paper we were talking about last week, I think. Yeah. As well as in the battery passport, which is something which came up before where, you know, every battery needs their ID, et cetera. And then you kind of, you know, at some point you could imagine, right, the car going to talk to the, you know, the fire truck and say, hey, I'm this EV. I have this battery chemistry loaded. That's the amount of potential explosion, you know, things. And essentially, you know, it'll be really cool, right?

6:22Like if the EV essentially tells the fire truck how to handle it. That's insane that we just talked about that. Well, that's wild. Welcome to 2022. Are we in 2022? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. No, we're definitely in 2021, aren't we? Yeah, we are. Oh, gosh. We're not in battery day 2020 yet. No. No, fantastic. And then I'm looking forward. I'm sure it's going to be a topic we're going to discuss. I think it's in the end also was discussed about battery sizing and things, which of course is also connected. They're going to be very nice sessions. But next week, actually, we're going to talk about silicon for silicon for anode. So it's going to be interesting as well. All right. Looking forward to it. Thanks then. Bye-bye.