Through another test, the team demonstrated that fire cannot occur within the new enclosure. Its design eliminates oxygen, making the containment unit self-inerting. Inerting is a step above fire detection and extinguishing as it prevents a fire from ever occurring.
It makes me wonder what these people are thinking. All the ingredients for "fire", i.e. rapid oxidation with release of heat, are present *inside* the cell. You could put a LiCo cell in a vacuum chamber and it would still catch fire with smoke and flames, much like a Saturn V booster still works outside the Earth's atmosphere.
The cathode material of their batteries is lithium cobalt
oxide, which gives off oxygen when decomposed by heat which then merrily reacts (burns) with the organic solvents, carbon, etc. which the rest of the battery is made from.