Why Are There So Many Bad Reviews About Hoverboards

"Dorsum to the Futurity Role II" got information technology partly right. As of 2015, the hoverboard is a real form of transportation that lets trendy kids get into trouble while effortlessly zipping along the sidewalk. In that location are a handful of important differences, though. These cocky-balancing scooters don't actually hover like the ones in the movie.

Besides, they could potentially grab on fire and fire your house down.

The US airline industry has decided not to take any chances: American, Alaska, Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest and United Airlines have banned hoverboards on rider flights, and the US Post has stopped shipping hoverboards by air as well. Amazon and Target both temporarily suspended sales, and Overstock.com has stopped selling hoverboards at all.

What the heck is going on? Proceed reading.

A New York homo filed a lawsuit after his Swagway hoverboard exploded while charging.

Chappaqua Fire Department

Hoverboards have get one of the hottest news stories this holiday flavor, and not merely because they're selling like mad. According to the Usa Consumer Product Safety Commission, in that location have been 12 incidents in the United states where the lithium ion batteries in these hoverboards reportedly caught burn as of December 2015, destroying bedrooms and even entire homes. In July 2016, the CPSC updated that number to at to the lowest degree lx reports of hoverboard fires totaling over $2 1000000 in property impairment.

The fires accept started in all sorts of unlike circumstances, too. According to owners and witnesses, some of the hoverboards exploded while charging, others while riding and one while information technology was but sitting near a kiosk in a Washington shopping mall. (There take been several other hoverboard fires reported in the UK, and at least one in Hong Kong.)

Here's the actually scary part: there's no single reason why these hoverboards are exploding, and there's no cinch way to avoid potential catastrophe if you want to buy i yourself. At that place'south no particular brand of hoverboard to avert -- they all seem to come from thousands of interchangeable factories in China -- or any characterization on the box that guarantees a product won't explode. And much of the advice we've seen issued by local burn down departments and government agencies isn't likely to help.

Jessica Horne lost her family's Louisiana dwelling later on her 12-twelvemonth quondam son's Fit Turbo hoverboard exploded.

WGNO

For example, officials take been warning that you should only use the charger that comes in the box. That sounds like common sense -- until y'all realize that these hoverboards tend to use a plug yous won't detect on any other blazon of device. Since you're and so restricted when information technology comes to which type of charger you tin can utilize, it's pretty unlikely that any of these fires occurred due to someone mistaking a laptop charger for a hoverboard one.

Similarly, many officials now warn against overcharging hoverboards, merely when was the last fourth dimension you had to think about overcharging a gadget? With modern laptops and smartphones, y'all simply plug them in and leave them there, trusting that they'll automatically shut off the menses of electricity when they're done.

Now playing: Sentry this: How to buy a hoverboard that won't catch fire

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While the US Consumer Product Safety Committee was on the case every bit of December 2015 to figure out the actual root causes of these incidents, they didn't have the answers when we start published this story. "We want to be able to deliver for the public, but nosotros hope they'll exist able to appreciate that what's going on right now is a very thorough science-based investigation," said CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson in late 2015.

Just in Feb 2016, the organization officially warned that hoverboards pose a serious hazard, and threatened to block imports or recall hoverboards that don't encounter voluntary prophylactic standards.

And in July 2016, the CPSC followed through on that threat, recalling one-half a million hoverboards in the United states. The cause: overheating lithium-ion batteries.

The science

The science behind hoverboard fires is really pretty simple, and fairly well understood. Much similar your laptop, tablet or phone, these hoverboards use lithium ion battery packs for their power, and it just so happens that the liquid swimming effectually inside most lithium ion batteries is highly flammable. If the battery short-circuits -- say, past puncturing the incredibly thin sail of plastic separating the positive and negative sides of the battery -- the liquid electrolyte can heat up so quickly that the battery explodes.

You lot don't necessarily demand to stab a lithium ion battery to set up it on fire. A lacking bombardment might have tiny sharp metallic particles inside that could puncture the separator all on its own. "When this happens, especially when the batteries are charged, a lot of heat is generated within the cells and this leads to electrolyte boiling, the rupture of the cell casing, and so a pregnant fire," Carnegie Mellon University materials science professor Jay Whitacre told Wired. Yous can see what a lithium ion battery fire looks similar in our Droid Turbo 2 torture test video:

At present playing: Watch this: We finally killed the Droid Turbo 2

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Information technology shouldn't be a revelation that lithium ion batteries are volatile, because fires similar these aren't exactly new. We've been living with potentially mortiferous explosions in our pockets and laptop bags for years. In 2004, a spike in the number of prison cell phone bombardment explosions prompted this CNET report, and Dell recalled millions of laptop batteries in 2006 after merely six incidents of fire. More recently, Boeing had to ground the 787 Dreamliner aeroplane until it could detect a mode to keep its lithium ion batteries from overheating.

Safety standards, or the lack thereof

If lithium ion batteries are so volatile, why are nosotros still using them today? The traditional statement is that the energy density of lithium ion batteries is significantly higher than batteries that use less flammable materials. (In other words, a lithium ion battery tin can be smaller, lighter, and/or last longer than say, a lithium iron phosphate one.)

Another reason is the consumer electronics industry has gotten much ameliorate well-nigh condom standards, to the point where virtually of united states don't think twice about leaving a phone connected to a charger. "We said to the companies, you need to come together, create a voluntary arrangement and set a safety standard," says the CPSC'due south Wolfson, recalling how nosotros went from big bombardment scares and recalls in the mid-2000s to the relatively safe laptops and phones nosotros take today.

Most modern batteries now comprise all kinds of prophylactic measures, such as emergency vents, and many products filled with lithium ion batteries have to endure a avalanche of drop tests, crush tests and electrical stress tests before they can pass.

But hoverboards are brand-new. "It'southward a product without a prophylactic standard," says Wolfson.

London Fire Brigade

Sean Kane, a longtime product safety researcher, says cases similar the hoverboard are precisely why his nonprofit organization The Safety Institute is advocating for more than full general categories of condom standards like "computers" and "personal mobility devices" instead of the specific ones that be today.

There are existing standards for motorized scooters and toys, says Kane, but the hoverboard but doesn't fit. "What y'all have is a product coming in here where no one knows which safety standards are applicable."

For now, retailers like Amazon and Target are making sure individual components of these hoverboards -- namely the batteries and the chargers -- have been certified for safety. (Every bit of Dec 2015, Amazon asked that all hoverboard sellers provide proof they comply with Un 38.three, UL 1642 and UL 60950-1, specifically.)

But earlier you breathe a sigh of relief, yous should probably know that while batteries and chargers can be certified individually, information technology doesn't hateful those hoverboards have been certified as a whole. Until those parts have actually been tested together, it'due south more of a legal embrace-your-donkey measure out for the manufacturers and retailers than anything else.

When Florida resident Timothy Cade's hoverboard caught fire, it wasn't connected to a charger.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister/CNET

And you might not be able to find a hoverboard that's been tested in its entirety by a reputable independent firm like Underwriters Laboratories (UL) fifty-fifty if you looked hard. Swagway, one of the more popular brands, claims its entire hoverboard is UL-certified because it has a UL-certified battery and a UL-certified charger within, but that'southward not accurate. "In that location are presently no UL-certified hoverboards," says UL consumer safety director John Drengenberg. (Incidentally, Swagway is now facing a lawsuit from when one of its hoverboards caught fire.)

Besides, there'due south some other problem with certifying batteries instead of the hoverboards themselves. In that location's no like shooting fish in a barrel way to tell what kind of battery is inside a hoverboard -- or if information technology'south a apocryphal.

Update, March 2016: Underwriters Laboratories now has a testing process for hoverboards, UL 2272, and we got an early on look at how it works . Also, some cocky-balancing scooter companies now claim to follow that standard. See the UL's testing procedure in the video below.

At present playing: Picket this: UL fights hoverboard fires with new rubber standards

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Supply and demand

When an increased number of jail cell phone batteries were bursting in 2004, many blamed cheap counterfeits made in Red china -- batteries produced with far less stringent standards than phone manufacturers might accept wanted.

That'southward a popular theory when it comes to the hoverboard fires, too. "There are some factories right at present that will say they use Samsung batteries, but don't," a sales manager for Chinese hoverboard manufacturer CHIC told Quartz. "They wrap a piece of paper around the battery that says 'Samsung' when it'due south not Samsung."

Merely unlike cell phones, it'due south non like we have known reputable hoverboard manufacturers that merely got a bad batch of batteries to get with their own carefully designed proprietary components. Even the meridian hoverboard brands -- Phunkeeduck, IO Hawk, Swagway -- are ones you lot've probably never heard of, ones that sprang up out of nowhere to take advantage of the hoverboard craze.

And those companies are only distributors for a sprawling array of factories in China that supply components to one another practically interchangeably.

Montgomery County Fire and Rescue

That's not a reflection on the quality of Chinese manufacturing in general, by the fashion. Practically every high-quality Apple product comes off a Chinese assembly line, not to mention those of Lenovo, a Chinese visitor that's 1 of the top worldwide computer vendors. But Cathay has as well become famous as a place where tiny factories can pile onto a hot new idea similar the selfie stick or the miniature R/C helicopter, churning out copycats in tape time.

By the time the hoverboard fad took off in the United states, in that location were already too many Chinese companies building hoverboards to tell who came up with the thought first. Practically every hoverboard you meet is a counterfeit, in that sense.

"Correct at present in that location are thousands of workshops making identical hoverboards in People's republic of china, and the only obvious differentiator is the costs," says Jay Sung, CEO of popular electric-scooter company EcoReco. And since there are so many different ways these Chinese companies could have cutting costs amongst the different components they merchandise with one another and piece together to form the final product y'all see, it's difficult to narrow down the actual point of failure.

So far, some reports have blamed the batteries, others the cables, but we don't know for sure. The UK divisions of retailers Amazon and Costco are specifically telling customers to destroy charging cables that accept plugs that weren't built to UK safety standards. (Costco is providing replacement cables, while Amazon is offering total refunds.)

Another possible culprit is the cut-off switch, a condom characteristic that keeps an electronic device from overcharging, which the UK'southward National Trading Standards consumer protection agency says can frequently fail in these hoverboards. EcoReco's Sung suggested that to save costs, some hoverboard manufacturers might non even include a cut-off switch to brainstorm with. That's clearly not the issue everywhere, though, equally Mashable recently tore down a Swagway hoverboard that appeared to have a cut-off switch installed.

What happens now

In the UK, the authorities is already cracking downward on hoverboards. Not just is it illegal to ride one on public roads or walkways, but the Uk National Trading Standards body has at present seized and reportedly destroyed 32,000 hoverboards in December 2015 -- the vast bulk of the 38,800 devices that the organization has been tracking since it started investigating the devices in October of that year.

In the United states, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has now recalled one-half a meg hoverboards, and is pushing for voluntary standards like the ones that made laptops and phones safer today.

It could too exist that the CPSC pushes to ban hoverboards altogether. It wouldn't be the commencement time a pop product was deemed likewise unsafe to sell. There are good reasons that lawn darts and magnetic Buckyballs, both popular toys, were banned. (Fires aren't the only reason that hoverboards are dangerous. The CPSC has received "dozens" of reports of injuries from falls from US hospital emergency rooms as of Dec 2015.)

Perhaps adjacent time, nosotros could reserve the name "hoverboard" for a gadget that really floats to a higher place the ground.

Original story published December 22, 2015

Update, January 21 at 2:27 p.grand. PT: The Us Consumer Product Safety Commission is now investigating at least 40 reports of hoverboard fires beyond 19 The states states.

Update, Feb 20 at 1:15 p.1000. PT: The CPSC has officially warned that hoverboards that don't run across voluntary condom standards pose "an unreasonable run a risk of fire," and has threatened to recall or ban imports if manufacturers don't follow those standards.

Update, June 8 at four:02 p.chiliad. PT: The kickoff hoverboards meeting UL's new prophylactic standard are at present on sale in the United States.

Update, July 9 at 3:43 p.m. PT: The CPSC has officially recalled half a million hoverboards due to lithium-ion batteries that were establish prone to overheating.

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Source: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/why-are-hoverboards-exploding-and-catching-fire/

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