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New way of jump starting your car. No need to carry around jumper cables or waiting for some good Samaritan to help you. There are a few brands around. Powerall and Genius Noco available at Amazon are probably the better made ones. There are also chinese knock-offs available at aliexpress at much lower price. But if you're driver or regularly going MY, you certainly should consider having one, just like having a spare tyre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d3Mr7GYNa84

Just sharing some of my thoughts and knowledge gathered from reading several articles on the topic. You are welcome to comment. My intention is to raise the awareness of people who are unknowingly taking on excessive risks. Many of you will be aware of the fire hazards of Lithium batteries. We have learnt to accept these hazards knowingly or unknowingly. The technology had been improved and the risks decreased over the years. The risk is never zero. Well known cases include Sony laptop batteries and the recent Boeing battery problems. There are many more. Even reputable MNCs like them face problems given their strict Quality/Reliability/Safety requirements and qualifications. Some of us use Lithium secondary cells without safety certification like UL1642 to power DVRs in our cars 24/7, under the hot sun and unattended. I hope to raise your awareness to the risks of Lithium battery thermal runaways and internal short circuits failure modes. I am not sure typical comprehensive auto insurance in Singapore covers such non-OEM "modifications". I need comments on this. There are simple mitigations that the ordinary consumer can adopt to reduce the risks. It may be troublesome but it takes care of the most risky phases of Lithium battery usage to avoid catastrophic outcomes. I list some of my personal ones, which include non-car related. - Never charge phones beside you when sleeping. I mandate this on my family recently. - Avoid having Lithium battery less than ~40% of charge whether in usage or storage. Undercharge conditions increase risks of internal short circuit that can start a fire, even under storage. - Overcharge is also dangerous, but this is usually not a problem as batteries and charger nowadays have automatic cutoff. - Avoid high temperatures. In Singapore, car parked under the hot sun has induced internal temperature of 60 to 70 degress C. This greatly increase risks of a thermal runaway condition internal of the battery and start a fire. I know people have done tests to show DVRs work under such conditions. I do not think these tests are done over the long term and with enough sample size. You need just 1 event over the lifetime of a battery to create a catastrophic outcome.

The future is high on lithium Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/06/2007 Lithium-ion battery-powered cars came a step closer this week, writes Andrew English American giant General Motors signed development contracts with two companies (Compact Power of Michigan and Continental of Germany) for the advanced development of lithium-ion batteries for its hybrid electric Volt concept. GM hopes to have the Volt, which has its drive train mounted on the chassis rails from the Astra hatchback, on sale by 2012. "The first Volt to go on sale will be the fuel-cell version," said Dr Christopher Borroni-Bird, GM's director of advanced technology, who warned that without government incentives to consumers such technology might be still born. "We can't go on subsidising this business forever," he said. At the same time, Mitsubishi UK MD Jim Tyrrell has confirmed he has asked for 3,000 lithium-ion versions of the Mitsubishi "i" to come to Britain when it goes on sale in 2010. (The petrol-powered "i" goes on sale this summer.) The battery-powered "i" will dispense with the heavy in-rear-wheel motors on the concept car and use a simpler single motor, driving the front wheels. "They will test the car in Tokyo from August," says Tyrrell. "They hadn't planned to sell in Europe until I told them about the congestion charges." So does this mean the fuel cell is dead? Yes, if you believe Ricardo CEO Dave Shemmans. "Battery cars will overtake fuel cells; even the Japanese think that," he said. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.j...09/mnvolt09.xml mitsubishi r tied with Yuasa on the new battery development. mitsu own sista company MHI r also developing newer batteries for cars.