James Post, a Dutch electronic engineer by education, has been in professional electronics since 1975. General background: https://linkedin.com/in/james-post Since 2011 he is a battery expert/consultant.

A lecturer at international conferences in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, China, Hong Kong, Israel and USA with a focus on battery safety and longevity. At the Battery Safety Conference 2012 he introduced safety monitoring by the Battery Management System and led a forum discussion on this -then new- topic. Meanwhile, safety monitoring by the BMS is common with EV’s; although his recommendation to extend the safety monitoring to idle use/transport.

At the Battery Safety Conference in 2012, a scientist of CALCE https://calce.umd.edu/about-calce was a delegate and reported the safety monitoring proposal to the director, Prof. Dr. Michael Pecht. This led to a cooperation and many joint presentations in the US, Europe and China, including at the Battery Safety Conference 2013.

Because of the, relative to electric cars, less developed battery technology of light electrical vehicles, especially e-bikes, his consultancy is mainly in this field with a focus on battery management, but also addressing other important design considerations, such as thermal design. He publishes articles, primarily in Bike Europe, where he is their e-bike battery correspondent. Summary of recent articles: https://journa.com/james-post   The past 11 years he provided lectures every year at Eurobike Academy.

His most recent achievement is that he discovered the exact reasons why e-bike batteries are so prone to catching fire and that the majority of the problem is caused by insufficient protection against transient voltages (that damage the BMS) and a lack of a self-test. Together with his Bangalore-based BMS team, he developed a remedy, which was published in Bike Europe in April 2023.

On November 2, he was invited as an expert speaker at a conference for members of the China Bicycle Association in Guangzhou/China, where it became clear that the e-bike (battery) manufacturers were not aware of the safety problems caused by the low-grade BMSs, commonly used in China. As the upgrade to a safe BMS is costing as little as $ 3.50, manufacturers indicated that they intend to implement the changes proposed. Once this becomes a reality, the vast majority of the currently (on average) 1,300/month e-bike fires/explosions can become a thing of the past.

During the past years, James’ EE partners developed an advanced LEV motor controller, that offers high efficiency/none to limited cooling(!) and significantly increased acceleration, in addition to smooth departure from standstill, which will be a great help for especially older and weaker e-bike riders.