SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Overheating

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20240509-4E6A7-2147339290. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Re-lion Insight (Relion Insight 48v (2)). Incident: Re-lion Insight 48v golf cart batteries. I purchased these in 2023 and had strange issues immediately. I was told those batteries were under a recall, so Re-lion asked me to send them back for replacements, which I did. 5 months later I received replacements that are worse than the originals. They get extremely hot while charging with a smell of smoke and burnt electronics. They also start to overheat and smell after driving for a mile or two, then shut down from overheating if I don't pull over. I measured over 300 degrees F with a laser thermometer on the outer housing, and the plastic housing gets soft enough to poke a hole through with my finger. These are worse and more dangerous than the batteries I had before the recall. They fixed nothing with the recall, and I'm afraid my house will burn down. These cost me almost $3000 new and I haven't gotten a solid week of use out of them. They need to be off the market. The company won't answer the phone or emails. Again, the original recall did NOT make these batteries safer. The old ones (1 year old!) are showing up by the pallet to battery re-sellers like batteryhookup.com for pennies on the dollar, where more people are buying them for solar home backup...and they are having many issues also. Someone will burn their house down with these! I am an expert In batteries and electronics. I've seen a lot of dangerous batteries, but these are the worst I've seen.