I’ve seen a lot of batteries on trade show floors. This might have been the first time I saw one that had exploded. One end of the battery pack was charred like an ashtray. The other end looked fine. That was part of the pitch Xing Mobility had for its battery tech at CES 2024.
Xing Mobility, a Taiwanese battery company, demonstrated how its battery packs handled a three-needle test, in which a trio of nails were driven into the side, puncturing three cells. Those cells, as you can imagine, caught fire.
What the company wanted to brag about was the speed at which those explosions were contained and the fact that most of the cells in the module were undamaged. Temperatures spiked to 1,400 degrees Celsius, but returned to normal within 30 seconds, the company said. Not only did most of the other cells in the module not explode — they maintained their charge.
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The reason: Those cells were directly immersed in a non-conductive lubricant made from petroleum. That lubricant can contact the whole surface of every battery cell, allowing it to cool more quickly and effectively. Xing Mobility has developed the technology and is working with manufacturers to include it in trucks and tractors now, but the company hopes it can provide lighter, safer and longer-lasting batteries for electric vehicles soon.
The company started out trying to build an electric race car, Xing Mobility’s Hisou Hochen told me. They discovered similarities between how race cars are designed and how other specialty vehicles, like tractors, work. Because of the difficult life that tractors and trucks have, they’ve focused on building batteries that can take some punishment.
