New Battery Finally Solves Our Exploding Hoverboard Problem

PatrickJS

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Jun 8, 2015
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New Battery Finally Solves Our Exploding Hoverboard Problem

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One of 2015's biggest new products, a "hoverboard," kept catching fire, likely due to its reliance on dangerous batteries. A new battery that shuts down before overheating may solve this problem.

Our long, international nightmare is over: our hoverboards are no longer exploding. Wait - we had hoverboards?

Alright, sure, these boards do not actually hover. They are self-balancing scooters - pretty cool, yes, and you might feel like you're hovering when you're on one, but everyone else can see two wheels planted firmly on the ground.

They tend to explode and ruin Christmas when their lithium-ion batteries overheat, a problem a number of fun gadgets have had over the years. Recently, however, Standford scientists announced they may have solved this ongoing problem with a new type of battery, one which shuts itself down before it overheats.

Nanotechnology is at work here - making the batteries that power the hoverboards inherently cooler than the boards themselves. Specifically, microscopic nickel spikes coated in graphene are what conduct the electricity amongst themselves. When heat causes the material to expand, the nickel spikes can no longer touch each other, thus ending the current and cooling the battery off. All in all, a straight-forward (despite the nanotech part) fix.

Tragically, this technology will put a serious damper on the booming "flaming hoverboards" cottage industry.

Source: CNet [http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/new-battery-design-could-keep-hoverboards-from-catching-on-fire/]



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Lightknight

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Nov 26, 2008
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This was announced by Standford or Stanford? Because one is a college I trust and I assume the other isn't if it exists.

Interesting though, they produced a sort of heat-triggered circuit breaker. That actually makes perfect sense. I wonder how much space it adds to a battery?
 

Cowabungaa

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Feb 10, 2008
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Man, I can't wait for lithium-ion to go the way of the dodo. If there's anything that's holding a lot of green tech (and advanced tech in general) back at the moment, it's our limited battery technology. Luckily we're seeing more and more research going towards just that.

"Flaming hoverboard" does sound cool though.
 

LordLundar

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Now they just need to implement the fix to allowing idiots to ride them, fall and injure themselves.
 

FirstNameLastName

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I absolutely refuse to refer to these scooters as "hoverboards", and detest the way the marketers have managed to exploit it. It seems the reaction most people have to it is "wait, we've invented hover boards? Why did no one tell--oh, it's just a scooter," which is a pretty good marketing strategy since I wouldn't have heard of it if this bullshit name wasn't used.
 

LordLundar

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FirstNameLastName said:
I absolutely refuse to refer to these scooters as "hoverboards", and detest the way the marketers have managed to exploit it. It seems the reaction most people have to it is "wait, we've invented hover boards? Why did no one tell--oh, it's just a scooter," which is a pretty good marketing strategy since I wouldn't have heard of it if this bullshit name wasn't used.
Well that's probably because their legal team told them that marketing it as "A segway with all the safety mechanics stripped out" would be a bad idea.
 

Jadak

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Nov 4, 2008
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So.. A battery that turns itself off when it gets hot? I mean, sure, that's better than exploding, but unless you want devices suddenly shutting down and throwing people off, you're going to have to have sensors to monitor the temperature and shut down prematurely in a controller manner anyways, at which point you may as well just do that.

Nothing wrong with using the new battery regardless, but only if costs are equal.
 

Lightknight

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Nov 26, 2008
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LordLundar said:
FirstNameLastName said:
I absolutely refuse to refer to these scooters as "hoverboards", and detest the way the marketers have managed to exploit it. It seems the reaction most people have to it is "wait, we've invented hover boards? Why did no one tell--oh, it's just a scooter," which is a pretty good marketing strategy since I wouldn't have heard of it if this bullshit name wasn't used.
Well that's probably because their legal team told them that marketing it as "A segway with all the safety mechanics stripped out" would be a bad idea.
Eh, it's a "glider" at best. Hoverboard is an overt lie of a name. Like selling a paper airplane as a "helicopter"