Fire-resistant bags are the latest hoverboard accessory
After fires, explosions, recalls and bans, it seems like owning a hoverboard is just testing fate. If you must, at least take some precautions.
Aiming to give hoverboard-owners a little more peace of mind, an Australian company has built the Hovervault, a product it's marketing as a fire-resistant bag that will prevent a malfunctioning hoverboard from burning your house down. Designed to allow users to charge their hoverboard in the bag, as well as transport it, it claims to add an extra level of protection.
Hovervault's James Stewart told Mashable Australia he was inspired to make the bag after using similar products when transporting his own hobby drones. He purchased speciality-fibreglass pouches, known as Lipo bags, after discovering many drones have lithium polymer batteries that are known to be unstable. "[The bags] basically suffocate a fire and stop it from becoming a raging inferno," he said.
After hearing reports about the spate of hoverboard combustions, particularly when charging, he wondered why no one had made a similar bag for the larger devices and decided to go ahead and build his own. "You have to respect these batteries," he said. "They're lithium-ion batteries in the hoverboards ... They're very small, they're very cheap and they're high output. It doesn't always work together.
"They don't always have the highest levels of quality control on these things."
Hovervault is not the first such bag to market — there is a HoverCover fire resistant hoverboard bag available on Amazon. Made by Newtex, a supplier of fire resistant fabrics and coatings, it ships to the U.S., Canada and Europe but not to Asia nor Australia. The Hovervault will ship globally.
Made from 2-millimetre fibreglass composite weave, the Hovervault won't stop a fire from occurring, but it will contain and eventually suffocate the flames until danger has passed, Stewart claimed. "This thing won't stop a fire, it will contain a fire," he said. "It's quite a proven material to withhold the high temperatures these things can burn at."
The bag will vent smoke, but the company recommends not opening the bag after a fire and calling the fire brigade to dispose of it. "The minute you open it up again, if there's lithium remaining, it could flare up again," he explained, given lithium reacts to oxygen.
Furthermore, the Hovervault doesn't mean hoverboard owners can be cavalier. Stewart said the product manual would cover the do's and don'ts of charging the devices: "You're never to ever charge a hoverboard on any flammable surface or within 5 metres of any flammable materials," he said. "You're not even supposed to charge these things unattended. It's just good practice."
Stewart said his team have done in-house testing of the bags with various batteries, but added that independent testing and accreditation is expected to occur shortly, before the product is ready to ship in March.
