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Depending on chemistry, 18650 cells are quite dangerous. Tesla at least puts them in a metal box and will warn you when they’re about to catch fire.


re: Tesla - and they have individual fuses on every cell. And they have liquid cooling for every cell. And they have a rugged enclosure that has been designed to fail in a somewhat safe way while (briefly) containing the fire.


Not arguing that you shouldn't pay close attention to safety considerations, but many of those optimizations are necessary for Tesla because they have constraints that would be easy to relax in a DIY scenario: very low volume/high density, the possibility of a collision, consistent proximity to humans, etc. I don't think it's fair to suggest that you need to be individually liquid cooling every cell to ensure safety.


Have you seen docs about their batteries ?


not a doc but a good writeup with pictures of failure testing the 'powerpack' product: https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-saf...

I sure as shit would not want 1/10th of that in my garage ever.


Thanks


yes, they made all their patents public awhile back. also: https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+battery+teardown&oq=te...


aren't all patents required to be public?


derp, I meant [quasi-]"public domain" and therefore, in some legal sense, safe for engineers to read without fear of getting sued. https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you


Somehow I never considered batteries as part of their IP :)

Thanks


Well sure, something like a portable phone power bank is probably a better place to start than a battery for your house, but they're very useful things to learn about.




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