I generally agree with this, but my contention is that we can never fix the battery issue: it won't be possible to stop people deliberately misusing the equipment, or making mistakes, or being the victims of fraud (counterfeit batteries).
If you can't stop damaged or faulty or incorrect cells being used, what other options are there? The only one I see is to make the device in such a way that no matter what is inserted into it, it cannot explode in the user's face. The tradeoff is they get a blister on their hand and it burns up their carpet.
Well, firstly, we have to ascertain exactly what causes the problem - we both agree that the root cause is something to do with battery cells. Neither of us, though, can pinpoint exactly what - we can surmise that counterfeit cells or primary cells or mismatched cells are the culprits, but we cannot be certain. By the same token, and given the diversity of the energy release from different chemistries of cells under catastrophic failure, what might cause a blister in one scenario might completely disable a hand in another - as of this moment, we do not know.
What is needed is testing - firstly to ascertain the actual causes of catastrophic failures IN USE (we already know about charging), and secondly, having garnered that information, what the characteristics of the failures are, and thus what warnings, if any, are given as the cells head towards failure.
With that information, we can then be fairly sure of the likely frequency of failure, the severity of the energy release, what the signs of impending failure are and what needs to be done to mitigate them so as to cause as close to no injuries at all - to hands, face, or anything else. At that point, after all the testing is done, proper detailed advice can be given.
Imagine this situation in three year's time when there are half a million APVs out there, being used by every possible type of user from the elderly housewife to the crazy young adult. Giving them information to try and keep them safe is not sufficient, it just won't work all of the time. The only answer is a safe device. What that involves exactly is not clear yet.
Exactly, for the reasons I've outlined above.
Perhaps in the future we ought to have more devices with a USB charging socket, to reduce the probability that the wrong batteries will be used by somebody. However that doesn't fix the problem of the tens of thousands of APVs out there that can have two counterfeit, damaged or faulty batteries inserted.
Neither does it remove the risk of cells failing under charge - and, therefore, because of the pass-through capability, in use - if anything, it may even raise the potential for catastrophic failure - something again, which needs to tested for and potential failure rates established.
In fact this is a whole separate issue that does not involve units that will be sold from today onward: some of the units already out there will explode in someone's face one day.
indeed, and there's nothing anyone can do about that, other than educate folks with the real, known, tested and reliably demonstrable information.
It would be a brave man who would formulate a design and brand it 100% safe - such a thing just does not exist. For that reason, too, we need to know exactly what causes catastrophic failure in use, and what the most likely failure rate is for the cause(s) in order to be able to quantify the risk for any give mitigation measure. If the chances are one in a million that a device will go postal, is that an acceptable level of risk? Some will say yes, some won't be happy with even that level of risk, but, at some point, you have to say "that's as safe as it gets - accept that or move on".
