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  • Okay, This is a battery stress test, and the results are pretty clear.

  • Do not try this at home.

  • In recent years, lithium ion batteries that power our phones, our laptops and our Tesla's have exploded, causing serious injury and, in a few cases, death.

  • But a California based company says they've developed a new type of battery that won't explode no matter what you do to it.

  • Mhm battery fires are rare about one in 10 million, but with billions of batteries produced every year, the stakes are higher than you think.

  • Electric cars and e bike sales continue to grow rapidly, and we're likely to see more massive batteries being used to store renewable energy for homes.

  • The technical term for how most battery fires start is thermal runaway, and it works kind of like this.

  • If this banana were a standard lithium ion battery, there's just a thin separation between the parts that carry positive and negative charges.

  • When that barrier is broken, a battery can become a bomb.

  • A new technology is like a bomb squad inside the battery, stopping a fire before it starts.

  • AM Ionics invented a technology called safe core.

  • It's a fuse that goes within the battery cell itself.

  • Safe core adds an additional layer, kind of like placing this deflated balloon between the banana skin and tin foil layer, which represents the current collector.

  • If a battery fails, safe core creates a physical gap to safely stop the flow of electricity.

  • Safe core was originally developed for batteries that soldiers used to power their communications equipment.

  • That's why it needed to be bullets safe if somebody was wearing that be on fire right now, Safe course starts with this black goo.

  • It hardens and then gets rolled out as an additional layer inside the battery.

  • Um, Ionic says that safe core has the potential to quickly scale across the industry because many battery making factories already have the equipment to process the safe course slurry.

  • We can tack, transfer and have battery manufacturers up running within six months.

  • The company recently announced a partnership with Stanley Black and Decker, one of the world's top producers of power tools.

  • Companies have a financial incentive to make sure their batteries are safe.

  • We literally we add pennies to the bill of material.

  • The cost is relatively little to implement the technology in 2016, Samsung recalled 2.5 million phones after several reports of fire.

  • Officially, the company claimed $5 billion in losses.

  • Exploding batteries are a really key safety problem, and it's a terrible impact on their brand.

  • Lithium ion batteries are poised to remain the go to power source in coming years with that many batteries and maybe impossible to completely eliminate the risk of fires.

  • But, um, Ionics believes that they're battle tested.

  • Technology can get the risk that much closer to zero.

Okay, This is a battery stress test, and the results are pretty clear.

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