A recent story by Axios reports that some building owners in New York City are clamping down on the storage of electric bicycles and scooters.
Why it matters: E-bikes are surging in popularity. Still, the benefits they bring — lower emissions, easy transportation — are threatened by the growing toll of injuries and deaths from battery-related fires.
E-bike advocates link the problems to poorly made, refurbished, or improperly charged batteries.
- New York has seen “an exponential increase” in battery fires this year, Daniel Flynn, chief fire marshal at the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), said at a recent news conference.
Driving the news: A terrifying fire in an apartment building on Manhattan’s East 52nd Street this past November sent 43 people to the hospital and forced firefighters to rescue a woman dangling from a 20th-floor window. The cause: An e-bike a resident left charging by their front door overnight.
- In response, at least one large NYC landlord — told tenants to permanently remove any e-bikes.
- “Our leases are also being amended to state that residents and/or their guests are prohibited from having an e-bike in their apartment,” The Landlord’s notice to tenants said. “Additionally, we will not store or maintain them anywhere else on the premises.”
- Other cities have their own rules — in London, for instance, they’re barred from buses, subways, and the Palace of Westminster, where Parliament meets.
By the numbers: New York City saw 200 lithium-ion battery fires and six related deaths in 2022, the FDNY said. (There have been 76 overall fire-related deaths across the five boroughs in 2022, per the New York Post.)
What to know: Keeping an e-bike in your home is “somewhat safe,” says Brian O’Connor, a fire protection engineer at the National Fire Protection Association.
- “There’s a pretty low probability of these e-bikes catching on fire if you treat them correctly, if you follow the manufacturer’s instructions, you use the correct batteries, you store them at the right temperature, you don’t lean them up against a heater,” O’Connor says.
Yes, but: “A damaged battery should definitely not go in an apartment building, because when they fail, they fail pretty violently,” he added.
More tips: People should only use industry-certified batteries in their e-bikes, said Ash Lovell, electric bike policy and campaign director at PeopleForBikes in Denver.
- Most fires are linked to batteries that don’t meet safety standards, Lovell tells Axios. And many consumers don’t distinguish between e-bikes and e-scooters and e-mopeds, which can be more likely to have dodgy batteries, she said.
- “I would hate for products that are perfectly safe to be lumped in with products that are problematic.”