E-bike battery fires pose a deadly problem

Last month, an intense (but quickly extinguished) fire erupted in a storefront on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The cause was a lithium-ion battery on an e-bike. Four people died.

A detailed report published recently in The Atlantic arrives at a scary conclusion: Lithium-ion batteries, which pack a substantial amount of power in a small package that fits neatly in an electric bike, can spontaneously explode, and the U.S. is being flooded with e-bikes and scooters. And there’s no easy fix, the story says, for this expanding problem.Safety standards for these and related products, author Caroline Mimbs Nyce points out, are pending but are currently hit-or-miss, or nonexistent. Nyce takes pains to focus her story on e-bikes, which are obviously more ubiquitous than full-size electric vehicles and currently in the news, and may lack some of the battery protection technologies built into cars and SUVs.

“For the foreseeable future,” she writes,”more e-bikes will explode, and more people may die. 'That’s the simple and horrifying truth right now,' William Wallace, the associate director for safety policy at Consumer Reports, told me. Unfortunately, when it comes to e-bikes and the like, we are stuck in a kind of battery purgatory.”

Because of its residential density, New York City is particularly susceptible to battery fires that spread quickly. “But as e-bikes and e-scooters have taken off across the country, fires have been reported in other places, too, such as Virginia, Colorado, and Washington. Abroad, the London Fire Brigade says it has responded to one e-bike or e-scooter fire every two days so far this year.”

Nyce does balance her ominous report by pointing out that disasters like the one in Manhattan aren’t that common. She reports that most batteries are well-made but that there are “very, very bad ones” from dicey suppliers, including some from Chinese vendors.

Fancy e-bike companies might choose a best-in-the-business manufacturer for their products, she writes. “But smaller or newer companies looking to make a quick buck may end up going with a sketchier manufacturer that isn’t producing batteries to industry safety standards (though the Consumer Product Safety Commission does not have mandatory requirements).”

The piece suggests that an “obvious solution” is tougher federal and city standards. They may not be that far off: The CPSC has called a meeting later this month to talk about lithium-ion-battery safety, with a focus on e-bikes, hoverboards, and e-scooters. The story notes that "a bill introduced in Congress would give the CPSC six months to create and implement such regulations. New York City, for its part, has already adopted a batch of new e-bike laws aimed at reducing risk, and late last month, the city announced that it will be adding safe e-bike chargers and storage to public-housing complexes around the city.''

The full Atlantic story is here; a subscription is needed.