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Comment by srdeveng | Hacker News Reader

I really hope people don't start doing this on their own.

Although I'd expect a lot of first responders now have equipment to handle a lithium fire, will the DIY'er in their own garage?

The design of the charging circuit for lithium cells is not as straight forward as NiMH, NiCAD or lead-acid. Load balancing is required. Using a hodgepodge of old cells only makes it more dangerous.

Not at all surprised the demise of the road test was an electrical fault while some cells still had a charge while others were possibly deep-discharged.

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> I really hope people don't start doing this on their own.

People have been doing electro conversions of regular cars for many years. Popular conversions are Porsche 914, the Beetle and the Toyota MR2. There are companies that sell kits for many of these and others besides.

Most of them are quality wise a notch (or two) above what is shown in the article, but typically do not have as much range because of the more practical nature of their design. If you're willing to give up all the usable space in the car for batteries then probably you can get any one of those to that same range or even more.

http://germancarsforsaleblog.com/1975-porsche-914-electric-v...

http://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40

> Most of them are quality wise a notch (or two) above what is shown in the article, but typically do not have as much range because of the more practical nature of their design

Then they are not doing "this".

I chose to use the word "hodgepodge" to show the recklessness of this design. Repurposing an assortment of used rechargeable lithium cells is not safe.

I really hope people don't start doing this on their own.

While I disagree with your overall sentiment, I don't think you deserve to be downvoted. As a former firefighter, I definitely appreciate that you make a legitimate point about the safety aspects of this. Have a corrective upvote on me.

And FWIW, while my time as a firefighter was quite some time ago, at that time, my department had a whopping total of one Metal-X extinguisher which rode on our primary engine. But at the time, we considered a class D fire something pretty damn exotic and unlikely to be encountered. Given the ubiquity of exotic materials in modern batteries, I am guessing these fires are more common and I hope most departments are somewhat better equipped (and trained) for dealing with them than we were in 1995.

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