this prompted some digging. I wonder how they're going to distinguish "lithium polymer" from anything else? How do you distinguish them?
The only thing that seems to be a pattern is that if it uses cylindrical cells, it's not LiPo, but if it uses flat pouch cells, it could be either and I see no easy way to distinguish them. The common Shorai and Antigravity batteries use flat pouch cells, and they're LiFePo, but I don't know if they're LiPo.
"Participants are not allowed to use LIPO batteries in any form, including but not limited to primary power source, backup power source, or in any other capacity." probably bans most laptop computers ...
They list "lithium-ion" batteries as an alternative ... but that's not the issue. LiPo batteries ARE lithium-ion batteries, just with a different form of electrolyte.
This probably morphs into only allowing bikes to have lead-acid batteries and not allowing any of those portable high-capacity batteries in lieu of generators, regardless of what's actually in the batteries, while ignoring laptops, and the whole time missing whatever the actual cause was of the battery explosion that led to this. (knee jerk reaction).
Lead-acid batteries can explode pretty good, too, if the wrong things happen ...
Be interesting to find out exactly what the battery was that exploded, and whether it had a decent BMS, and whether it had adequate overload or over-discharge protection (and I will grant that a lot of the aftermarket lithium batteries don't have adequate overload or over-discharge protection)
www.roadracingworld.com
