They can short out without being on charge. There are growth shorts from stable voltage too. They grow little stalactites, that once long enough connect cathode to anode. Once O2 gets involved, it gets ugly from there.

I was head of R+D at a military diver propulsion company (farallon) when about the only devices using lithium batteries were orbital satellites.A french company (saft) provided us with some, at the time, edgy Li batteries. We burned, exploded, and destroyed tons of stuff with them. Good times lol.

FWIW I would definitely use the recommended charger to not exceed max voltage while charging. FWIW we also have alternators with our Lithiums but both are adjustable voltage units and we have them both set up to only provide a max of 16.5 volts going down track. So far not as issue with their set up we use House of Payne alternators fwiw.