This morning a GM lab suffered damage, five workers were injured and one hospitalized, as a result of a battery explosion. Apparently the battery under test was a prototype pack from A123.
Hard to spin this positively. The test was apparently "extreme." Did GM not understand the potential for explosion? Hard to think of that in positive terms... are they clueless? Or did GM understand the potential, but failed to take adequate protection for their employees. Also hard to think of that in positive terms. One cannot make explosion containment structures without first understanding the potential energy to be released.
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/04/12/chevy-spark-battery-pack-repor...
(I wonder if this will affect sales of the ICE Spark? The Fox article does not make the distinction clear between the Spark and the electric Spark.)
I certainly hope that GM blows up and burns a lot of batteries. I certainly want to be sure they know at exactly what point it will blow up or catch fire - before one finds its way into a car that I'm driving.
That someone screwed up and got hurt is standard industrial risk while doing tests to blow things up and catch them on fire. Someone probably didn't follow some standard safety procedure or follow common sense.
To me, as a possible GM customer some day, this is good news. It means they continue to stress battery technologies. This suggests that they aren't quitting in their development of EVs!