Adam Savage of Myth Busters Fame released a 21′ video “The Surprising Flaws in 18650 Lithium-Ion Batteries”on YouTube on January 20, 2026. Adam has 7,100,000 subscribers. Adam interviews these two employees from Lumafield:
The upshot is that Lumafield has used a scanning device to see what is really inside a battery and noted that Lithium battery designs have very high tolerances as to where positive and negative lines are separated. Batteries which are not subject to high level quality assurance can have a higher percentage of alignment problems that may lead to spontaneous combustion.
The 41 page PDF was created September 23, 2025. It is available for download at Lumafield’s site at: https://www.lumafield.com/battery-report You have to to identify yourself and provide contact information, then the report is made available at no charge for download. Lumafield also sends you a follow-up email where you can download the report.
This is a real eye-opener and underscores buying name brand batteries is good insurance.
I also posted to Andreas Spiess’ battery project for posterity: https://github.com/SensorsIot/SuperPower/issues/45
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