E-bikes are exploding in popularity in the transition to sustainable energy but some are also actually exploding. At the heart of the issue are substandard or sometimes damaged lithium-ion batteries. The blazes are costing lives and could end up pulling the plug on EV adoption.
Lithium-ion battery fires are unique. Instead of a slow smoldering ignition point that grows over a matter of minutes, these fires often result in an actual explosion of sorts. Battery fires can get completely out of control in well under 60 seconds as numerous examples have demonstrated.
This year alone, the city of New York has reported 13 deaths as a result of battery fires. That’s already over twice the fatalities (six) reported in all of 2022.
In a very notable example, an e-bike store was the site where a fire erupted and ultimately killed four people in apartments above the store. In that case, the store owner violated multiple rules surrounding the number of devices at the location and the way they were charged.
Read: E-Bike Battery Explodes On Video While Charging At Home
“You go from no fire at all to a fully involved fire within seconds,” said Daniel Flynn, chief fire marshal at the Fire Department of New York to Automotive News. “This isn’t something that we’ve really seen for accidental fires in the past. These behave almost like an incendiary fire, like arson, like a gas pour, with the speed that they travel.”
Officials say that the real issue at hand is a lack of regulation. Subpar manufacturing standards create batteries that are more volatile, less robust, and thus prone to thermal runaway that leads to fires. “We just need to make them safe, and there is a way to make them safe through testing and certification,” says Robert Slone, the senior vice president and chief scientist for UL Solutions.
UL Solutions is one company that tests and certifies batteries to ensure that they’re safe and reliable. Experts suggest never leaving a battery on a charger once it’s full and following all instructions from the manufacturer.
Ultimately, progress on the issue of lithium-ion batteries will be made so long as the bad press doesn’t cause the public to abandon the technology prematurely. As one expert pointed out, gas cars catch fire far more often than electric vehicles and that’s with decades of work to make them safer. With respect to electric cars, bikes, and more we’re still in the early stages of safety regulation.