A rising number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries has spurred New York City’s public housing authority to propose entirely banning e-bikes from their buildings. But the causes are not so simple, the solutions fiendishly complex, and the repercussions potentially devastating to thousands of hard-pressed delivery workers.
New York City firefighters have responded to 26 battery-based fires in public housing since 2021, according to reporting from The City. That includes fires in early August that killed a 5-year-old girl and 36-year-old woman in Harlem, and a death and injury in The Bronx. And battery-based fires are rising elsewhere in the city resulting in 73 injuries and five deaths, according to Canary Media, with 130 investigations so far this year. It’s a sharp upturn from 104 battery fire calls the year before, 44 in 2020, and 30 in 2019.
“e-bike bans are racist” headline in 5… 4… 3…
‘Public Housing’
So we can assume these were all stolen bikes.
This bike craze along with the tattoo epidemic will be a source of much regret. Already is for many.
The primary supplier of lithium batteries is……China. I’m sure the quality of the battery is not at issue.
Disclaimer: That was sarcasm.
Orson
If you ever visit China, you may realize how stupid your post is. Chinese can and do make excellent quality products for home consumers. They ship garbage, and importers want garbage, as they follow the walmart economy model, hi volume, low quality , so you keep coming back to replace the junk that wore out! And they use lots of ‘electric’ scooters over there, with very little problems!
If you ever visit China, you may realize how stupid your post is
I have visited China. It’s a sh*thole pretending to be a first-world nation and the factories are corrupt as hell. That’s how melamine ends up in baby formula and antifreeze ends up in toothpaste. The products for domestic consumption are no different from the products they export, you just don’t hear about the resulting accidents and deaths.
E-bominations Is what they are, a cheap chineese bike with a cheap chineese powertrain sold for $1000 or more!
But I guess it’s cheaper than a good bike (which tend to get stolen) and the cost of food to power it (calories are units of energy, after all).
After the fax machine and internet pretty much put an end to the Document type bicycle Courrier, it looks like they are coming back, delivering door dash, etc. Everyone remembers those crazy bicycle couriers, dodging in and out of traffic, but at least they were peddling theirs!
They would take high end bikes and make them look low end to discourage thieves, or bring their bikes with them in the elevators, etc..
What was old, is new again!
After reading the improvements are likely coming link I came across battery development company SES. Ten years ago I’d have likely taken a really hard look at it with respect to investment – very interesting to say the least.
However – My optimism in Lithium, Cobalt and other minerals much less the stock market has been kind of drained in that short span of time.
Wow, it’s almost as if ditching the past century-and-change of design and practice in dealing with highly concentrated energy in liquid form was a mistake.
Everybody somehow ‘gets’ that the electric motor is doing just as much work as the internal combustion engine, but they just don’t grok that that means the battery has just as much energy as the gas tank did. I suspect that not even the battery designers quite get it.
Not a surprise: nowadays math is hard, economics is black magick, and physics is beyond comprehension.
Nothing is impossible to those with zero understanding of the problem(s) involved…
Wonder when the insurance companies will raise rates to deal with the increased incidents of electric battery fires?
26 fires / 26 million people is 0.0001% per capita. now compare and contrast to deaths by big pharmaceutical.
Civilization burns.
Fire iLand
Life Follows Art dept.
Far side of the world :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E794rTPa4nA