Federal officials are looking into cracking down on defective lithium-ion batteries that power hoverboards, scooters and motorized bicycles because of a rash of deadly fires caused by exploding batteries. The effort comes as New York City implements new laws meant to reduce the number of fires, injuries and deaths in a city where ebikes have become ubiquitous. — AP
NEW YORK: The explosion early on a June morning ignited a blaze that engulfed a New York City shop filled with motorised bicycles and their volatile lithium-ion batteries. Billowing smoke quickly killed four people asleep in apartments above the burning store.
As the ubiquity of ebikes has grown, so has the frequency of fires and deaths blamed on the batteries that power them – prompting a campaign to establish regulations on how the batteries are manufactured, sold, reconditioned, charged and stored.
Consumer advocates and fire departments, particularly in New York City, are urging the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to establish mandatory safety standards and confiscate noncompliant imports when they arrive at the border or shipping ports, so unsafe ebikes and poorly manufactured batteries don't reach streets and endanger homes.
These aren’t typical fires, said New York City Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh. The batteries don’t smoulder; they explode.
"The number of fire incidents has rapidly increased. Other cities across the country have begun seeing these issues as well, and municipalities that are not yet experiencing this phenomenon may be facing similar incidents in the future," Kavanagh told the commission Thursday at a forum focused on ebikes and lithium-ion batteries.
"We have reached a point of crisis in New York City, with ion batteries now a top cause of fatal fires in New York,” she told commissioners.
With some 65,000 ebikes zipping through its streets – more than any other place in the US – New York City is the epicentre of battery-related fires. There have been 100 such blazes so far this year, resulting in 13 deaths, already more than double the six fatalities last year.
Nationally, there were more than 200 battery-related fires reported to the commission – an obvious undercount – from 39 states over the past two years, including 19 deaths blamed on so-called micromobility devices that include battery-powered scooters, bicycles and hoverboards.
New York’s two US senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, introduced legislation last month that would set mandatory safety standards for ebikes and the batteries that power them.
Because mandatory standards don't exist, Schumer said, poorly made batteries have flooded the US, increasing the risk of fires.
In many cases, authorities have been challenged to track the source of batteries from overseas sources, many of them bought online or from aftermarket dealers.
Earlier this year, New York City urgently enacted a sweeping package of local laws intended to crack down on defective batteries, including a ban on the sale or rental of ebikes and batteries that aren’t certified as meeting safety standards by an independent product testing lab.
The new rules also outlaw tampering with batteries or selling refurbished batteries made with lithium-ion cells scavenged from used units.
Meanwhile, New York City officials also announced they had received a US$25mil (RM113.9mil) in federal grant for ebike charging stations across the city, which fire marshalls hope will reduce the risk of fires.
"When they fail, they fail quite spectacularly,” Kavanagh said in interview last week. "Once one of these ignites, there is a huge volume of fire, often so much so that the person in their home can’t get out and the firefighters can’t get in to get them."
Such was the case in April when two siblings, a 7-year-old boy and his 19-year-old sister, died when a scooter battery ignited a fire in Queens.
Because of the fire hazard, some residential buildings have banned ebikes. Last summer, the New York City Housing Authority sought to prohibit tenants in all of its 335 developments from keeping or charging evehicles in their units, only to back down a few months later after protests from delivery workers.
Use of motorised bicycles grew dramatically in the city during the Covid-19 pandemic as homebound people turned more to food delivery workers for meals and groceries.
With the rash of fires, delivery workers like Lizandro Lopez say they are now more mindful about precautions.
"As soon as the battery is charged, I disconnect it. You shouldn’t leave it charging for too long,” Lopez said in Spanish, "because if you leave it on there too long, that’s when you can cause a fire.”
Los Deliveristas Unidos, which represents app-based delivery workers in the New York area, estimates that fewer than 10% of ebikes sold in the city have been deemed safe by a third-party evaluator, such as UL Solutions, a product testing company that certifies safety compliance for a host of electrical products, including Christmas lights and televisions.
ebike batteries rely on the same chemistry to generate power as the lithium-ion batteries in cellphones, laptops and most electric vehicles – products that were initially prone to overheating.
Tighter regulations, safety standards and compliance testing drastically reduced the risk of fires in such devices, according to Robert Slone, the senior vice president and chief scientist for UL Solutions.
The same can happen with ebike batteries, he said, if they are made to comply with established safety standards. One feature most of these batteries lack is the ability to automatically shut off while charging to prevent overheating.
"We just need to make them safe, and there is a way to make them safe through testing and certification," Slone said, "given the history that we’ve seen in terms of fires and injuries and unfortunately, deaths as well – not just in New York, but across the country and around the world.”
In London, the fire brigade says lithium batteries are the city’s fastest growing fire risk, with one fire erupting about every two days. Last year, there were a total of 116 fires involving ebikes and escooters. At least one death has been attributed this year to an overheated battery.
In San Francisco, there have been at least 21 battery fires so far this year – compared with just 13 battery-related fires in 2017, according to an analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Last year, some 1.1 million ebikes were imported into the US, according to the Light Electric Vehicle Association, an industry group. In 2021, more than 880,000 ebikes came into the country – about double from the year before and triple the number in 2019.
Many of the batteries now on the road are aftermarket products that are cheaply made and popular with delivery workers because of their lower prices.
"But that product is so cheap because it hasn’t gone through those design and testing.... It doesn’t meet a standard, so that’s why they’re inexpensive," said Matt Moore, the general and policy council for the PeopleForBikes Coalition, which will also take part in the forum. "Even if there was a regulation, there will still be the ability of foreign sellers and manufacturers to send these products into the United States.” – AP
