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More Than 500,000 Hoverboards Recalled Because of Fire Hazards (go.com)
501,000 self-balancing scooters -- more popularly known as hoverboards -- are being recalled due to fire hazard concerns, said The U.S. Consumer Product Safety. The lithium-ion battery packs in the hoverboards can overheat -- which could result in sparking, smoking, fire, and explosion -- the agency added. ABC reports:The recall involves hoverboards from eight manufacturers/importers that are made with lithium-ion battery packs as well as 4,300 from Overstock.com and 1,300 from a store in Pennsylvania. Amazon.com is not listed in the recall, but in February, the online giant worked with the CPSC to offer refunds to any customer who wanted to return hoverboards purchased on the site. Hoverboards by Swagway make up more than half of those recalled -- 267,000. "We are urging consumers to act quickly," CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye told ABC News. "We've concluded pretty definitively that these are not safe products the way they were designed."
what?
Customers aren't your QA, nitwits!
They listed a ton of brands. I think it would be easier to do a list of hoverboards that are NOT proven fire hazards, rather than the other way around.
Also is there some reason those lithium batteries only went into hoverboards? Or did some go into other devices - and are those other devices safe?
After all, it's not the wheels or actual standing area that's the problem.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
We know.
Most power supplies today have a single 12 V rail onto which all those power leads sprout. These leads can easily handle 75W; they could handle much, much more. Beware shorts, though. They burn REAL GOOD! Flame on! Jonny!
Only LUDDITE hoverboards catch fire! Modern appy appboards are 100% appy so they always app perfectly!
Apps!
Is the usual li-ion battery circuitry preventing overcharging missing/broken? Does the battery get crushed from the weight of the human? What's going wrong here?
"It can be dangerous!" doesn't tell me anything I don't already know about compact stores of energy.
The companies selling dangerous ones will get sued out of existence. The ones selling better ones will thrive. That's the market in action. Hillary doesn't have to get involved every time a kid scratches his knee.
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roman_mir
The only thing more pathetic than them is the original 'transportation revolution' Segway. There is no hovering to these ridiculous contraptions.
... because they can't hover.
...I see an advertisement for a Hoverboard right at the top of the page as I write this post.
When is the FDA going to regulate them?
Letterman's Dangerous Toys
They are a glorified 2 wheel motor-boards. They don't hover in any shape or form they are firmly planted to the ground by 2 wheels. This is a true hoverborad it actually hovers over air
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-the-most-promising-hoverboards-actually-work/
Jack of all trades,master of none
or wannabe "hoverboards".
Now if we could only recall all of the douchebags who think it's cool to ride them. Extra points for vaping at the same time.
How about they recall every single off-brand garbage battery ever made in China? I've had replacement laptop batteries fail after a week. I've heard quite a few light on fire or melt too. The same goes for the garbage quality set of 2 batteries I got from 2 different vendors for my digital camera. Basically every non-OEM battery ever is a sketchy, dangerous, fire hazard piece of crap and the vendors are lying about their reliability.
And burn away. Isn't this the american way of using gadgets and doing business?
Personally I suggest people who bought a product from a company called Swagway just stand on them and burn with their toy.
The level of complete ineptitude on the part of the hardware designer is astounding. Plenty of scooters and other vehicles have been powered by Li-ion batteries and all of them seem to have no trouble with power protection circuits that keep the Li-ion battery in safe operating temperature. Most of these self balancing scooters (I refuse to call them hoverboards) have about the same amount of Li-ion cells as an average laptop. Don't see anything about laptops blowing off peoples hands. Even if this designer didn't know how to make a power regulation and charging circuit they could have easily found an off the shelf premade one to use. I'm surprised no one has tried to sue these companies for neglect given how poorly designed and poorly tested this Russian Roulette board is.
They just need to re-brand these as 'Hoverboard Extreme' and they can sell as many as they like. For the hipsters shooting vines of their hoverboard tricks, the added features of these so-called defects can only put more eyeballs on the link.
You're making a false assumption. If the hardware designer is tasked with coming up with the lowest-priced, cheapest-to-manufacture design which doesn't blow up before leaving the factory, he's doing a fine job.
Remember the time when those laptop batteries got recalled, over heating and exploding?
From burning crotches to burning feet, I dare say, consumer technology is improving!