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Buildings are banning e-bikes amid deadly battery fires

  • Some building owners, mainly in New York City, are clamping down on electric bicycles after a recent spate of damaging and deadly battery fires.To get more news about ebike for sale, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.

    Why it matters: E-bikes are surging in popularity, but the benefits they bring — lower emissions, easy transportation — are threatened by the growing toll of injuries and deaths from blazes sparked by their lithium-ion batteries.

    E-bike advocates link the problems to batteries that are poorly made, refurbished or improperly charged.
    New York has seen "an exponential increase" in battery fires this year, Daniel Flynn, chief fire marshal at the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), said at a recent news conference.
    Driving the news: A terrifying fire in an apartment building on Manhattan's East 52nd Street this month sent 43 people to the hospital and forced firefighters to rescue a woman dangling from a 20th-floor window. The cause: An e-bike residents left charging by their front door overnight.

    In response, at least one large NYC landlord — Glenwood Management, which runs 26 luxury high-rises — told tenants to permanently remove any e-bikes.
    "Our leases are also being amended to state that residents and/or their guests are prohibited from having an e-bike in their apartment," Glenwood's notice to tenants said. "Additionally, we will not store or maintain them anywhere else on the premises."
    E-bikes and e-scooters are already banned from FDNY buildings. Other cities have their own rules — in London, for instance, they're barred from buses, subways and the Palace of Westminster, where Parliament meets.
    By the numbers: New York City has seen 200 lithium-ion battery fires and six related deaths so far in 2022, the FDNY said. (There have been 76 overall fire-related deaths across the five boroughs so far this year, per the New York Post.)

    E-bike fires have caused "more deaths and injuries already this year than in the past three years combined," Flynn said at the news conference, per the Associated Press.
    Backstory: The New York Public Housing Authority pledged to ban e-bikes over the summer. However, it reversed itself after an outcry over the city's army of 65,000 app delivery workers, or "deliveristas," many of whom depend on e-bikes to do their jobs.

    Those workers tend to charge their vehicles in their apartments, keeping them safe and dry. But they often buy knockoff e-bikes with lousy batteries because it's what they can afford.
    What we're watching: On Monday, the New York City Council will consider several bills to regulate e-bikes, including one that would ban the sale of used batteries.

    The big picture: While other cities haven't agonized over e-bike battery fires quite the same way as New York City has, the breakneck growth of micromobility means the issue is bound to spread.
      November 20, 2022 6:27 PM MST
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