Amid concerns about the safety of electric vehicles in India, thanks to recent incidents of electric scooters catching fire, MakerMax, a Canada-based start-up focusing on battery safety, has come up with a unique solution. The company has announced that it has developed testing devices and algorithms that are claimed to arrest battery fires and save the consequent loss of property and lives.
The device developed by MakerMax is christened M201 and it is said to create the benchmark data of any battery by accurately capturing the five vital internal characteristics (names not revealed) within minutes and at multiple touchpoints such as at a factory, warehouse, dealer end, servicing from day 1 to the end of the life of the battery.
This reference database is then claimed to be used for predicting the abnormal behaviour, deterioration, and safety index of any battery by comparing its vital characteristics with the benchmark through the algorithms developed by the company. In addition, Makermax claims to collaborate with the battery manufacturers to place specially designed Pressure, Temperature, and Gas sensors at the vulnerable zones in the battery.
This is said to create 3 levels of a “wifi-enabled audio-visual alarm system” that can depict the Cautious, Serious, or Dangerous condition of the battery. Commenting on the development, Founder-Director of the start-up Akshay, an ex-Tesla R&D engineer who has worked for years in the field of EV batteries, said “While everyone is desperately trying to find answers through safer Chemistries, advanced BMS, battery cooling mechanisms, etc, the EV universe has yet not been able to find a perfect solution to thermal runaways and battery flares that once started cannot be contained through BMS, fuses or cut-offs.”
“We at MakerMax help design the system and the devices to predict the battery behaviour and forewarns the users about the likelihood of an impending disaster as well as forewarn users to save property and life in case of an actual fire. While 100% safe batteries are a global quest, one cell in million can still trigger a fire during the lifetime of a battery. We need to tackle this urgent and critical issue comprehensively, starting with the batteries that are already in use in thousands of E scooters while we are designing safer batteries for the future.
He added, “We find that generally, the E2W batteries used in India do not have even enough mechanical safety features. One suggestion to help contain the fire and minimize the damage could be dividing the battery into 3 or more mutually sealed compartments with pressure release valves rather than one thick metal box that has no outlet for expanding gases and is a potential bomb. Another critical area usually forgotten is the customer awareness about his role in keeping the batteries safe while charging and identifying the telltale signs of a potentially unsafe battery and bringing it immediately to a service station.”
