How safe are those batteries, anyway?
I just read the True Blue Power TB-50 lithium-ion main starting battery article in the December 2024 issue of Aviation Consumer. Now this battery won’t be going in my Cessna 150 or Van’s RV-9A, but I think you should be much more specific about the battery chemistry in these articles.
Plain vanilla lithium-ion batteries (mainly used in consumer products like cellphones and e-bikes) have a very poor safety record for fires, and they are terrifying when they do occur. But of course there are many other lithium-based battery chemistries that are much safer. The True Blue battery website is not very specific about theirs, calling it NanoPhosphate Lithium-Ion technology. What little I know about the chemistries is that phosphate or iron-based lithium chemistries are very much safer (though nothing is 100 percent safe, I suppose). But for me, any battery that requires a small computer on board to monitor the health of the individual cells to prevent thermal runaways (fires) is not going in my airplane.