As the electric car market expands, Sandia National Laboratories' battery-abuse testing facility gets a workout

The forthcoming Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf rely on lithium-ion battery packs, as do other contenders on the electric-car circuit. Yet perhaps mindful of a few highly publicized fires touched off by early lithium-ion power packs in laptops, are consumers assured that their car batteries will remain safe, even in an accident?

Much of the assurance falls under the purview of Sandia National Laboratories’ Battery Abuse Testing Laboratory, which has become the de facto automotive battery-testing shop in the U.S. The lab heats, shocks, punctures and crushes batteries to see how safe they would be in crashes and extreme operating conditions.

When lithium-ion cells first came to the laptop market, “the active materials were very energetic. There were some significant field failures,” notes Chris Orendorff, the battery lab’s team leader. The usual cause was thermal runaway, a chemical reaction that could start from excessive overheating, then potentially cause a cell to catch fire or explode. Although even extreme driving conditions are unlikely to trigger those problems, a crash could, and so could a sudden overcharge—for example, if lightning struck a charging port while a car was being recharged.

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