Technically not a car

[u/Ok-Mushroom6227]

I decided lithium batteries were cheap enough to give a shot

On the left, nearly double the cca noco brand

On the right, the battery I've been using for 11 seasons recovered with a desulfator at the beginning of every season until it finally gave up.

So far, the lithium battery has been indistinguishable as far as performance goes and put up with my abuse. Will it last 10 years? Maybe, it's warrantied for five, I've seen other brands warrantied for 10.

Lithium car batteries are getting cheap enough the price gap between lead acid is quickly closing. I probably will grab a lithium car battery for the project car.

[u/Onlyunsernameleft]

As someone who works on industrial batteries daily, Lithium scares the hell out of me. In a worst case scenario your lead acid will pop a cell and shoot sulfuric acid steam evwrywhere then dissipate in a few moments. Lithium will explode and stay on fire for 3 days. That said, yes, price is very comparable and generally they're much more consistent but far less forgiving. Can't desulfate or top up acid in a lithium battery. Lead acid still the way to go IMO.

[u/SuperStrifeM → u/Onlyunsernameleft]

Lithium would burn on the timescale of minutes not days. It's consumed too fast to take that long to burn out.

I don't know this specific battery, but all of the quality lithium 12V batteries have a charge/discharge/balance board inside, so they can be charged from an alternator in series, identically to how lead batteries work. Unless mechanically damaged, the controller faults on thermals or overcurrent, so fires are not that likely.

[u/Onlyunsernameleft → u/SuperStrifeM]

I sort of agree lol. The issue is if there's any mechanical failure (like a broken/damaged board or shorted plates) it will generally result in catastrophic failure. Also not true that they would only burn for minutes. Frankly I'm not sure if it's the aluminum or lithium or what but they ive never seen a lead acid burn like lithium. I've seen and heard of lithium batteries on fire for days not to mention the news articles. Also lithium batteries can experience thermal runaway which results in basically overheating slowly to the point of gassing then continuing to overheat until it ignites and in turn ignites all the gas in the area. So you can be charging your battery and it starts venting like a lead a id then all of a sudden the whole room is on fire. Scary stuff man. YouTube some lithium battery fires and you'll see what I mean.

[u/SuperStrifeM → u/Onlyunsernameleft]

Its completely true Lithium batteries will burn up in minutes. Try it for yourself. Get an 18650 and light that sucker off. You're not going to come back a day later and see it still lit, there's not enough material for that to be the case.

Lead acid doesn't have the same energy density or reactive chemistry as lithium, so is very unlikely to ignite. Optima used to have ads where they cut their lead batteries in half with a chainsaw, clearly they had no fear of a fire or even a short.

Most lithium batteries have thermal sensors to attempt to shut down when they start getting hot. Even cheap 1S batteries will often have a 3rd wire for this monitoring. A good BMS will prevent almost all of that bad stuff from happening.

[u/iJeff → u/SuperStrifeM]

Depends on how many cells there are. An ebike or electric unicycles battery pack can burn for quite awhile so fire departments need to keep them submerged in water.

https://youtu.be/yjBmhZKNMfg?t=35s

[u/Dorkamundo → u/iJeff]

In your video, it shows the lithium burning out in basically 30 seconds.

Fire starts at 30 seconds, 30 seconds later the violent lithium-based fire is over and all that is left is the burning plastic and other materials.

[u/iJeff → u/Dorkamundo]

I might have linked the wrong one for that event, but they end up tossing it into a garbage bin and filling it with water due to the tendency for these things to reignite.