2 injured in battery explosion at GM Tech Center
WARREN, Mich.—Two employees were injured Wednesday in a lithium battery explosion that forced the evacuation of about 80 others at a General Motors Co. facility north of Detroit, authorities said.Okay, so there was a battery explosion. At the laboratory where they make the batteries for the Chevy Volt. They're quick to claim that this was not a Volt battery - and if you buy that, well, you probably bought a Volt, too. Ah, the poor, plagued Chevrolet Volt - the Government Motors Wundercar, with $250K worth of taxpayer subsidies per vehicle, the one that sold so poorly (at nearly $50K per crappy mid-sized bland sedan) that they had to stop production, the one that caught fire, but we were told that it was perfectly safe by the NTSB, had an explosion in the same lab where Volt batteries were made...
The explosion occurred during extreme testing of an experimental battery in a test chamber at the Alternative Energy Center laboratory at the GM Tech Center in Warren, the automaker said in a statement.
Why am I reminded of this?
That is all.
Another dispatch from...
(image courtesy of Robb Allen)
4 comments:
As someone who workes with Li Ion batteries let me tell you they do go BOOM! even a single cell has a safety circuit to prevent over or under charging for this reason. I would not want to be near a Volt if the battery pack got shorted out (you know like in an accident?). Things would get real interesting real fast. Spontanious Dissassembly sucks if you are in the blast radious. . . .
Still it sounds like a small boom, probably a cell or two, not a full battery. Would love to know the details on this one. They will cover as much as possible to hide the inconvenient truths about the car.
"Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work!"
if you buy that, well, you probably bought a Volt, too.
Actually I do buy it. You should see some of the messes I've made on the way to developing a product. Mine never needed a hazmat response, but still.
GM is sinking a lot of money (some of it is even theirs) into battery research. There's a very good chance the battery that failed was being designed for a different application than the Volt.
It was for the next generation of volt.
It will be called the re-volt
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