This week another 2 e-scooters caught fire at Yishun and Pasir Ris. From the pictures, these look like one of the cheap scooters being sold by shady online sellers, many of whom are located overseas.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) has come up with some safety tips for charging PMDs, we thought it is good information to help disseminate.
- Avoid overcharging the battery, especially leaving it to charge overnight.
- When charging such batteries, place them on hard flat surfaces to allow optimal dissipation of heat.
- Do not place the charging battery near combustible materials.
To qualify, this is general advice that should be applied to ALL devices that use LITHIUM batteries. This includes not only most of the e-scooters and hoverboards in the market, but also to personal electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, mobile phones etc. It also applies to some of our mobility scooters and motorised wheelchair, such as:
- Mobie foldable scooter
- Genie auto-folding scooter
- Ultra-Light motorised wheelchair
- KD Smartchair
- PW-1000XL motorised wheelchair
- PW-800AX dual-function motorised wheelchair
That is because in the periodic table, Lithium (Li) is one of the alkali metals, which are all highly reactive and flammable. That is why special care and proctection circuits are needed for lithium batteries, and they are susceptible to combustion when the protection circuits fail and they are overcharged.
But for products that use lead-acid batteries, they should still be charged overnight. It is safe to do so because the base metal is lead (Pb), which is a heavy but very stable element. So for the models listed below, our advisory to customers remains unchanged, which is to charge overnight, at least 8 hours a day:
- Spitfire Scout mobility scooter
- Phoenix HD mobility scooter
- Ventura DLX mobility scooter
- Cirrus Plus EC motorised wheelchair
For more fire safety tips, please click below:
How to avoid lithium batteries from catching fire
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