We used a Lithium D cell in a prototype wireless product at a startup I worked at in 1989. The cells were pre-production samples. I forget the name of the company that was producing them now (I think it was a Japanese company - there were no logos on these batteries), but we were warned not to let them short out as they would go off like a 1/4 stick of dynamite. We were pretty careful with them, but we did have a unit come back from the field that had pretty much burned up, nothing but a charred circuit board left and most of the plastic enclosure melted away.
Were these disposable lithium metal batteries or rechargeable lithium ion? They’re pretty different technologies. Both are prone to rapid discharge overheating problems though.
We needed long battery life - 3 years for a small 8051-based board with a data radio (kind of like wifi in 1989) that turned on every second or so. We created a power control ASIC that kept the 8051 off most of the time - it would wake up when data was available for processing. This was a proof of concept project for the military not a consumer item.
