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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Have you heard of gas stoves? Or grid electricity?

Either occasionally sets something ablaze unprovoked.

(As much as I hate this as a city dweller, the compromise solution may be simply to ban work on certain types of batteries in multi-tenant buildings and dense residential areas - making it so you effectively need to own a home outside of the city, with a plot of land, to do this. Or perhaps just enforce existing rules better, because I bet that the potentially dangerous activities are already not legal to perform in a regular flat.)

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Or require licensing, like is required in a lot of places for gas or mains electricity work. I don't mind some licensing required to ensure people doing repair work have some minimum level of competence at the task, it just need to not be in the control of the manufacturers. Right to repair for most people is about the right to go to a repair shop of their choosing, not doing the repair themselves, in practice.

There are already spaces available to perform repair work in most if not all cities, look for maker spaces or tool libraries

Gas stoves are a great example, because in most countries you don't have a right to repair. And it's not manufacturers making it hard, it's the state putting you in prison if you get caught doing it.

Same for electricity to a lesser extent.

RE RrR - but you have the right to call in any certified technician to fix your stove. This fulfills what RtR is about - not that everyone does their own repairs themselves, but that they can either do or outsource it to someone in their local community, without being beholden to some outside commercial interests. This enables local repair businesses to thrive and develop expertise. Etc.

As for electronics, if batteries are becoming such a problem that we end up comparing things to gas stoves, I'd vote for regulations mandating standardized, interchangeable, interoperable battery packs. That is, isolate the directly dangerous bit - batteries and charging circuits - and make those work like propane tanks or gas stoves, while everything else in the device should be end-user tinkerable.

Another reason why bikes are as locked down as they are is because to be certified bikes have to confirm to a whole pile of regulations and two of these centers on power limits and speed limits. If a bike is hackable it could easily lose certification and that means you can't sell it any more, in an extreme case it would be applied retro-actively (though there currently is no instance of this the certification requirements as written are open to that interpretation).

Yes and you're not allowed to do your own electrical work unless you get a temporary license and pass inspection so I'm not really sure if this is the best argument. Also at least in my state there are no 3rd party gas lines for this reason, the only people allowed to install or do maintenance on them is the gas company that is defacto state controlled.

I don't think there's anything in my house that is as dangerous as a large lithium battery and that's before counting that hoverboards and ebikes that do nothing but put stress on them unlike say a laptop that just sits on a desk.

> you're not allowed to do your own electrical work unless you get a temporary license and pass inspection

That's heavily dependent on jurisdiction. In many places you can do your own electrical work without any kind of license (you can pull a permit by simply acknowledging that you are responsible for the work), and the inspection does not adequately cover all the safety issues that could arise.

For minor -- but still potentially dangerous -- things like replacing an outlet or light switch (or, hell, even a mains-connected light fixture), you don't need to do any of that.

> I don't think there's anything in my house that is as dangerous as a large lithium battery

For some reason we accept that many of us have, either in our basement or in a closet, one or more devices that continuously set a fossil fuel on fire in order to heat our homes, heat water, or dry clothing. Many of us even have a device that exposes that fire to the open air in order to cook food. Those devices do have some impressive safety features (well, except for the gas stove, oof), but they also have some pretty impressive failure modes. Not to mention how bad it is for your health to be inhaling the particles a gas stove spews into the air, even with an exhaust fan.

I'm not pointing this out in order to claim that lithium-based batteries are safe or are no big deal. But we accept all sorts of risk in our homes already, and batteries don't strike me as meaningfully different.

You're not required to negotiate with your electrical company to do your own electrical work, you're required to deal with the state. No one is proposing that unlimited home battery experimentation be added to the constitution. They're proposing that safety legislation shouldn't be outsourced to private industry, which is only concerned with safety to the degree which it affects profits, and is motivated to disguise profitable decisions as safety decisions.

I'm not entirely sure why you think I disagree with this addition, this is how I would like the system to work in the case where manufacturers make products they claim is only safely serviceable by them or some other professional.

Obviously they have, so please don't degrade the discussion like this. Lithium Ion packs are far more dangerous than gas stoves or general use of electricity. If you don't recognize that fact then maybe I should send you my safety notes regarding lithium ion battery packs? This stuff is so unstable that I'm kind of on the edge of believing that we probably should have never used this tech to the degree that we do, and as these systems get older you can expect more and more of them to develop issues.

If you have materials to this effect, please share with the class. Your statement of "lithium ion packs are far more dangerous than gas stoves or general use of electricity" seems a bit far fetched.

From casual review, it appears that the greatest risk for fire in households remains: cooking equipment, heating equipment, smoking, and inadequate electrical wiring (extensions cords, overdrawn circuits, etc.).

This leaves off other majors like kids with matches, candles, flammable liquids, etc.

Note: This is not to say that LiIon batteries are safe and beyond reproach. The Toronto fire service had 29 battery-related fires in 2022, up from 11 in 2021. This compares vs. 254 "cooking equipment" fires, 158 "open flames / smokers" fires, and 77 "electrical distribution" fires (2019 figures). This suggests lithium ion batteries are a source of domestic fires, but not a major one (~2% of causes).

> Your statement of "lithium ion packs are far more dangerous than gas stoves or general use of electricity" seems a bit far fetched.

I wish. I've installed distribution panels and gas gear and none of that comes close to working on a sizeable Lithium Ion pack in terms of risk.

If you don't believe me that is something I can not help but there are other commenters in this thread who back that up, surely the people that actually did this stuff have some relevant experience?

The stats are what they are because of the relative distribution of e-bikes vs gas stoves and such. What should worry you is that the number of e-bikes is still relatively low vs the number of gas stoves.

As for sharing the document, I'd love to but there is no email address visible in your profile, could you supply one please?

Unfortunately I don't disclose emails through public forums for privacy reasons. If you can share the title of the document it may be indexed somewhere on the web?

As for the statement, as a professional I do tend to believe other professionals. Ultimately the statistics don't lie: lithium ion related fires are a minority of current household causes. To your point, that may change over time particularly where larger installations (e-bikes, solar system batteries) are involved. I'll pitch that the regulatory regime is more than capable of catching up and enforcing change if the degree of risk starts to go up. We already see fire departments commenting on it, so it won't be long before we start seeing guidelines and restrictions on battery sizes within homes.

Ok.

I haven't published it yet, and will probably do so in the near future so if you read HN regularly you'll see it sooner or later.

Looking forward to it!

Hi, could you please share your notes with me? I've put my email in my profile.

yes, of course, I will send it.

Edit: sent! should be in your inbox, happy reading.

I have far more lithium batteries on my desk than I do gas appliances on my entire property.

I'm not an outlier either. Most of us carry at least one fragile lithium polymer battery on our person at all times.

I understand that larger packs like those on my bicycle are more energetic, but I'm still not convinced that it is more dangerous than something as mundane as the grill on my patio, and the stats seem to back this up.

The point is, though, that both are pretty safe as long as some standard safety protocols are followed. Should you be allowed to spot weld 18650s on your kitchen counter? no. But you also shouldn't be building experimental grills in your living room either, or playing with gasoline.

This is changing the subject. The point being made is that electrical devices and infrastructure burst into flames a lot, and burn houses down.

Battery fires are horrible, and we should be regulated to protect our neighbors from them just as we regulate other electrical devices, explosives, flammable or noxious chemicals, and home wiring. That does not mean that we should allow private companies to dictate how we use or repair the products they've sold us, even though it could absolutely include legislation to forbid us from experimenting with certain batteries under certain circumstances or without certain licensing.

> Lithium Ion packs are far more dangerous than gas stoves or general use of electricity.

How much of that is due to tech being relatively new?

Gas has some impressive failure modes too; in fact, every now and then I hear in national news about a residential apartment building having to be torn down after being structurally damaged beyond repair by a gas explosion in on of the flats. That's on top of fires and carbon monoxide poisoning. Gas is relatable in its ubiquity and danger, in ways lithium ions aren't yet.

> If you don't recognize that fact then maybe I should send you my safety notes regarding lithium ion battery packs?

I'd actually love to read those. I am personally afraid to play with lithium ion batteries, though a little less than I am playing with propane tanks. Maybe your notes would help me recalibrate. My mail should be in my profile.

> How much of that is due to tech being relatively new?

None. The power density + basic chemistry and the way in which packs are manufactured are pretty much set. Without a change in any of those we won't see any major safety improvements. My hope is on a safer basic chemistry becoming mandated.

> Gas has some impressive failure modes too; in fact, every now and then I hear in national news about a residential apartment building having to be torn down after being structurally damaged beyond repair by a gas explosion in on of the flats. That's on top of fires and carbon monoxide poisoning. Gas is relatable in its ubiquity and danger, in ways lithium ions aren't yet.

Yes. True. But: yet.

> I'd actually love to read those. I am personally afraid to play with lithium ion batteries, though a little less than I am playing with propane tanks. Maybe your notes would help me recalibrate. My mail should be in my profile.

Ok, will mail this to you right away.

edit: sent.

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