NEW YORK — The explosion early on a June morning ignited a blaze that engulfed a New York Metropolis store stuffed with motorized bicycles and their unstable lithium-ion batteries. Billowing smoke rapidly killed 4 folks asleep in flats above the burning retailer.
Because the ubiquity of e-bikes has grown, so has the frequency of fires and deaths blamed on the batteries that energy them — sparking a push to higher regulate how the batteries are manufactured, bought, reconditioned, charged and saved.
Client advocates and fireplace departments, significantly in New York Metropolis, are urging the U.S. Client Product Security Fee to determine nationwide security requirements and confiscate imports that do not adjust to rules on the border, so unsafe e-bikes and poorly manufactured batteries could be taken off the streets and out of properties.
The matter comes beneath dialogue when the fee convenes a public listening to Thursday in Washington.
“We’ve been sounding the alarm for months,” New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams stated a day after an exploding battery ignited the Chinatown e-bike store fireplace final month. “We’d like actual motion, not solely on the state stage, however on the federal stage.”
With some 65,000 e-bikes zipping by its streets — greater than some other place within the U.S. — New York Metropolis is the epicenter of battery-related fires. There have been 100 such blazes to this point this 12 months, leading to 13 deaths, already greater than double the six fatalities final 12 months.
Nationally, there have been greater than 200 battery-related fires reported to the fee — an apparent undercount — from 39 states over the previous two years, together with 19 deaths blamed on so-called micromobility units that embody battery-powered scooters, bicycles and hoverboards.
New York’s two U.S. Senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, launched laws final month that will set necessary security requirements for e-bikes and the batteries that energy them.
As a result of necessary requirements do not exist, Schumer stated, poorly made batteries have flooded the U.S., growing the danger of fires.
Earlier this 12 months, New York Metropolis urgently enacted a sweeping package deal of native legal guidelines supposed to crack down on faulty batteries, together with a ban on the sale or rental of e-bikes and batteries that aren’t licensed as assembly security requirements by an unbiased product testing lab.
The brand new guidelines additionally outlaw tampering with batteries or promoting refurbished batteries made with lithium-ion cells scavenged from used models.
In the meantime, New York Metropolis officers additionally introduced they’d obtained a $25 million federal grant for e-bike charging stations throughout the town — which fireplace marshals hope will cut back the danger of fires.
These aren’t typical fires, stated New York Metropolis Fireplace Commissioner Laura Kavanagh. The batteries don’t smolder; they explode.
“Once they fail, they fail fairly spectacularly,” stated Kavanagh, who will converse at Thursday’s discussion board and advocate for nationwide security requirements and stronger measures towards presumably harmful units. “As soon as one among these ignites, there’s a large quantity of fireplace, typically a lot in order that the individual of their house 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 hearth in Queens.
Due to the fireplace hazard, some residential buildings have banned e-bikes. Final summer time, the New York Metropolis Housing Authority sought to ban tenants in all of its 335 developments from protecting or charging e-vehicles of their models, solely to again down just a few months later after protests from supply staff.
Use of motorized bicycles grew dramatically within the metropolis through the COVID-19 pandemic as homebound folks turned extra to meals supply staff for meals and groceries.
With the rash of fires, supply staff like Lizandro Lopez say they’re now extra conscious about precautions.
“As quickly because the battery is charged, I disconnect it. You shouldn’t go away it charging for too lengthy,” Lopez instructed The Related Press in Spanish, “as a result of for those who go away it on there too lengthy, that’s when you may trigger a hearth.”
Los Deliveristas Unidos, which represents app-based supply staff within the New York space, estimates that fewer than 10% of e-bikes bought within the metropolis have been deemed protected by a third-party evaluator, similar to UL Options, a product testing firm that certifies security compliance for a bunch {of electrical} merchandise, together with Christmas lights and televisions.
E-bike batteries depend on the identical chemistry to generate energy because the lithium-ion batteries in cellphones, laptops and most electrical automobiles — merchandise that had been initially liable to overheating.
Tighter rules, security requirements and compliance testing drastically decreased the danger of fires in such units, based on Robert Slone, the senior vice chairman and chief scientist for UL Options.
The identical can occur with e-bike batteries, he stated, if they’re made to adjust to established security requirements.
“We simply must make them protected, and there’s a solution to make them protected by testing and certification,” Slone stated, “given the historical past that we’ve seen when it comes to fires and accidents and sadly, deaths as nicely — not simply in New York, however throughout the nation and world wide.”
In London, the fireplace brigade says lithium batteries are the town’s quickest rising fireplace threat, with one fireplace erupting about each two days. Final 12 months, there have been a complete of 116 fires involving e-bikes and e-scooters. At the least one dying has been attributed this 12 months to an overheated battery.
In San Francisco, there have been a minimum of 21 battery fires to this point this 12 months — in contrast with simply 13 battery-related fires in 2017, based on an evaluation by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Final 12 months, some 1.1 million e-bikes had been imported into the U.S., based on the Mild Electrical Automobile Affiliation, an business group. In 2021, greater than 880,000 e-bikes got here into the nation — about double from the 12 months earlier than and triple the quantity in 2019.
Lots of the batteries now on the street are aftermarket merchandise which are cheaply made and widespread with supply staff due to their decrease costs.
“However that product is so low-cost as a result of it hasn’t gone by these design and testing. … It doesn’t meet a normal, in order that’s why they’re cheap,” stated Matt Moore, the overall and coverage council for the PeopleForBikes Coalition, which will even participate within the discussion board. “Even when there was a regulation, there’ll nonetheless be the power of international sellers and producers to ship these merchandise into the USA.”
___
Related Press video journalist Ted Shaffrey and video producer Vanessa A. Alvarez contributed to this report.
.jpg "Steve Bannon Is Out of Prison and Spreading Lies Online")
