which is the point of those horrible expensive to repair "crush zones" on the newer cars.
Ah, never knock good crumple zones. Took a concrete median divider head on at 55 mph (yes, there was a reason, involving either a school bus or the divider to pick from). Popped off my seat belt, opened the door (didn't even have to push), walked down the road a ways (no point getting hit in a secondary crash), and waited for the flatbed.
Through 35 pages of this, the bottom line is Li ion technology remains our best solution for a high current rechargeable battery. It's not perfect, and can fail, at times spectacularly. It can fail due to mishandling, internal manufacturing defects, to looking at it funny. Proper care and treatment keeps failures to a minimum, but even with the best of intentions, "energetic release of energy" may still occur. Lots of Note 7 owners feel picked on too when the flight attendant announces you can't have them on the plane (why you would still be carrying one around is beyond me, but maybe it falls under the "bunch of loose batteries in your pocket with change" mentality).
Hopefully better battery design will be developed that avoids spectacular fails. Until then, continue to expect these occurrences to make the news, and continue to expect them to be manipulated to serve a secondary policy agenda by those who can benefit from it. As there is no movement to ban cellphones to "save the children", I guess Samsung is safe on the phone side of the issue from the pitchfork and torches crowd (still cost them several billion dollars to clean that Note 7 mess anyhow).
