Like I said there have been two house fires this winter in our little town traced to batteries. No cars yet. They aren’t real popular here.
Scooter fires are probably the most common. There are poorly constructed ones on line that are much more prone to catching fire. These items are so cheap that they don’t carry temperature sensors and a feedback circuit to shut the charger off if it gets too hot. Cars are expensive enough that the extra cost for fire mitigation circuitry isn’t a big percentage. My EV has a lithium ion battery that is less prone to thermal runaway than previous generations (LFP) and has a heat pump that runs when the battery is too hot, even when it is off and in the garage.
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My plug-in hybrid also has this feature.
The dangerous scooter packs are becoming more scarce as the circuitry to properly monitor them becomes less expensive and more widely available. Thankfully. I’m working on a hoverboard I bought two years ago and the pack has all the bells and whistles on the control board. Charge state, thermal and cell balance monitoring- the latter being something many did not include in years past. One cell drops and the rest try to feed it, with no limit on current from them, leading to meltdown. Searching for replacement packs, I couldn’t even find one that didn’t have the more robust protections so hopefully, that has trickled down to even the most inexpensive versions by now…
Unfortunately, it’s not happening soon enough and fast enough.
In just NYC, there were 216 fires, 147 injuries, and 6 deaths in 2022 resulting from e-scooter/e-bike fires. And, so far in 2023, NYC has had 30 fires, 40 injuries, and two deaths from the same cause.
There are a lot of already fielded units out there that are still susceptible. And the risk goes up as the battery packs age. So it’s likely to get worse before it gets better unless there is some effort to purge existing units in the field. No telling who is sitting on questionable inventory either. The manufacturers not concerned with safety certification will exhaust inventory before they buy new, even if the packs are not as safe as what’s being sold today.
A scooter is like a razor? Our city lost its partnership (sponser pays all costs) for green bikes and city collects their cut but the e-scooters are doing good
I was working on Broadway right off the Interstate when the e-scooters hit Nashville and it got real crazy stupid real fast… People would rent them and when done just leave them ANYWHERE they wanted, middle of sidewalks, in front of our doors, our shop doors were only 3 cars deep being in the main road, so not much room backing out, we had to start walking out and directing pedestrians and those dang scooters from getting run over… It was bad for a while, several people were killed (not in front of our shop) down lower Broadway not paying attention and many more hurt… I delt with a lot of law enforcement and they hated the scooters cause of the problems they cause…
At the peak in 2019, Nashville had seven companies deploying just more than 4,000 scooters. But there was a backlash over crashes, unsafe riding and chaos on downtown sidewalks as they piled up at corners. Metro slashed the fleets in half, put temporary rules in place and began writing a new framework.
I come very close to throwing a few in the dumpster just to see how long it would take them (GPS trackers) to find them… lol
Soo glad I don’t have to go downtown anymore, well rarely anyway…
I’m not able to read the article, blocked by NY Times firewall. But isn’t part of the reason for the ban that Parisians think the scooters are dangerous for pedestrians when the scooters are used on the sidewalks?