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Boeing Shows Dreamliner Battery Plan to Japanese Government

February 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Japanese investigators, however, have maintained that there is still not enough evidence to show that the batteries themselves are the cause of fires, and that a shock could have caused them to overheat. That could complicate Boeing’s efforts to get regulators around the world to approve their fixes, because they focus only on containing any problems that might arise in the batteries.

The Japanese assertions have put Japan’s transport safety board at odds with American investigators, who have said publicly that there was no such surge in electrical current from outside the battery. The lithium-ion batteries on the 787 are made by GS Yuasa of Japan.

Raymond L. Conner, the chief executive of Boeing’s commercial airplane division, who is in Tokyo for talks with Japanese government officials, airliners and suppliers, gave a public apology for the problems with the 787 and said that he was confident that the battery fixes were a “permanent” solution that ensured the batteries would not be a danger going forward.

“What we did today was to discuss these solutions that we are looking at that could be final solutions,” Mr. Connor told reporters after meeting with the Japanese transport minister, Akihiro Ota.

“We feel this solution takes into account any possible event that could occur,” he said, “any causal factor that could cause an event, and we are very confident that we have a fix that will be permanent and allow us to continue to use the technology.”

He denied that there was any disagreement between the American and Japanese positions on the needed fixes. He said that Boeing continued to have a “great relationship” with GS Yuasa, the battery maker.

Boeing has delivered 50 787s so far to eight airlines, and it expects to sell thousands of the fuel-efficient jets. But a battery caught fire on one Japan Airlines plane parked in Boston on Jan. 7, and smoke forced another 787 operated by All Nippon Airways to make an emergency landing in Japan.

Boeing has proposed separating the battery cells with insulation to keep heat from spreading from one to another. It also would build a fireproof container around the batteries and add tubes to vent smoke or hazardous gases out of the plane.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/business/boeing-shows-dreamliner-battery-plan-to-japan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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F.A.A. Sets Terms for Boeing’s Battery Fixes on 787

February 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“The safety of the flying public is our top priority and we won’t allow the 787 to return to commercial service until we’re confident that any proposed solution has addressed the battery failure risks,” Laura J. Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said in a statement.

At the meeting on Friday, more than five weeks after the plane was grounded, Boeing executives outlined the company’s latest proposals on how to keep the 787’s new lithium-ion batteries from overheating and how to vent any smoke or hazardous gases out of the plane.

Raymond L. Conner, the president of Boeing’s commercial airplane division, led the group of executives that met with Michael P. Huerta, the administrator of the F.A.A., and John Porcari, the deputy transportation secretary.

The meeting, however, was unlikely to bring about a quick lifting of the 787s’ grounding order. Boeing is asking the F.A.A. to approve the fixes even though safety investigators have not figured out precisely what caused the battery on one plane to ignite and the battery on another to start smoking last month.

After the meeting, federal officials said Boeing would be allowed to conduct a series of test flights to see how the fixes work and to fine-tune its proposals.

Boeing officials say that even though the causes of the battery episodes have not been determined, they have identified the most likely ways in which the new lithium-ion batteries failed. They now want the F.A.A. to approve changes meant to virtually eliminate the odds of future cases and to protect the plane and its passengers if a problem does arise.

In that sense, the meeting on Friday was also aimed at expanding the company’s emphasis from engineering work to the political arena. Besides evaluating the merits of its proposals, Mr. Huerta and the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, might have to make difficult decisions about how well the fixes minimize the safety risk. Mr. LaHood said last month that the planes “won’t fly until we’re one thousand percent sure they are safe to fly.”

But battery and aviation-safety experts say that it could be hard to meet that standard if the causes of the recent episodes are not totally clear. And the F.A.A. often has to walk a delicate line in balancing its role in promoting aviation as well as ensuring safety.

Engineers at the agency have worked closely with Boeing in developing the possible fixes, and their general support for the concept was crucial in enabling the company to bring those proposals to Mr. Huerta and Mr. Porcari.

But Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent board that is investigating the battery problems, said: “These kinds of things always raise the basic question: Is the F.A.A. really a participant or a regulator in this, and how does it play the role of regulator when the only way to get to a solution is by being a partner? It’s always a fine line.”

Mr. Goelz and other former safety officials said Boeing’s proposals were on the right track. But some battery experts said they would like to hear more details about how Boeing would keep the batteries from overheating before judging how well the plans would work.

Boeing has delivered 50 787s so far to eight airlines. The company has much riding on the innovative planes. They are the first commercial jets to be built mostly out of lightweight composite materials that reduce fuel costs. Boeing has orders for 800 more of these planes, nicknamed the Dreamliner.

Investigators at the safety board said a battery that ignited on a 787 parked at Logan Airport in Boston in January had suffered thermal runaway, a chemical reaction that leads the battery to overact. They said the problem started in one of the eight cells in the batteries and spread to the others.

On Friday, Boeing proposed adding insulation between the cells to minimize the risk of a short-circuit cascading through most or all of them.

The company also proposed to add systems to monitor the temperature and activity inside each cell. It would enclose the batteries in sturdier steel boxes to contain any fire, and it would create tubes to vent hazardous gases outside the plane.

Boeing said the redesigned batteries would fit in the same space. After the meeting, it also said in a statement that it was “encouraged by the progress being made toward resolving the issue and returning the 787 to flight for our customers and their passengers around the world.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/business/faa-sets-terms-for-boeings-battery-fixes-on-787.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Airbus and Boeing on Different Paths on Battery

February 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Faced with the potential of a lengthy investigation into what caused batteries on two Boeing 787 jets to ignite or emit smoke last month, Airbus said Friday that it had dropped plans to use the technology on its forthcoming wide-body jet, the A350-XWB, to avoid possible delays in producing the planes. But Boeing, which has much more at stake, said later in the day that it would stick with the batteries, and the company is working with regulators to reduce risks even if the cause of the hazards is not clearly found.

All 50 of the 787s delivered so far were grounded in mid-January. And even though the problems have embarrassed Boeing and could cost it hundreds of millions of dollars, the company said Friday, “There’s nothing we’ve learned in the investigations that would lead us to a different decision regarding lithium-ion batteries.”

To some extent, Boeing’s bravado reflects a sense among battery experts that they have narrowed down the ways that the batteries, made by a Japanese company, GS Yuasa, could fail. That then increases the chances that a handful of changes may eventually provide enough assurance that the batteries would be safe to use.

Airbus was planning on a more limited use of the lithium-ion batteries than Boeing, and by switching to the more traditional nickel-cadmium batteries, the company can make the necessary changes as it is building the planes. Boeing, on the other hand, has a strong motivation to stick with the lithium-ion batteries in hopes that a solution will emerge.

Under flight safety regulations, industry and government officials said, Boeing might not have to go through as extensive — and time-consuming — an approval process if it redesigned the lithium-ion batteries as it would if it switched to the conventional batteries.

Even though the behavior of the more traditional batteries is better understood, they have not yet been certified for use in the 787s, and the batteries and related parts of the plane’s electrical system would have to be created and tested from scratch. Under the safety directive grounding the planes, Boeing might have a more straightforward path to get them flying again if it could persuade the Federal Aviation Administration that redesigning the lithium-ion batteries would work.

Federal and industry officials said Boeing would probably have to spread the eight cells in the batteries farther apart — or increase the insulation between them — to keep a failure in one cell from cascading to the others in the “thermal runaway” that led to the smoke and fire. Battery experts are also looking into whether vibrations in flight could have added to the risks of unwanted contact between the cells. And Boeing would undoubtedly have to wall off the battery within a sturdier metal container and make it easier to vent any hazardous materials outside the plane.

Aviation experts said the examination of such changes reflected what could end up being a difficult calculation for safety regulators: Will there be a way to ensure the safety of the batteries if they cannot tell for certain what set off the problems on the two planes?

Until now, most of the public statements by regulators have focused on the need to pin down the cause of the battery problems. But investigators, now weeks into their work, have been able to find only limited clues in the charred remains of the two batteries.

As a result, government and outside experts, working closely with Boeing engineers, have been studying the research on lithium-ion batteries carried out since Boeing won approval for its batteries in 2007 and, in essence, trying to come up with a safer design.

Government and industry officials said Friday that it was still too early to know if Boeing could devise enough changes to satisfy regulators and the flying public.

Airbus said it started informing airline customers on Thursday that it would not move ahead with an original plan to use the lithium-ion batteries on its A350s.

“Airbus considers this to be the most appropriate way forward in the interest of program execution and reliability,” said Marcella Muratore, an Airbus spokeswoman.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article mischaracterized incidents in January involving lithium-ion batteries in Boeing 787 Dreamliners. In one case a battery caught fire, and in another a battery emitted smoke; both batteries did not catch fire.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/business/global/airbus-abandons-plan-to-use-controversial-batteries.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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TV Show Mirrors a Japanese Battery Maker’s Bind

February 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

With the real-life manufacturer of Boeing’s Japan-made batteries under intense scrutiny, the three-part series, which was carried by the national broadcaster NHK and showed its finale on Saturday, came at an angst-ridden time, and underscored the hopes that Japan had pinned on technologies like lithium-ion batteries.

As portrayed in the series, Takumi Electronics might as well be Japan Inc. itself. Takumi’s lead in televisions and mobile phones has been eclipsed by more nimble upstarts in South Korea and China, echoing the fate of Japanese technology giants like Sony and Panasonic. The only hope the company has now lies in its advanced battery technology.

“These lithium-ion batteries took us years to develop, and our technological advantage won’t waver so easily,” the Takumi Electronics president says defiantly to reporters after yet another disastrous earnings presentation. “We are betting on big growth in electric cars, and we are about to clinch some big deals.”

GS Yuasa, the real-life maker of Boeing’s lithium-ion batteries, made a similar bet, one that has not yet paid off.

Fire and smoke in batteries aboard Boeing’s next-generation Dreamliner have led to the grounding of all 50 of the planes while authorities around the world try to figure out the cause. On Thursday, the head of the United States National Transportation Safety Board, Deborah Hersman, said the fire seemed to have originated in one of the batteries, and faulted aviation officials for not anticipating the risks.

On Saturday and again on Monday, Boeing crews took a 787 on test flights to monitor the performance of the lithium-ion batteries. Both flights, Boeing said, were uneventful.

The recent troubles are hardly what GS Yuasa could have envisioned when it started making the batteries. In 2009, it started supplying the batteries for Mitsubishi Motors’ i-Miev electric vehicles, billed as the first mass-produced, fully electric car. Everything seemed to go well at the beginning. GS Yuasa executives said in interviews three years ago that the company was struggling to keep up with inquiries pouring in from automakers.

But demand for the electric vehicles has not taken off. Last month, Mitsubishi Motors sold just 137 i-Mievs, and GS Yuasa’s factories have been running at less than capacity.

That has marred plans at the company, which had hoped its lithium-ion technology would soon replace its older lead-acid batteries as its core business. GS Yuasa has still not turned a profit on its lithium-ion batteries, losing 3.26 billion yen, about $35 million, on the business last year despite directing the bulk of its capital investment to the technology, according to its annual report.

Enter Boeing and its next-generation 787 jet, which relies more than ever on electric systems and the batteries that power them. GS Yuasa won a contract in 2005 to supply Boeing with lithium-ion batteries through the French aviation electronics company Thales, and GS Yuasa has promoted aviation as a growth area that could make up for the disappointing electric vehicle market.

GS Yuasa’s president, Makoto Yoda, had high ambitions, telling Kyodo News in late 2011 that he wanted to double sales of lithium-ion batteries to clients other than automakers within five years. By “building on our track record in supplying Boeing,” he said, the company aimed to open up new uses for the battery technology, including small jets and helicopters.

Advanced batteries are also crucial to wider Japanese industry at a time when the country remains stunned by how swiftly its once-dominant makers of semiconductors and flat-panel televisions have been overtaken by South Korean rivals. The culprit is commoditization, which made Japan’s prized technology indistinguishable from everyone else’s.

There is already fear that Japan’s prized lithium-ion battery technology could go the same way.

Though Japan was long the world’s dominant supplier of lithium-ion technology, led by Sony’s first commercial lithium-ion batteries in 1991, rivals have largely usurped Japan’s lead. The catch-up has been especially swift in smaller lithium-ion batteries, which have become increasingly common.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/business/tv-show-mirrors-a-japanese-battery-makers-bind.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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U.S. Official Faults F.A.A. for Missing 787 Battery Risk

February 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters that the problems seemed to have originated in the battery, when one of the eight cells had a short circuit and the fire spread to the rest of the cells. But she said that Boeing’s tests showed no indication that the new lithium-ion batteries on its 787 planes could erupt in flame and concluded that they were likely to emit smoke less than once in every 10 million flight hours.

Once the planes were placed in service, though, the batteries overheated and emitted smoke twice last month, and caused one fire, after about 50,000 hours of commercial flights.

“The assumptions used to certify the batteries must be reconsidered,” Ms. Hersman said.

Late Thursday, the F.A.A. said it would allow Boeing to conduct test flights with its 787 to collect data on the batteries and the plane’s electrical system. The agency said the flights “will be an important part of our efforts to ensure the safety of passengers and return these aircraft to service.” It did not immediately specify the number of test flights or when they would begin.

Ms. Hersman, at her news conference, said that before the F.A.A. certified the batteries, Boeing’s tests found no evidence that a short circuit in one of the eight cells could spread to other cells.

But Ms. Hersman said the fire on a 787 parked at an airport in Boston on Jan. 7 started with a short circuit in one cell and then spread to the others.

She said investigators had still not been able to tell what caused the short circuit in that cell and led to a “thermal runaway,” overheating up to 500 degrees, that then cascaded to the rest of the cells.

Still, she said, “This investigation has demonstrated that a short circuit in a single cell can propagate to adjacent cells and result in a fire.”

Battery experts said that the finding pinpointed one step Boeing could take to make the batteries safer: it could expand the size of the battery to create more physical separation between the cells. Ralph J. Brodd, a battery industry consultant in Henderson, Nev., said Boeing and its Japanese battery subcontractor, GS Yuasa, could make the design and manufacturing changes needed to do that fairly quickly.

But unless investigators can determine what caused the first cell to short-circuit, federal officials said, Boeing will also be required to make other changes to prevent any of the possible causes and to better contain or vent any overheated materials. And given the safety board’s findings about how poorly Boeing gauged the original safety risks, the F.A.A. is likely to take its time in assessing the validity of any new tests.

The 787 is the first commercial airplane to use large lithium-ion batteries for major flight functions. All 50 of Boeing’s 787s that were delivered to airlines have been grounded since mid-January, when a 787 made an emergency landing in Japan after the pilots smelled smoke in the cockpit. That incident occurred nine days after the Boston fire.

In searching for the cause of the fire on the plane in Boston, Ms. Hersman said the safety board was still looking at the battery’s charging mechanism and potential manufacturing defects or contamination, and whether the cells were not as isolated as they should have been.

Investigators have so far ruled out two possible reasons for the short circuit — a mechanical or electrical shock from outside the battery.

“We have not yet identified what the cause of the short circuit is,” she said. “We are looking at the design of the battery, at the manufacturing, and we are also looking at the cell charging. There are a lot of things we are still looking at.”

Boeing said in a statement Thursday that it viewed the safety board’s findings as narrowing the likely source of the problem to within the battery itself, as opposed to other components of the plane’s extensive new electric system. But company officials said they also recognized that it would take a combination of changes to restore confidence in the battery system.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/business/us-officials-fault-faa-for-missing-787-battery-risk.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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No Immediate Quality Control Problems Found at 787 Battery Maker

January 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The investigators said they would now turn their inquiry to the maker of a device that monitors the batteries.

Japan’s Transport Ministry said it had wrapped up its eight-day on-site investigation at GS Yuasa, the maker of the lithium-ion batteries at the center of the inquiry. Officials stressed, however, that the cause of the recent battery malfunctions was still unknown, and that GS Yuasa remained under investigation.

GS Yuasa made the batteries that overheated during an All Nippon Airways flight this month in Japan, prompting an emergency landing. That incident came just days after another GS Yuasa battery on a parked Japan Airlines plane caught fire at Boston’s Logan Airport. The incidents prompted regulators worldwide to ground all 787s, and Boeing to halt deliveries.

It is still unclear whether the mishaps were caused by the batteries or by another part of the aircraft’s complex electronics. On Monday, the Ministry of Transport said inspectors would begin a review of Kanto Aircraft Instrument, outside Tokyo, which makes the unit that measures the battery’s voltage, current, temperature and other parameters.

“We do not know where the problems lie, so we are simply doing checks in order,” said an official at the ministry’s Civil Aviation Bureau who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said it was too early to say that inspectors had ruled out GS Yuasa as the source of the battery’s malfunctions or that they would not be back for further review.

“We have seen what we needed to see for now, and are moving on, but that does not mean that there was definitely no problem with the battery,” the official said.

He said that at Kanto Aircraft, officials would check manufacturing processes for quality control breaches.

Kanto Aircraft officials could not immediately be reached for comment. GS Yuasa said it could not comment on ongoing investigations.

The United States National Transportation Safety Board, which is also investigating the batteries, has already completed an examination of the monitoring unit at Kanto Aircraft.

The American-led team examined the circuit boards that monitor the batteries, but found the boards were damaged and that limited the information the team could obtain. The team “found no significant discoveries,” the board said in a news release.

Plagued by production delays, the 787 Dreamliner finally went into service last year as Boeing’s next-generation, state-of-the-art aircraft made of lightweight composite materials that greatly improve the jet’s fuel efficiency. The 787 also relies far more than previous aircraft on electronic systems, including lithium-ion batteries, which are lighter but more prone to overheating.

In a separate development, the Reuters news agency reported that Japan’s government had eased the way for the new aircraft in 2008 by making concessions on safety regulations and fast-tracking the jet’s rollout. The report cited records and participants in the process.

“I believe the request for the changes came initially from the airlines. Ultimately, it was a discussion of measures to lower operating costs for the airlines,” Masatoshi Harigae, head of aviation at Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency, told the news service.

There was no suggestion, however, that looser regulatory standards contributed to the problems now facing the Dreamliner, the report said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/business/global/boeing-787-batteries-pass-inspection-in-japan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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F.A.A. Orders Grounding of U.S.-Operated Boeing 787s

January 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The decision follows incidents involving a plane parked in Boston and one in Japan that was forced to make an emergency landing on Wednesday morning after an alarm warning of smoke in the cockpit. The problems prompted All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines to voluntarily ground their 787s.

The F.A.A.’s emergency directive, issued Wednesday night, initially applies to United Airlines, the only American carrier using the new plane so far, with six 787s.

Other regulators around the globe followed suit on Thursday. In Japan the transport ministry issued a formal order to ground all 787s indefinitely, until concerns over the aircraft’s battery systems are resolved. In India, the aviation regulator grounded all six of the 787s operated by the state-owned carrier Air India.

European safety regulators also will ground Dreamliners.

Boeing, based in Chicago, has a lot riding on the 787, and its stock dropped nearly 3.4 percent on Wednesday to $74.34. The company has outlined ambitious plans to double its production rate to 10 planes a month by the end of 2013. It is also starting to build a stretch version and considering an even larger one after that.

“We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity,” Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The grounding — an unusual action for a new plane — focuses on one of the more risky design choices made by Boeing, namely to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries aboard its airplanes for the first time.

Until now, much of the attention on the 787 was focused on its lighter composite materials and more efficient engines, meant to usher in a new era of more fuel-efficient travel, particularly over long distances. The batteries are part of an electrical system that replaces many mechanical and hydraulic ones common in previous jets.

The 787’s problems could jeopardize one of its major features, its ability to fly long distances at a cheaper cost. The plane is certified to fly 180 minutes from an airport. The government is unlikely to extend that to 330 minutes, as Boeing has promised, until all problems with the plane have been resolved.

For Boeing, “it’s crucial to get it right,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. “They’ve got a brief and closing window in which they can convince the public and their flying customers that this is not a problem child.”

The 787 uses two identical lithium-ion batteries, each about one-and-a-half to twice the size of a car battery. One battery, in the rear electrical equipment bay near the wings, is used to start the auxiliary power unit, a small engine in the tail that is used most often to provide power for the plane while it is on the ground. The other battery, called the main battery, starts the pilot’s computer displays and serves as a backup for flight systems.

The maker of the 787’s batteries, Japan’s GS Yuasa, has declined to comment on the problems so far.

Boeing has defended the novel use of the batteries and said it had put in place a series of systems meant to prevent overcharging and overheating.

In a conference call last week with reporters, Boeing’s chief engineer for the 787, Mike Sinnett, said that the company had long been aware of possible problems with lithium-ion batteries, but it had built numerousredundant features to keep any problems with the batteries from threatening the plane in flight. He said the batteries had not had any problems in 1.3 million hours of flight, and that Boeing was trying to understand what had caused the problems.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo, Sruthi Gottipati from New Delhi and Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 16, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article published online, and an appended correction, misstated the number of Boeing 787s already delivered worldwide. It is 50, not 49.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/business/faa-orders-grounding-of-us-operated-boeing-787s.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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