Guardian article on Ebike and Escooter fires

E-bike and e-scooter fires have injured at least 190 people in UK, data shows

Could you post the link to the article here. Thanks

Cheap Chinese imports for sure. And if we think those figures are bad, wait until it really takes off and the public are dealing with the loss of fossil fuel vehicles and looking for something for short runs around town.

THIS Ladies and Gents is the time we need to convey to the general public and those who make the rules that cheap imports are to be avoided like a syphilitic £5 tart.

Need to point new members away from any notions they have that they can buy their steed off the web from alibaba or the like and direct them towards the likes of Whisper or Woosh.

Maybe insist also that overnight charging is incredibly dangerous and should be avoided.

Could you post the link to the article here. Thanks

The text is the link, just needs to be clicked.

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Could you post the link to the article here. Thanks

That is the link

https://www.dhses.ny.gov/specialized-bicycle-components-recalls-electric-mountain-bike-battery-packs-due-fire-and-burn#:~:text=About-,Specialized%20Bicycle%20Components%20Recalls%20Electric%20Mountain%20Bike%20Battery,to%20Fire%20and%20Burn%20Hazards&text=Hazard%3A%20Water%20can%20penetrate%20the,posing%20fire%20and%20burn%20hazards.

i also spoke to a giant dealer round here and had a lot of batts going bad. i said check the chargers as they go faulty and over charge the batts and then the bms shuts the batts down and bricks them.

Phone charger powerbank destroys launderette

https://metro.co.uk/video/man-narrowly-avoids-launderette-explosion-caused-charger-left-tumble-dryer-2911937/

I'd really like to see the details of every product that has these issues. Full make and model, where it was bought etc. I realise this could be commercially damaging and unfair to the company making the product if user error like using a 48V charger with a 36V battery but feel the safety importance is paramount.

Also it should always be put into context of how many are sold. Typically premium high cost ebikes sell in very small numbers so statistically are far less likely to appear in such incidents so we don't want a situation where people pretend a high cost premium product is better giving a false bias to the marketplace. 50 fires in 50,000 is no better or worse than 1 fire in 1,000 with regard the safety of the product but people are going to assume the first product is more dangerous as it will be reported 50x as much as the other.

The average price of a bicycle sold in the UK including ebikes was £365 in September 2020. Halfords stated ebikes were 11% of all bikes sold but that was some time ago. Probably the Carrera range of ebikes are the most common ebikes sold in the UK by a huge margin. I'm not sure if there has been any Carrera ebike fires, I don't remember seeing any.

Also age of the ebike is very important.

Also lumping e-scooters with ebikes is not helpful. When the New York fire service showed the so called ebikes that had caught fire the majority were e-scooters.

Ultimately you are left none the wiser with such news reports. I tried to look at that image to identify the ebike but its very hard. I can see its a fat bike and has a large geared hub motor on the rear. It could be one of those US brands of a Chinese import or a direct Chinese import. I can't see it being a true 250W ebike with that large rear hub motor.

That's another thing if you buy a ebike restricted to 250W then find a way of un-restricting it on the display you have to ask the question was the battery sold with the ebike good enough to be un-restricted?

I agree with Bonzo Banana, some good old fashioned empirical data would be useful.

I strongly suspect the vast majority of ebike battery fires relate to cheaper ebikes and cheaper batteries.

Of course any product can fail but I think it is the ones in the lowest price bracket that would be the most likely.

It would be good if for each fire a fact find process had to be gone through to identify the manufacturer of the bike/kit/battery.

I can see a snow ball health and safety effect gathering momentum that could really restrict how we are allowed to use our ebikes . Public transport operators could ban them being taken aboard, workplaces could refuse them being parked inside their buildings or having their batteries charged, etc etc.

I feel lucky that I got to commute on mine for over 5 years to work and back, storing my bike inside at work and being able to charge the battery.

I strongly suspect the vast majority of ebike battery fires relate to cheaper ebikes and cheaper batteries.

In fact we could go so far as to say thats probably the obvious rather than any exception.

But I suspect the chargers are probably bearing the higher percentage of the blame because we need only look at previous fires(pre-Ebike boom) where we were hearing reports of fires caused by Ecigarettes and phones, with the news reports stating that the inspectors found that the likely cause was a cheap high st bought charger.

There is some data on this site Electric vehicle fires in the UK.

The Department for Communities and Local Government will have detailed data. The Officer in Charge of a fire has to record the details on the incident recording system an example of which is Here So I suppose the information could be accessed with a freedom of information request.

There is some data on this site Electric vehicle fires in the UK.

 

The Department for Communities and Local Government will have detailed data. The Officer in Charge of a fire has to record the details on the incident recording system an example of which is Here So I suppose the information could be accessed with a freedom of information request.

Nothing about specific models but still interesting. Scooters are well over 2x as likely to catch fire than ebikes and ebikes are over 3x as likely to catch fire compared to mobility chairs but personally I would of thought making mobility chairs safer would be the number one priority as many such people would struggle to get away from their mobility vehicles in the event of a fire. Cars approaching 50% of all fires but with more Chinese brands entering the UK market this is likely to increase. BYD of China are notorious for car fires in China, they have taken out buildings when they explode into flames, probably not helped by being a hot dry country in many areas. So as we become poorer we are more likely to choose cheaper car options.