The Chinese have developed a new way to, er, dispose of an EV battery on fire, but why?

Batteries are a wonderful invention. They store energy that allows our modern gadgets and vehicles to be powered without any need for other sources of power. Unfortunately, the densely packed power also means that if the container does get damaged, all of this energy has to go somewhere.

This usually results in batteries going boom, and it’s not uncommon to see reports of electric vehicles self-immolating because of this. If you’ve been on social media recently, you may have seen this amusing video of a modified iCar 03 (also known as the Jaecoo EJ6) ejecting out a burning battery with such great force.

Made in collaboration with the China Vehicle Collision Repair Technical and Research Center, this new tech aims to, er, prevent electric vehicle fires from happening by forcefully ejecting the burning battery in a manner that resembles how you’d want to incapacitate your rivals in Mario Kart with a blue shell.

In theory, this makes sense as the vehicle can still be salvaged and reused (instead of being burnt to a crisp), plus, making it safer for the occupants as well. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten one thing.

Where will the battery go?

EV batteries can burn at any given moment, so one can imagine these EV batteries suddenly being forcefully ejected into a sidewalk, bus stop, or even into an adjacent car in traffic. And, you have to remember: the battery is still on fire.

Hence, there are hundreds of comments on that post that mock or make fun of this newly developed technology. Thankfully, with the rate at which battery technology is evolving, we should see fewer battery fires around the world thanks to safer power packs, and we hope that we won’t see a car fitted with this hilarious and very dangerous battery disposal method.

^{Photos from Yicai}