Safety
Lithium-ion batteries are made safe. ZenQuo batteries are safe.
That is not wordplay. It is the difference between a risk that has been engineered around and a risk that is not present.
The distinction that matters
Where the safety comes from
A lithium-ion system is safe because of what surrounds the cells: thermal management, battery management electronics, fire-rated enclosures, mandated separation distances, and installation standards. Remove any of those and the risk returns, because the flammable solvent is still in the cell.
ZenQuo's electrolyte is around 99% water. There is no flammable solvent, so there is no thermal runaway pathway to manage. The safety is a property of the chemistry, not a system built around it.
Lithium-ion
Cooling · battery management · fire-rated enclosure · separation distances · installation standards
Safe because of all of that.
ZenQuo
An electrolyte that is around 99% water. No flammable solvent.
Safe because there is nothing there to burn.
The Australian context
A risk that is real, rising, and now under coronial scrutiny
Lithium-ion battery fires in NSW
Incidents recorded by Fire and Rescue NSW - roughly five to six every week in one state alone. People are four times more likely to be injured in a fire originating from a lithium-ion battery than in other fire types. NSW recorded its first lithium-ion battery fire fatalities in 2024, and the NSW Coroners Court opened an inquest in November of that year.
Show the numbers
| Year | Incidents |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 165 |
| 2023 | 272 |
| 2024 | approx. 320 |
| 2025 | 332 |
Fire and Rescue NSW. The 2024 figure is approximate. A single series, so no legend is needed - the title names what is plotted.
4×
More likely to be injured
In a fire originating from a lithium-ion battery, than in other fire types. Fire and Rescue NSW.
5–6
Lithium-ion battery fires a week
In New South Wales alone, at 2025 rates.
The obvious objection
Why not LFP?
Lithium iron phosphate is a genuine improvement on earlier lithium chemistries. It is more thermally stable than NMC, it is cheap, and it dominates the Australian home battery market. It is the right comparison to make, and we should make it directly.
LFP still uses a flammable organic electrolyte, and it can still enter thermal runaway - the threshold is higher, not absent. It depends on an offshore supply chain for lithium extraction and processing. It is materially harder to recycle than an aqueous zinc cell. And its greatest advantage, energy density, is the variable that matters least for a unit bolted to the side of a house.
ZenQuo's materials are abundant, domestically available, non-toxic, and recyclable - and the cell cannot burn.
The trade-off
We are worse at the thing that doesn't matter here
ZenQuo cells are projected at 60–70 Wh/kg. Lithium-ion sits several times higher. For a phone or a car, that difference decides everything.
For stationary storage it decides very little. A home battery does not move. Floor space in a garage, on a wall, or in a plant room is not the scarce resource - capital cost, cycle life and safety are.
We have optimised for the application, not for the spec sheet.
60–70
Wh/kg projected
Projected energy density.
0
Metres a home battery moves
Which is why energy density is the wrong thing to optimise for.
End of life
Recyclable, and genuinely circular
ZenQuo cells are built from non-toxic components and are fully recyclable. The additive molecules are chemically benign. Zinc and manganese are abundant, domestically mined, and already have established recovery routes.
There is no end-of-life problem here to hand to the next generation.
If you assess battery safety for a living, we would rather you interrogated this than took it on trust.