Don't do what they do in china!

[freax]

Attention: IEC Plug – More Recalls Expected - ExtraEnergy.org

Yikes!

[techbiker]

I'd love to have an electric bike with an IEC plug. It would make electric bikes cheaper!

I can't understand why anyone would plug their bike directly into the wall if it takes 30v, regardless of the shape of the plugs. If you can't practice proper electrical safety, you shouldn't be messing with electric bikes! Do European governments think adults are like 5 year olds?

[djQUAN]

While I was shopping for big battery packs, I stumbled upon these e-bike battery packs with IEC connectors as charging ports and thought this would inevitably happen.

[MrTim64]

You know they have to redesign it so people without a clue wont' plug it into a wall outlet which is just really sad.

[keantoken]

What, you expect everyone to be educated on electrical safety? For the average person voltage and current don't matter one bit and it's no surprise that when asked to choose the right cord they get it wrong, given the opportunity. Would you insist everyone took a class on basic electronics? Would that ever happen? And what about children who still have to use household appliances?

I don't think it's "sad" at all for the average person not to understand basic electronics. I think that's a ridiculous suggestion. Neither children nor anyone else else should be at risk simply because they have to choose which cord to plug in and one of them will cause a fire.

[freax]

at least here the IEC female socket is widespread and on basically every single device ever made that runs off mains.

And to use it for DC, or any other mains connector, is tantamount to murder.

Because you don't know who is going to use the device that you've made after you're done with it, if you sell it it is still your responsibility for the users safety, their family could sue you if the user of the device is killed.

It was stupid of the chinese to use it on the bikes, but what I find staggering is that it was even stupider of the regulators to allow these things to be imported into their country.

[analog_sa]

3 years old article? How do you guys even find this stuff?

[freax]

I was doing a search for something related to IEC earlier today and thought I'd share and get the message out there and make sure that no one was doing the same as what this article depicts.

Btw your account predates my old one "Layberinthius" by 1 year, interesting.

[marce]

When designing equipement, even equipement to be used by trained people, technicians, engineers etc it is always good practice to design anything that plugs in so that they are all diferentiated and the wrong thing cannot be pluged in to the wrong socket. Its saftey and trying to minimise any mistakes that could cause the equipement to fail, or more serious death. We all make mistakes and trying to avoid mistakes is common sense. How many people do you know who have been on an electrical saftey course (outside of the industry), here Hair curlers are becoming a bit of a problem, left pluged in and on. Even better though is designi9ng gear for Squaddies, you now the first thing they will do is try and break whatever you give them...
As to avoiding Chinease products, 80% of the worlds electronics is now produced in Aisa, the number of PCB manufacturers, electronic and electrical assemblers etc that have disapeared from both Europe and the USA in the last few years is frightening, I know look at redundancy as a part of life, twice in the last 5 years, firms re-structuring and design and production outsource to a cheeper part of the world.

[JMFahey]

What I'm saying now should not be taken as an insult but as a basic safety mindset:
**Design for Morons**
That way you can *almost* guarantee safety.

Do I think most people are Morons? Not at all.
Do I think average people are uninformed? Yup !!

Even 10% uninformed people are a lot, they must be considered.

After all, *most* people who buy a bike (in this case) do it because it's fun/cool/healthy/practical.
None of these choices implies technical savvy per se.

Only a few (us?) will buy these because they are Nerds.
Yes, there's quite a few of us around here .... but not that many "outside".