The Challenge
Despite incident reports that included battery packs sparking, smoking, catching fire, and even exploding, hoverboards gained popularity and sales increased. Exponent's clients asked for help determining the root cause of failures as well as how to minimize the risk of future problems.
Exponent's MULTIDISCIPLINARY Solution
What's the best way to advance safety for a new — and rapidly evolving — product category? Our engineers and scientists analyzed failures down to the cell level in numerous hoverboard models to understand why and how things can go wrong, including issues related to lithium-ion batteries, battery chargers, motherboards, and overall design.
Exponent's Impact
Studying consumer hoverboard battery failures paved the way for next-generation technology for our clients — and led to safer and more reliable lithium-ion products.
Exponent was able to leverage our experience in best practices in other consumer electronics and transportation sectors with respect to the design, manufacture, and management of lithium-ion batteries to provide guidance on putting a safer product in the hands of consumers.
