Fire at ebikes-sf

i was gonna recommend that people in the area go over to his shop to help pick up stuff and put it in storage after the fire was out. i bet it is in a storage locker somewhere or he may have a house there where he coulda stored stuff until the store was repaired.
 
erik_m said:
I started this thread because I am using a third party to recover my funds and the third party inquired about others who may be in the same position that I am.
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That "third party"'s action sounds like the way lawyers often do things, wanting to get more money / action out of any situation. :(

FWIW, having been thru a fire myself, I can say that stuff gets complicated, and that was just my house and personal stuff. I imagine with a business, and insurance companies, and any lawyers that get involved, it's way worse than that, and takes even longer to get settled back to anything resembling normal business.

I can understand a concern for delays when stuff is needed immediately, though myself I would just wait till things get sorted out at his end, under most circumstances. But I suppose I am a different sort of person than most.

I understand it's not my call, but why not just be patient? Do you already have all the other parts for your build, and only waiting on the stuff from Ebikes-SF? If not, maybe just wait at least until all the other stuff shows up and then if what you ordered from him should have already showed up based on previous shipping estimates, re-try contacting to see what's up.

In a post a little less than a week ago, you'd heard back from him that your motor was still on order anyway, and so presumably still in transit (which usually takes a good while from China anyway).


(Situations and customers like this are one reason I'd decided a long time back to never ever sell/build bikes or anything else for anybody (even friends). Too much jumping to conclusions and impatience everywhere. )
 
erik_m said:
Whoa, I deleted that stuff. Please do not drag out the skeletons, my brother.
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I didn't drag out anything, I just replied to what was there when i hit quote to reply.

Please go in and delete the previous edited versions.
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The reason we have a post history is so people can't do that, and to preserve data. ;) The idea is that people shouldn't post what they don't want people to see. Most people won't use the post history, but if they want to, it's there--sorry.

Best I can say is to keep in mind that everything you post becomes part of history--once said it can't really be unsaid, just like in conversation.

When I wrote that, I was upset about a delay in getting a response. I felt better after purchasing a replacement motor from ebikes.ca, after which I did receive Ilia's response as per Murphy's Law.
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Oh, I understand being upset; I've been (very) upset over delays in things before, too--a similar situation for me was when someone else uninvolved with the company I ordered from held up my order for stuff to get CrazyBike2 back on the road after teh housefire, when I'd been talking to that person about a separate future project I had thought totally unrelated that they were considering donating to.... It was a complicated situation but the order got worked out eventually and got the bike back on the road. (but it caused me to think about how things were with the person...and led to a break with them eventually).

GIven that the only other transport I had at the time was the unstable Delta Tripper, or catching rides with Bill, and I was not long out of my burned house at the time, still mightily upset about losing all the dogs and not completely rational at the time, I probably freaked out more than is reasonable at the delay. :/

So, upset, I do understand. :|
 
If there is any kind of relief fund set up please let me know. I will be happy to do what I can.

:(
 
Maybe what we could do is give Ilia a couple of days to assess things, and in the meantime we could start a thread soliciting Bay Area ES members who may be able to pitch in at the shop. Ilia could set up a time and date, and maybe a published punch list of things to do, and then we just show up and go to work. I could get over there.
 
Hugechainring said:
Maybe what we could do is give Ilia a couple of days to assess things, and in the meantime we could start a thread soliciting Bay Area ES members who may be able to pitch in at the shop. Ilia could set up a time and date, and maybe a published punch list of things to do, and then we just show up and go to work. I could get over there.
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That's a cool idea.

I'd be happy to start a kickstarter or something since i am about 2,000 miles away and cannot help in person. But he has not got back to me. I don't know what he wants to do. It's been a week since i sent an email to him. Well, if he wants help, it's his initiative to reach out at this point then.
 
i can vouch that Illia is a super conservative guy when it comes to batteries etc....for example the only lithium battery i ever knew him to sale was the all cell.

He was very concerned with fire safety etc.

Its alarming he has joined the ranks of ebike store owners who had a fire. I had one as well in SF back in the day.

It sucks...but lets just hope he was insured and he will be fine.
 
not likely the fire started in the battery. they all have a BMS but a charger coulda spit fire out the fan when a cap blew up and caught something like paper on fire. usually they are from shorts imo.

i did have a lipo fire here from a tenant perhaps overcharging a sony laptop with those defective cans in it and i think he had hacked a different charger onto the charger leads to it so it may have been overcharged.
 
dnmun said:
not likely the fire started in the battery. they all have a BMS but a charger coulda spit fire out the fan when a cap blew up and caught something like paper on fire. usually they are from shorts imo.
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That's not impossible but it is a fairly wild conjecture given the circumstances. I've personally known over a dozen ebike shops or businesses now that have burnt down over the years, and it has always always been a lithium battery fire at fault, although I guess in many scenarios the damage is so bad that not a whole lot of forensics is possible to pinpoint the precise origin. Last fall this happened to the owner of Bend Electric bikes (see http://www.ktvz.com/news/smoky-fire-tears-through-nw-bend-home/27871540 ) and not so long before that one of our overseas suppliers had a huge warehouse fire in their battery storage with UN38.3 certified packs that were brand new, unopened in boxes not charging or discharging. Similar thing happened at the Pearson Airport in toronto a few years ago (see this, by all indication BionX batteries)
BMS circuits can do a bit to prevent the one obvious cause of cells going pyro (overcharging), but they don't do anything for cells that seemingly at random burst into thermal runaway without any obviously external cause. And some BMS circuits surprisingly don't do much to prevent you from charging a pack with a cell that has been drained down to 0V, which is another surefire way to vent some smoke.

Anyways I really really hope for the best for Ilia and that the fallout from this is not too discouraging in the long run, he's an awesome individual who doesn't deserve this. Hopefully when things settle he'll pipe up and provide some more details which can be shed some light on the causes and circumstances, and allow other operations to learn from this to reduce similar risk. Already after hearing this incident we're doing an overview at our own shop in how we store and manage batteries to contain any fires from spreading elsewhere should they occur.

Insurance is its own headache and no saving grace, and then when insurance does cover the claim then insurance companies go on a hunt trying to sue every manufacturer or vendor in the supply line for negligence to try an recoup their own costs, and it all gets really ugly.

At least nobody was badly hurt, and hopefully there will be some further details coming so that there's no need for speculation, and we as a community have an opportunity for lessons learned.
 
justin_le said:
dnmun said:
not likely the fire started in the battery. they all have a BMS but a charger coulda spit fire out the fan when a cap blew up and caught something like paper on fire. usually they are from shorts imo.
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That's not impossible but it is a fairly wild conjecture given the circumstances. I've personally known over a dozen ebike shops or businesses now that have burnt down over the years, and it has always always been a lithium battery fire at fault, although I guess in many scenarios the damage is so bad that not a whole lot of forensics is possible to pinpoint the precise origin. Last fall this happened to the owner of Bend Electric bikes (see http://www.ktvz.com/news/smoky-fire-tears-through-nw-bend-home/27871540 ) and not so long before that one of our overseas suppliers had a huge warehouse fire in their battery storage with UN38.3 certified packs that were brand new, unopened in boxes not charging or discharging. Similar thing happened at the Pearson Airport in toronto a few years ago (see this, by all indication BionX batteries)
B
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Thanks Justin for calling out the elephant in the room!
 
i am under the impression that the AllCell packs have the phase change material which can absorb the heat released during thermal runaway so it should not have propagated if that was the case imo.

but i do not see how they can get hot enuff to go into thermal runaway unless they are shorted, internally or externally.

the fire the tenant started at my house was during charging of his laptop and he had left it smothered in the down comforter on his bed. in this case his sony cells were larger than the 18650s. they were about 24mm diameter and 160mm long it seemed. the cans themselves did not catch on fire, but got so hot that they ignited the fabric on the bed when they melted through the plastic laptop case.

it would have been a total loss for me if i had not been outside the house when the smoke alarms sounded and i was able to intervene and put out the fire where it started.
 
while the phase change will likely prevent runaway it will still vent flames even if only one cell goes

how many people keep their batteries in fabric frame bags?

I also dont like battery in frame ebikes that cant be easily removed

you cant put them in battery safes when you leave for the night from your ebike shop

once your battery is part of the frame you cant store your ebike in your home either. but then again the same argument could be made for any cell phone or laptop or whatever with lithium cells. they all cause fires it is just with ebikes the packs are exposed to high vibration and high temps from poor thermal design and higher discharge than consumer electronics. most packs are not even designed for proper passive air cooling or proper venting and are wrapped or kept in flammable material.

the chargers and bms s are almost all cheap pieces of junk many made by factories with no real understanding of how they work. this is the danger of copy engineering when safety is paramount. the fact hundreds of factories spit out hub motor clones in not a problem. when they start
cloning bms boards and chargers then it is different. worst of all is counterfeit cells or salvaged chips. those jokers in China need to be locked up for a long time and be made to work with burn victims
 
That's why I have always said batteries in the frame is really a stupid idea. They need to be removable and easy to carry with you for safe keeping.
 
Having removable batteries does no good for a store...does the owner take them home with him at night? Put them outside in the parking lot? Even a storage locker would not really protect the store in the case of large amounts of lithium. Those of us who have lost ebike stores to fire know the smoke can be worst than the fire.

Mr Electric was the electric bike fleet manager at blazing saddles for a while (a giant SF ebike rental spot plus ebike dealer) . Mr electric was very concerned with Fire Safety. Fechter and Mr Electric came up with a design for metal storage cabinets that would not only contain the fire but also deal with the smoke the .....there idea was to have vent holes on the top of the cabinerts and ducting going to the roof so the smoke would go out the building. Also this way the storage lockers would not explode open. The fleet consists mostly of Stromers (around 50 them plus extra battery packs), the plan was all the battery packs would be removed and put in the storage lockers at night. By the way Add high power cycles to the list of stores who have recently had fires.
 
neptronix said:
HPC had a fire too? god damn..
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Yeah ....but then it kind of disappeared..... pooooff........like nothing happened.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10391

Fires in ebike stores...plus all the unusual amount of garage fires ebikers have.... is the elephant in the room. I dont think most fires related to ebikes get reported as such for insurance reasons. I personally know of a few of those i wont mention either. ;)
 
dnmun said:
i am under the impression that the AllCell packs have the phase change material which can absorb the heat released during thermal runaway so it should not have propagated if that was the case imo.
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I understand that their "phase change material" is wax. In the case of a fire, that would be fuel. Whether or not it can contain the heat of thermal runaway is a matter of how concentrated the heat is.
 
From Allcell:

“…The wax is micro-encapsulated within the graphite matrix. When the wax melts, there’s enough surface tension between the wax and a graphite matrix that it doesn’t leak out. You could heat the material up to 300° C (570F), and it will become soft enough for a thumbprint, but it will remain solid…”
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In the case of fire, graphite is also fuel.
 
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