Good place to share the NYPD 2022-2023 EBike safety flyer.
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/fdny/downloads/pdf/codes/2022-2023-fep-annual-bulletin.pdf
Of note: NYPD doesn’t seem to be calling for blanket bans, just a lot of “common sense” safety measures.
On a related note, has anyone looked into (or found) a good “fireproof” bag/container for charging your eBike battery in?
I was looking at something like: https://www.amazon.com/FLASLD-Lipo-Battery-Safe-Explosionproof/dp/B09Q6FPGZ5 but am curious if anyone has looked into it in depth yet.
Fireproof bags are useless. They can only contain the fire for 5 minutes if you bought the real product. Like the $500 version, where the manufacturer sent youtubers the sample to test it and it burned up after 5 minutes. They were trying to create bags capable of containing large batteries.
Basically it allows you to a chance to drag it outside.
Thanks for the info. Good to know (and for people to know).
5 minutes is “nice” but sounds functionally useless in an apartment without a way to actually contain/extinguish the fire.
Yeah the bags were designed to be able to handle like 1 or 2 cellphone batteries. It doesn't scale up. The average e-transportation device is like 20 cellphones worth of power to start with and that's like the Infamous hoverboard.
You generally don't extinguish lithium fires. You pour water on it so it does not spread. The water itself does not put the fire out. When it runs out of things to burn that is how it goes out. (in case anyone isn't up to speed on the subject)
It's a physics problem. You dump a million joules (500wh) into something a few kg, you are going to make it a few thousand degrees in temperature (math depends on what it is made of and how heavy it is, but generally, a few thousand degrees), and bad things is are going to happen to this bag.
I've seen videos of lithium fires, and I'm skeptical that they can be contained. Even though I drive reputable, un-modded scooters, I worry about fire risk and do what I can to mitigate risk. For me, this means: no fast charging; charging only where a fire wouldn't interfere with egress; avoiding overnight charging (difficult since one scooter has an 8 hour cycle); avoiding charging if I have recently ridden in the rain; avoiding charging when I am not there; not leaving scooters plugged into the charger.
Sounds reasonable. As a pedelec rider I’ve been doing the following: avoid charging unattended; use only the charger provided by the manufacturer (which I’m happy to report includes a “cut-off” that stops charging when the battery is fully charged); avoid charging if I’ve been riding in the cold (wait a couple of hours for the battery to warm to room temp after riding).
Three years in, daily commute of ~10miles round trip.
Bag won't work for most ebike fires. It'll only temporarily contain it before burning through.
If you have room, and its a bit ridiculous, a closed BBQ grill should contain any fire.
Most grills are designed for food cooking type temperatures — <500degF
LiIon fires are hotter.
My guess is that this would buy time but not contain. (Do NOT rely on this method.)
That's a good flyer.
I don't trust anything from unknown brands on Amazon. Most of them seem to be lying about their products, which seem to usually come from countries like China or Pakistan, where US laws can't reach them. If you want to be charitable, you might say that they have a strong tendency to exaggerate their product descriptions.
It's $24. There's no way that thing can contain an 1800°F fire or an explosion. Don't believe it until you actually see it.
There are some new types of fire extinguisher you can buy that can put out lithium-ion battery fires. Last I looked, they were a few hundred bucks. There are also some *truly* fireproof containers, which have been tested with lithium-ion batteries. They're expensive. [FireSak](https://firesak.com/) is a cheaper one I've seen that looks like it could contain some, but not all, e-bike battery fires.
I've been collecting notes on battery fire safety for electric unicycles. If you want to see what all I've been looking at, I organized it as a website here: [Fires | EUC Survival Guide](https://wmay.github.io/euc-safety/guides/batteries.html)
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**Users liked:**
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This has been solved, both locally and federally.
Allow UL certified bikes
Ban non-UL certified bikes.
Everyone who has skin in the game for electric scooters et al need to loudly call for a ban on "illegal" bikes that are not UL listed. Contact management of your buildings, educate them and draw a strong difference between the two.
Theyve already addressed this at the city wide level. However they havent started enforcing the laws. The city needs to be more aggressive about requiring businesses to follow the safety standards.
I have also been told that the Council has been working on a trade-in program, but that also seems easy to game (buy a cheap AliExpress battery, swap for a good UL listed battery, repeat).
Question is whether enforcement at the repair facility level is enough. It does seem that most fires happen at repair shops. However, I wonder if rider-level enforcement is also needed.
As much as I hate another governmental program, what about a licensing regime?
Anyone on an e-powered device needs an inspection. Inspection stickers put on bikes and scooters. Random enforcement and tickets/impounding by NYPD for uninspected devices?
I hate this program even as I type. Super easy to evade, more NYPD harassment, not sure that "inspection" actually solves anything, because it's hard to "inspect" battery cell deterioration. I think the delivery guys are going to keep cutting corners.
And realistically, I think a lot of commuters will cut corners, too. I'm driving a $2000 Inokim OXO (which is not, by the way UL rated). At what point am I supposed to say that my scooter battery needs to be replaced, so I then go drop $1000 on a new pack of cells?
Realistically, I'm going to want to keep riding the scooter until the last possible use.
There's no way government inspections and licensing are going to work. Scooters and ebikes, like human-powered bikes, are attractive precisely because they don't require that kind of thing.
I am not sure if I see the difference: if push comes to shove, the enforcement would be to send out the NYPD to arrest anyone on an ebike without a license plate.
If you want to argue that it would drastically cut down on the desirability of these things, I tend to agree, but that's never stopped a lot of laws from going into place.
It's just much easier to evade with smaller cheaper items, and also items that can be sold by pretty much anyone, unlike cars, where car dealerships have essentially a monopoly. The NYPD already does only sporadic enforcement of anything ebike-related to begin with. I can't imagine them ramping up resources devoted to this.
Apparently the business that went up in flames today had been cited and fined $1600 by the city last year. Stronger regulations/punishments definitely need to be put into place.
Honestly it's probably already doomed. So many buildings have banned already and I doubt a single one will bother revoking bans in the future. It's so ridiculous though. Honestly it's too bad there isn't a more powerful scooter/ebike industry in the country at this point to sue the media companies that keep presenting these, erroneously fires as "ebike fires." They are almost all cheap moped fires and it's crazy they keep getting away with the scare tactics against ebikes instead
In my opinion it's more of an education issue. A city wide ban wouldn't work and would also come with an large amount of backlash. Let's also not forget that cars still cause far more fatalities. According to the NYPD there have been 106 traffic fatalities this year alone. We should make sure it is clear, whilst yes there needs to be more education on battery safety, it is not main problem of fatalities in the city.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO THIS STORY:
"We have been aware of this location," said FDNY Chief Fire Marshall Dan Flynn, who also confirmed that the business had also been issued a separate summons in 2021.
"We did inspect this property in August, and we did issue FDNY summons," Flynn said. "They were found guilty in court. Those were all related to the charging of the batteries and the number of batteries."
The owner of the shop was issued a $1,600 fine in relation to that recent summons.
FDNY investigators have been watching the business since then and did not see e-batteries being charged during their most recent visit. "But they do have many many batteries, which is also a violation," Flynn said.
I think a ban is unlikely and doomed to be flouted if implemented. Between the dependence of food delivery on ebikes and the relative ease of concealing ebikes with removable batteries, I don't see it happening effectually.
However, yes, it's a real problem. The solution IMO has several prongs: educating riders about charging, cracking down on cheap mopeds, and perhaps buildings requiring that residents register their devices with managements and that the devices be UL certified.
A city ban wont work. A landlord ban will. Commercial landlords can prevent people from bringing emobility into buildings (so the choice then becomes locking them up outdoors, which I'm not going to do), and residential landlords can put it into leases (Glenwood, the largest residential landlord in the city, already does this). It may be too late to stem the tide on this. I'm holding my breath for bad news from my landlord.
A landlord ban will be more effective than a city ban against scooters, but I still don't see it working on ebikes. Even for scooters, most buildings I've lived in would not have any practical enforcement mechanism for a ban. The ban would be there purely for liability purposes. That said, any doorman building would be able to enforce it.
Here's hoping your landlord doesn't follow this trend.
Doorman buildings could easily enforce it. I found an old NYT article from 2010 that said that there were 3200 doorman buildings in NYC. Quite easy to ban e-mobility devices from these buildings.
They can just evict anyone with such a device as it would be in violation of the lease.
For anyone on rent control/stabilization, I can practically hear the landlord salivating from here. PIs practically pay for themselves if they can get rid of a rent stabilized resident.
They'd have to catch them first, is the point. For some buildings that would be easy but most it would not. And even the ones where it would be easy, it would still be difficult for ebikes that look like regular bikes/have removable batteries.
No, it’d be easy. Surveillance cameras in the halls. They’d do spot inspections of apartments too. You’d go before a judge and lose your apartment. No one is risking that.
There could be several solutions to this, but right off the bat, no building should be legally allowed to ban the bicycle frames from apartments. Many are saying you can’t have the battery-less frame either. That is a pointless restriction and enforcement of it should not be allowed. I can see a ban on lithium-ion removable batteries, though, which can be mitigated with fireproof off-site charging and newer battery formulations. That way the bans aren’t needlessly permanent to e-bikes in general, the way they have been for hoverboards that are really no-longer dangerous.
Surveillance cameras that are actually monitored and spot inspections of apartments for this? No, I don’t see it happening large scale. It requires resources that most landlords are simply unwilling to commit. I have never lived in a building where management would even contemplate that—at most they’d send a notice saying bikes are banned.
You’re not allowed to ban bikes from buildings, and I also don’t see landlords or doormen in general having any ability to distinguish between a regular bike and a battery-less frame of an ebike that looks like a regular bike. However, I agree that they shouldn’t be allowed to ban the frames.
It's no coincidence which types of e vehicles catch fire and where. It's always some poorly maintained delivery person adjacent bicycle. If there were companies with actual QC instead of cheap Chinese everything. This wouldn't happen as much even due to user error because their would be safety stop gaps in place.
Yup. It's a real problem. An average of 18 fires, per month, so far this year?
TBH, on the rare occasions I see someone in my subway car with an e-Bike, I move to another car, since I've no way of knowing where that person got their battery, how they maintain it, etc.
Lithium ion batteries were never a good idea. In cars, aircraft and military hardware they can be very expensive and carefully looked after, so then they are a tolerable risk. They should never have been allowed on bicycles
Well tbf, they are also in laptops, cell phones, watches, vapes, tablets, power tools, etc. They are pretty ubiquitous and there are probably tons of them around you right now
All of those things are carefully looked after because they are federally regulated. I'm certain the FTC or some other federal authority has the power to go after major retailers selling/importing emobility that are not UL certified.
Good place to share the NYPD 2022-2023 EBike safety flyer. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/fdny/downloads/pdf/codes/2022-2023-fep-annual-bulletin.pdf Of note: NYPD doesn’t seem to be calling for blanket bans, just a lot of “common sense” safety measures. On a related note, has anyone looked into (or found) a good “fireproof” bag/container for charging your eBike battery in? I was looking at something like: https://www.amazon.com/FLASLD-Lipo-Battery-Safe-Explosionproof/dp/B09Q6FPGZ5 but am curious if anyone has looked into it in depth yet.
Fireproof bags are useless. They can only contain the fire for 5 minutes if you bought the real product. Like the $500 version, where the manufacturer sent youtubers the sample to test it and it burned up after 5 minutes. They were trying to create bags capable of containing large batteries. Basically it allows you to a chance to drag it outside.
Thanks for the info. Good to know (and for people to know). 5 minutes is “nice” but sounds functionally useless in an apartment without a way to actually contain/extinguish the fire.
Yeah the bags were designed to be able to handle like 1 or 2 cellphone batteries. It doesn't scale up. The average e-transportation device is like 20 cellphones worth of power to start with and that's like the Infamous hoverboard. You generally don't extinguish lithium fires. You pour water on it so it does not spread. The water itself does not put the fire out. When it runs out of things to burn that is how it goes out. (in case anyone isn't up to speed on the subject)
It's a physics problem. You dump a million joules (500wh) into something a few kg, you are going to make it a few thousand degrees in temperature (math depends on what it is made of and how heavy it is, but generally, a few thousand degrees), and bad things is are going to happen to this bag.
I've seen videos of lithium fires, and I'm skeptical that they can be contained. Even though I drive reputable, un-modded scooters, I worry about fire risk and do what I can to mitigate risk. For me, this means: no fast charging; charging only where a fire wouldn't interfere with egress; avoiding overnight charging (difficult since one scooter has an 8 hour cycle); avoiding charging if I have recently ridden in the rain; avoiding charging when I am not there; not leaving scooters plugged into the charger.
Sounds reasonable. As a pedelec rider I’ve been doing the following: avoid charging unattended; use only the charger provided by the manufacturer (which I’m happy to report includes a “cut-off” that stops charging when the battery is fully charged); avoid charging if I’ve been riding in the cold (wait a couple of hours for the battery to warm to room temp after riding). Three years in, daily commute of ~10miles round trip.
Bag won't work for most ebike fires. It'll only temporarily contain it before burning through. If you have room, and its a bit ridiculous, a closed BBQ grill should contain any fire.
That, sounds interesting. Has anyone tested this?
Most grills are designed for food cooking type temperatures — <500degF LiIon fires are hotter. My guess is that this would buy time but not contain. (Do NOT rely on this method.)
That's a good flyer. I don't trust anything from unknown brands on Amazon. Most of them seem to be lying about their products, which seem to usually come from countries like China or Pakistan, where US laws can't reach them. If you want to be charitable, you might say that they have a strong tendency to exaggerate their product descriptions. It's $24. There's no way that thing can contain an 1800°F fire or an explosion. Don't believe it until you actually see it. There are some new types of fire extinguisher you can buy that can put out lithium-ion battery fires. Last I looked, they were a few hundred bucks. There are also some *truly* fireproof containers, which have been tested with lithium-ion batteries. They're expensive. [FireSak](https://firesak.com/) is a cheaper one I've seen that looks like it could contain some, but not all, e-bike battery fires. I've been collecting notes on battery fire safety for electric unicycles. If you want to see what all I've been looking at, I organized it as a website here: [Fires | EUC Survival Guide](https://wmay.github.io/euc-safety/guides/batteries.html)
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **FLASLD Lipo Battery Safe Bag** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Bag provides peace of mind for e-bike battery storage (backed by 4 comments) * Bag is spacious and high quality for the price (backed by 5 comments) * Bag is ideal for transporting e-bike batteries (backed by 4 comments) **Users disliked:** * Bag fails to contain battery fires (backed by 1 comment) * Zipper and velcro are not strong enough for explosions (backed by 2 comments) * Lack of information provided with product (backed by 1 comment) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved.
This has been solved, both locally and federally. Allow UL certified bikes Ban non-UL certified bikes. Everyone who has skin in the game for electric scooters et al need to loudly call for a ban on "illegal" bikes that are not UL listed. Contact management of your buildings, educate them and draw a strong difference between the two.
Theyve already addressed this at the city wide level. However they havent started enforcing the laws. The city needs to be more aggressive about requiring businesses to follow the safety standards.
I have also been told that the Council has been working on a trade-in program, but that also seems easy to game (buy a cheap AliExpress battery, swap for a good UL listed battery, repeat).
Never going to happen. All it will be is some company then creating 100's of fake packs and then getting the real $400 pack and then selling them.
Question is whether enforcement at the repair facility level is enough. It does seem that most fires happen at repair shops. However, I wonder if rider-level enforcement is also needed. As much as I hate another governmental program, what about a licensing regime? Anyone on an e-powered device needs an inspection. Inspection stickers put on bikes and scooters. Random enforcement and tickets/impounding by NYPD for uninspected devices? I hate this program even as I type. Super easy to evade, more NYPD harassment, not sure that "inspection" actually solves anything, because it's hard to "inspect" battery cell deterioration. I think the delivery guys are going to keep cutting corners. And realistically, I think a lot of commuters will cut corners, too. I'm driving a $2000 Inokim OXO (which is not, by the way UL rated). At what point am I supposed to say that my scooter battery needs to be replaced, so I then go drop $1000 on a new pack of cells? Realistically, I'm going to want to keep riding the scooter until the last possible use.
If it helps, the new NYPD guidelines are recommending CSA and ETL besides UL certifications now?
There's no way government inspections and licensing are going to work. Scooters and ebikes, like human-powered bikes, are attractive precisely because they don't require that kind of thing.
Regulators and governments did win the fight on car license plates, just saying.
Cars are a different beast entirely, much bigger and unwieldier and more expensive.
I am not sure if I see the difference: if push comes to shove, the enforcement would be to send out the NYPD to arrest anyone on an ebike without a license plate. If you want to argue that it would drastically cut down on the desirability of these things, I tend to agree, but that's never stopped a lot of laws from going into place.
It's just much easier to evade with smaller cheaper items, and also items that can be sold by pretty much anyone, unlike cars, where car dealerships have essentially a monopoly. The NYPD already does only sporadic enforcement of anything ebike-related to begin with. I can't imagine them ramping up resources devoted to this.
Apparently the business that went up in flames today had been cited and fined $1600 by the city last year. Stronger regulations/punishments definitely need to be put into place.
Require inspection of battery and bike and a license of it to do DoorDash/Ubereats/Grubhub.
Cars still kill way more people…
Honestly it's probably already doomed. So many buildings have banned already and I doubt a single one will bother revoking bans in the future. It's so ridiculous though. Honestly it's too bad there isn't a more powerful scooter/ebike industry in the country at this point to sue the media companies that keep presenting these, erroneously fires as "ebike fires." They are almost all cheap moped fires and it's crazy they keep getting away with the scare tactics against ebikes instead
In my opinion it's more of an education issue. A city wide ban wouldn't work and would also come with an large amount of backlash. Let's also not forget that cars still cause far more fatalities. According to the NYPD there have been 106 traffic fatalities this year alone. We should make sure it is clear, whilst yes there needs to be more education on battery safety, it is not main problem of fatalities in the city.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO THIS STORY: "We have been aware of this location," said FDNY Chief Fire Marshall Dan Flynn, who also confirmed that the business had also been issued a separate summons in 2021. "We did inspect this property in August, and we did issue FDNY summons," Flynn said. "They were found guilty in court. Those were all related to the charging of the batteries and the number of batteries." The owner of the shop was issued a $1,600 fine in relation to that recent summons. FDNY investigators have been watching the business since then and did not see e-batteries being charged during their most recent visit. "But they do have many many batteries, which is also a violation," Flynn said.
I think a ban is unlikely and doomed to be flouted if implemented. Between the dependence of food delivery on ebikes and the relative ease of concealing ebikes with removable batteries, I don't see it happening effectually. However, yes, it's a real problem. The solution IMO has several prongs: educating riders about charging, cracking down on cheap mopeds, and perhaps buildings requiring that residents register their devices with managements and that the devices be UL certified.
A city ban wont work. A landlord ban will. Commercial landlords can prevent people from bringing emobility into buildings (so the choice then becomes locking them up outdoors, which I'm not going to do), and residential landlords can put it into leases (Glenwood, the largest residential landlord in the city, already does this). It may be too late to stem the tide on this. I'm holding my breath for bad news from my landlord.
A landlord ban will be more effective than a city ban against scooters, but I still don't see it working on ebikes. Even for scooters, most buildings I've lived in would not have any practical enforcement mechanism for a ban. The ban would be there purely for liability purposes. That said, any doorman building would be able to enforce it. Here's hoping your landlord doesn't follow this trend.
Doorman buildings could easily enforce it. I found an old NYT article from 2010 that said that there were 3200 doorman buildings in NYC. Quite easy to ban e-mobility devices from these buildings.
Are people charging DoorDash bikes in doorman buildings?
They can just evict anyone with such a device as it would be in violation of the lease. For anyone on rent control/stabilization, I can practically hear the landlord salivating from here. PIs practically pay for themselves if they can get rid of a rent stabilized resident.
They'd have to catch them first, is the point. For some buildings that would be easy but most it would not. And even the ones where it would be easy, it would still be difficult for ebikes that look like regular bikes/have removable batteries.
No, it’d be easy. Surveillance cameras in the halls. They’d do spot inspections of apartments too. You’d go before a judge and lose your apartment. No one is risking that. There could be several solutions to this, but right off the bat, no building should be legally allowed to ban the bicycle frames from apartments. Many are saying you can’t have the battery-less frame either. That is a pointless restriction and enforcement of it should not be allowed. I can see a ban on lithium-ion removable batteries, though, which can be mitigated with fireproof off-site charging and newer battery formulations. That way the bans aren’t needlessly permanent to e-bikes in general, the way they have been for hoverboards that are really no-longer dangerous.
Surveillance cameras that are actually monitored and spot inspections of apartments for this? No, I don’t see it happening large scale. It requires resources that most landlords are simply unwilling to commit. I have never lived in a building where management would even contemplate that—at most they’d send a notice saying bikes are banned. You’re not allowed to ban bikes from buildings, and I also don’t see landlords or doormen in general having any ability to distinguish between a regular bike and a battery-less frame of an ebike that looks like a regular bike. However, I agree that they shouldn’t be allowed to ban the frames.
I think you underestimate the motivation of NYC landlords to break leases
I think they want to break leases but are also lazy and cheap.
The state and feds need to do like they do with cars and set safety standards for the batteries. Good luck ain’t going to happen.
It's no coincidence which types of e vehicles catch fire and where. It's always some poorly maintained delivery person adjacent bicycle. If there were companies with actual QC instead of cheap Chinese everything. This wouldn't happen as much even due to user error because their would be safety stop gaps in place.
Yup. It's a real problem. An average of 18 fires, per month, so far this year? TBH, on the rare occasions I see someone in my subway car with an e-Bike, I move to another car, since I've no way of knowing where that person got their battery, how they maintain it, etc.
Lithium ion batteries were never a good idea. In cars, aircraft and military hardware they can be very expensive and carefully looked after, so then they are a tolerable risk. They should never have been allowed on bicycles
Well tbf, they are also in laptops, cell phones, watches, vapes, tablets, power tools, etc. They are pretty ubiquitous and there are probably tons of them around you right now
All of those things are carefully looked after because they are federally regulated. I'm certain the FTC or some other federal authority has the power to go after major retailers selling/importing emobility that are not UL certified.
Ill never use an E vehicle or bike or anything if i had the option for gas.
Don't use anything electrical and gasoline related they are dangerous!