Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

A fire has destroyed the MotoE paddock at Jerez, Spain. Evidently most if not all of the MotoE bikes were damaged if not destroyed. MotoE was at Jerez for pre-season testing.

http://www.motogp.com/en/news/2019/03/1 ... est/286841

Could be a battery fire issue. In any event they will determine the cause and hopefully a future prevention. Sorry for those teams, riders and owners to loose a lot of probably expensive investment. Also sounds like no one was hurt and that's the most important thing.

Somebody left their bike on charge when they went to dinner?

Seriously, that is a black eye for the industry.

Are other nearby modern battery systems additional "fuel'" for a nearby fire?

I mean i don't think a static typical lead acid battery wants to catch fire if another nearby is already on fire.

All 18 bikes that were participating in that weekend's testing were in that building and were destroyed, along with all of the supplies that the teams had on site. Everything. It's all gone. It's unknown if the manufacturer has sufficient spare parts and resources to start over before the scheduled start of their season (May), but it seems unlikely.

Given the severity of the fire, I would think that pinning down a source will be a challenge.

Modern batteries contain a lot of energy in a small space. Anything storing that much energy in that little space represents a risk. Modern high performance propulsion batteries (lithium based) have several times higher energy density than lead-acid batteries do. "Thermal runaway" is something that can happen to a number of high performance battery chemistries. Lead-acid normally won't do that, but to draw a parallel to something that has been said on this site about low performance combustion engines ... a lead-acid battery doesn't make enough power to hurt itself.

So sorry to hear an entire series and years events maybe lost! Hope opportunities will arise to put the series back whole.

As with many tragedies a investigation and findings will probably help eliminate the same possibility in the future. It's a pretty obvious thought with all the past fires that have resulted from high powered lithium batteries that if these batteries were in use in all these bikes there probably is a good possibility that a catastrophic failure in just one could have led to the fire and loss of all. Lithium battery safety seems to be improving all the time especially after an incident like this brings needed changes.

Surprised no one has come up with the theory that the fire was started by big oil yet?

7mgtesup wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2019 11:55 am Surprised no one has come up with the theory that the fire was started by big oil yet?

My ”commie” buddy immediately did when I forwarded him the headline.

Not totally surprised, Hobby shops dealt with this in the early years of LIPO batteries. We had to charge them in fireproof sacks. More than a few rc flying enthusiast vehicle or home was burned due to batteries that were damaged and later caught fire. It happens at at the insurance salvage auctions occasionally as well with hybrid vehicles.