PSA: Battleborn
- Thread starter High Current
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I am not familiar with the legal side of things, but why would a redesign of the buss bar set up be an "admission of guilt" ? Aren't companies free to improve the design of their products at any time?
The Battleborn 3000- Better, stronger, faster.
How is that worse than continuing to crank out a known flawed product?
The Battleborn 3000- Better, stronger, faster.
How is that worse than continuing to crank out a known flawed product?
It isn't an admission of guilt. Yes, companies can improve their products at any time - depending upon if they exist in a regulated environment which could affect how they improve. Not BB's problem. The real problem is all about how to handle "public perception"...
BB has clearly made bad decisions in how they are handling the current concerns, in my opinion. But hey, they didn't pay me to tell them how to handle it... Public perception is very treacherous to handle.
dj
If BB could add a bunch of features, say better comms, more capacity in the same size, internal Class T fuses, an upgraded BMS, etc they might be able to get away with it. On the other hand, just fixing the design issue and nothing else is tantamount to admitting the batteries were flawed and they would be providing evidence of the flaw in the lawsuits against them.
Well that depends upon if you are talking about a court of law or the court of public opinion. In a court of law, there are much bigger requirements to demonstrate a design deficiency or flaw. In the court of public opinion... well, there are no real "laws"...
dj
They were done well before their design flaws caught up with them. You can't expect to sell a 100Ah battery for $800.00, with no Bluetooth, no heating etc. and stay in business when your competitors are selling 100Ah LFP batts, with better internal construction, & a 1.1C BMS for $179.00 with free shipping.. After meeting with the CEO in 2014, about becoming a dealer, I got one, cut it open and immediately decided not to partner with them. The sample I had, was relying on the plastic cases compressionfor the conductivity path cell to cell. The cells were only bolted at the tops. the bottoms were free floating like an accordion. Lithionics actually called them out on this design 8+ years ago..
This nickel plated copper plate is relying on friction to pass the current cell to cell.. As can be seen there are only bolts at the top and they are bolted into plastic..
Compare that to a ultra-affordable Wattcycle 314Ah battery that is roughly the same physical foot print of a BB with a BT BMS for $429.00. The non BT 100Ah BB is currently on sale for $679.00. I will take the Wattcyle over a BB everyday of the week..
Based on the EOY letter from the CEO, Battle Born seems to be abandoning the marine market focusing instead on the trucking industry and the RV market. There is only one sentence about the marine market in his letter. They were almost delisted from NASDAQ last summer, because the stock price dropped below $1. There was debt restructuring and a reverse stock split to shore up the price.
Dragonfly Energy Issues Year-End CEO Letter to Shareholders
RENO, Nev., Jan. 08, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Dragonfly Energy Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: DFLI) (“Dragonfly Energy” or the “Company”), an industry leader in energy storage, today issued a Year-End Letter to Shareholders from its Chief Executive Officer and President, Dr. Denis Phares. Dear DFLI...
Yesterday Battle Born provided a Technical Note in response to the criticism -
battlebornbatteries.com
To summarize - “It’s a feature, not a bug!”
It is a pretty interesting read explaining their design decisions, or a retroactive explanation backing into why their design could be considered safe. One thing I don’t understand, or maybe they get wrong - they show how the circuit cuts itself off if the wiring is “undersized”, but not if it’s connected with AWG 1/0 cable for its continuous load of 100 amps. But ABYC’s table says AWG 6 can be good for up to 120 amps, as long as it’s rated for 105 degrees C. So if you’re using AWG 6, not exceeding the 105 degree rating of the cable, could you overheat the plastic in the battery that’s only rated for 85C and disable the battery?
Technical Note on the Safety and Design of the Battle Born 100Ah Positive Terminal
This technical note describes the design and behavior of the positive terminal assembly used in Battle Born 100Ah batteries. It outlines how the terminal functions under normal operation and under sustained fault conditions, and clarifies the conditions required for its protective mechanism to...
battlebornbatteries.com
To summarize - “It’s a feature, not a bug!”
It is a pretty interesting read explaining their design decisions, or a retroactive explanation backing into why their design could be considered safe. One thing I don’t understand, or maybe they get wrong - they show how the circuit cuts itself off if the wiring is “undersized”, but not if it’s connected with AWG 1/0 cable for its continuous load of 100 amps. But ABYC’s table says AWG 6 can be good for up to 120 amps, as long as it’s rated for 105 degrees C. So if you’re using AWG 6, not exceeding the 105 degree rating of the cable, could you overheat the plastic in the battery that’s only rated for 85C and disable the battery?
It is my understanding the temperature rating has to do with the wire's insulation. Lower ampacity ratings for low temp wire are to reduce the heat build up which could melt the insulation.
Yep, that matches my understanding- basically that if an AWG 6 wire is carrying 120 amps it’ll heat up to some high temperature (let’s say 100C for discussion purposes), so you can use AWG 6 wire to carry that many amps only if its insulation can handle that temperature without melting. But if you connect your 6 AWG wire to your BB battery terminal, and the wire heats the terminal to 100C, the wire won’t fail, but the terminal might.
Right, which sort of begs a bigger question, why even bother with low temp rated wire in any application?
I always assumed it was just a cost thing, but looking around at the typical sites I’d buy cable I only see 105C offered, so I can’t do a good cost comparison.
Seeing that only 105C is generally offered makes me think it’s even more likely DIY’ers are using the ABYC table recommendations to pick a cable size, wiring their charge circuits (usually shorter cable runs so voltage drop isn’t in play) with smaller and hotter cables than BB expects, increasing the battery failure rate.
Did anyone else find their explanation electrically and chemically questionable of how the terminal is purposefully designed so that the aluminum bolt progressively converts its outer layer to aluminum oxide when over-heated, thus progressively cutting off its ability to carry current and shutting down the battery? And all the frantic and fantastical hand waving on how this happens in a very controlled manner?
I mean, that part was a hail Mary piece of absolute BS that is boarder line dangerous.
Mark
I mean, that part was a hail Mary piece of absolute BS that is boarder line dangerous.
Mark
There's some impressive linguistic acrobatics, obfuscation, and misdirection in this article. But I will give them credit where it's due: I haven't heard any reports of an actual fire resulting from the design. And their test did indeed result in the terminal failing "as designed" when an undersized wire overheated it. But I am not satisfied that they addressed the design concerns; they seem to have started with a foregone conclusion that the only issue / concern is undersized wiring and built a rationale around it.
The melting terminal may indeed have been an intentional design choice to address the UL 2054 9.10 single fault short circuit requirement, but that doesn't make it a good design, regardless of whether or not it achieved that purpose. It's like if I designed a car to protect against a brake failure by making the wheels fall off, and then told people that the wheels only fall off if you push the brake pedal hard to the floor, and besides the car is totally safe because it does stop.
There's a technical term for what Battleborn claims they designed: a fuse. But I sincerely doubt their fuse would receive UL approval if they tried to certify it as such because its ability to reliably interrupt current is suspect. When the ABS melts the terminal loses compression but the circuit is not positively interrupted and may reconnect if you wiggle the now-melted terminal, to say nothing of the failure mode where it develops high resistance and then overheats even at normal operating currents. Where's the all-important data/analysis showing that it will necessarily interrupt power before that heat reaches the cells?
There are also some glaring omissions in the article. For example, they performed a test with "undersized" wires but failed to specify what AWG they used. Was it 10? Meanwhile, the "correct" 1/0AWG far exceeds the ABYC standard for a 100A circuit (4 AWG up to 10ft using the 3% voltage drop criteria) - and they neglect to specify the ambient temperature that produced a 43C terminal temperature: was it an 18C rise, a 23C rise, or more? They repeatedly cited the Intertek test results but conspicuously neglected to publish the actual test report. And for all the talk of creep limits and pressures, they don't appear to account for vibration, ambient temperature, thermal expansion, or the torque moment on the terminal. For example, the rated operating temperature is 57.2C (135F) (https://battlebornbatteries.com/wp-...andard-Datasheet_V1-12.26.2024-compressed.pdf) which I expect would produce a terminal temperature of 75C to 80C even based on their 1/0 test.
All in all, it reeks of desperation, but someone clearly worked hard to get the lipstick on this pig.
The melting terminal may indeed have been an intentional design choice to address the UL 2054 9.10 single fault short circuit requirement, but that doesn't make it a good design, regardless of whether or not it achieved that purpose. It's like if I designed a car to protect against a brake failure by making the wheels fall off, and then told people that the wheels only fall off if you push the brake pedal hard to the floor, and besides the car is totally safe because it does stop.
There's a technical term for what Battleborn claims they designed: a fuse. But I sincerely doubt their fuse would receive UL approval if they tried to certify it as such because its ability to reliably interrupt current is suspect. When the ABS melts the terminal loses compression but the circuit is not positively interrupted and may reconnect if you wiggle the now-melted terminal, to say nothing of the failure mode where it develops high resistance and then overheats even at normal operating currents. Where's the all-important data/analysis showing that it will necessarily interrupt power before that heat reaches the cells?
There are also some glaring omissions in the article. For example, they performed a test with "undersized" wires but failed to specify what AWG they used. Was it 10? Meanwhile, the "correct" 1/0AWG far exceeds the ABYC standard for a 100A circuit (4 AWG up to 10ft using the 3% voltage drop criteria) - and they neglect to specify the ambient temperature that produced a 43C terminal temperature: was it an 18C rise, a 23C rise, or more? They repeatedly cited the Intertek test results but conspicuously neglected to publish the actual test report. And for all the talk of creep limits and pressures, they don't appear to account for vibration, ambient temperature, thermal expansion, or the torque moment on the terminal. For example, the rated operating temperature is 57.2C (135F) (https://battlebornbatteries.com/wp-...andard-Datasheet_V1-12.26.2024-compressed.pdf) which I expect would produce a terminal temperature of 75C to 80C even based on their 1/0 test.
All in all, it reeks of desperation, but someone clearly worked hard to get the lipstick on this pig.
The chart you're quoting is max ampacity not running ampacity. Running ampacity always includes volt drop calcs.. For anything connected to the battery you want 3% or less. 6AWG on a 20' circuit @ 100a exceeds 10%......Yesterday Battle Born provided a Technical Note in response to the criticism -
Technical Note on the Safety and Design of the Battle Born 100Ah Positive Terminal
This technical note describes the design and behavior of the positive terminal assembly used in Battle Born 100Ah batteries. It outlines how the terminal functions under normal operation and under sustained fault conditions, and clarifies the conditions required for its protective mechanism to...
To summarize - “It’s a feature, not a bug!”
It is a pretty interesting read explaining their design decisions, or a retroactive explanation backing into why their design could be considered safe. One thing I don’t understand, or maybe they get wrong - they show how the circuit cuts itself off if the wiring is “undersized”, but not if it’s connected with AWG 1/0 cable for its continuous load of 100 amps. But ABYC’s table says AWG 6 can be good for up to 120 amps, as long as it’s rated for 105 degrees C. So if you’re using AWG 6, not exceeding the 105 degree rating of the cable, could you overheat the plastic in the battery that’s only rated for 85C and disable the battery?
They claim their BMS is not "off the shelf". If that is true, they can add a few temp sensors for pennies. Place one on B+ and the other on B- inside the battery. Epoch does this for a lot less money..
Yes, but on a short run from a charger to battery, say 10’ at 100 amps, you can use AWG 4 to be at 3% drop. That’s still lots smaller than the 1/0 that BB call out as adequate in their paper.