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NYC Wants Unsafe Lithium-Ion E-Bike Batteries To Be Stopped At the Border (fortune.com) 74

Following a rash of deadly fires, consumer advocates and fire departments, particularly in New York City, want the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to confiscate lithium-ion electric bikes that don't comply with regulations at the border. The ultimate goal is for unsafe e-bikes and poorly manufactured batteries to be taken off the streets and out of homes. The Associated Press reports: "We've been sounding the alarm for months," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said a day after an exploding battery ignited the Chinatown e-bike shop fire last month. "We need real action, not only on the state level, but on the federal level." With some 65,000 e-bikes zipping through its streets -- more than any other place in the U.S. -- New York City is the epicenter of battery-related fires. There have been 100 such blazes so far this year, resulting in 13 deaths, already more than double the six fatalities last year. Nationally, there were more than 200 battery-related fires reported to the commission -- an obvious undercount -- from 39 states over the past two years, including 19 deaths blamed on so-called micromobility devices that include battery-powered scooters, bicycles and hoverboards.

New York's two U.S. Senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, introduced legislation last month that would set mandatory safety standards for e-bikes and the batteries that power them. Because mandatory standards don't exist, Schumer said, poorly made batteries have flooded the U.S., increasing the risk of fires. Earlier this year, New York City urgently enacted a sweeping package of local laws intended to crack down on defective batteries, including a ban on the sale or rental of e-bikes and batteries that aren't certified as meeting safety standards by an independent product testing lab. The new rules also outlaw tampering with batteries or selling refurbished batteries made with lithium-ion cells scavenged from used units. [...]

Tighter regulations, safety standards and compliance testing drastically reduced the risk of fires in such devices, according to Robert Slone, the senior vice president and chief scientist for UL Solutions. The same can happen with e-bike batteries, he said, if they are made to comply with established safety standards. "We just need to make them safe, and there is a way to make them safe through testing and certification," Slone said, "given the history that we've seen in terms of fires and injuries and unfortunately, deaths as well -- not just in New York, but across the country and around the world."

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NYC Wants Unsafe Lithium-Ion E-Bike Batteries To Be Stopped At the Border

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  • Also like how they apparently have some magic tech that can evaluate the batteries. Because nobody else has that or can do that without massive effort.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Yes, and the highest quality battery can be caused to fail catastrophically when used with a bad charger or stored improperly.

      Also, I chuckled at "stopped at the border", as though domestic batteries don't exist or couldn't be a problem. Add xenophobia or outright racism to the stupidity.

      If New York City is the "epicenter", NYC should solve the NYC problem. This isn't a problem for the country. Also, it would seem that proper storage is far more likely to be effective than focusing solely on the batterie

      • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @07:17PM (#63719922) Homepage Journal

        Yes, and the highest quality battery can be caused to fail catastrophically when used with a bad charger or stored improperly.

        Of course they *can*, but they're not *supposed* to. Ebike battery packs are *supposed* to have a battery management circuit which prevents cells from overcharging and overheating. Indivdiual cells are also *supposed* to have internal protection devices which disconnect them when they overheat or overcharge. Yes, an ebike battery charger *should* have protections built in as well, but it's the second pair of suspenders in a belt-and-suspenders-and-more-suspenders system. It should be impossible to light a battery pack on fire with a bad charger.

        All this excellent protection stuff is why a good ebike battery can cost around $750, which is more than half of the price of what many ebikes sell for. But you can also buy battery packs of the same capacity for around $250, which is 1/3 the price.

        To the consumer the dodgy battery looks just like the legit one, because it may have even been made in the same damned Chinese factory. It may even function just like the legit battery, up until the point it catches fire because it was made with little protection and counterfeit cells.

      • by evanh ( 627108 )

        The tech is flawed. Lithium-cobalt's are the only consumer grade rechargeable tech that even has the potential to catch fire. The sooner it disappears from the shelves the better.

      • Amen. Those of us (myself included) who live in the rest of NY state, greatly desire that NYC would split off into another political entity and leave the rest of us alone. There are political parties in my area whose entire platform consists of splitting NY into two different states.

      • Yes, and the highest quality battery can be caused to fail catastrophically when used with a bad charger or stored improperly.

        Errr no. High quality batteries are in charge of their own protection and rarely fail catastrophically as a result of a charger. Unfortunately people don't want high quality batteries, they want cheap batteries without safety electronics in them.

      • If New York City is the "epicenter", NYC should solve the NYC problem. This isn't a problem for the country. Also, it would seem that proper storage is far more likely to be effective than focusing solely on the batteries or where they come from. A small Li battery, like those typical of scooters and e-bikes, can fail and catch fire BUT they generally don't threaten an entire building unless they cause other batteries to catch fire. Limit maximum size of battery packs (without stricter regulation) and provide handling and storage guidelines. Then, a pack could fail and make a big mess but it won't light the world on fire.

        A WHOLE lot is known about cylindrical Li cells, they don't fail when properly used. Federal safety certifications will add cost to emerging devices and they won't stop hobbyists from creating unsafe devices. Some of NYC's problem is hobiests anyway. Interestingly, a single Li cell CAN set fire to an entire building, yet anyone can buy these cells, mismanage them and store them unsafely. It is likely that such regulations would accomplish little.

        NYC is the epicenter because it's the largest city. It's a problem everywhere, and safety standards for consumer devices should be set on national level, not local.

        How do you want to limit battery size? To what capacity? If they do it, won't you be back here whining about how the big government is limiting your freedoms?

        We know a lot about Li-Ion batteries, that's how we know they can fail if over-charged, over-discharged, physically damaged, or if you look at them wrong.

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      What they are discussing is a product type certification. UL's product cert company is a for-profit entity that certifies essentially the design of the product to safety Standard. It seems like they stand to make a lot of money if their cert mark were to be required on every battery.

      The manufacturer has to provide samples for testing, and only those sample units are tested.

      The cert mark never guaranteed that the actual unit you receive isn't defective. But you can bet the manufacturer have to pay

      • Batteries already have NRTL marks.
        EU requires certification when importing and selling products. US does not yet.

        The huge difference is that CE certification is self signed by the issuer, while NRTL certification absolutely requires a third party, which is really expensive, and so requiring NRTL basically cuts out all small companies, and distorts the market, profiting only to big cert labs.

        -> If US should require NRTL marking, it should absolutely avoid to kill off a lot of small companies in the proces

    • Also like how they apparently have some magic tech that can evaluate the batteries.

      There is magic tech. It's called eyes. You look at the label and ask two questions: "Is this a company I know?" and "Did I buy this from this company?"

      It's vanishingly rare for a 1st party product manufactured and purchased from a legitimate source to catch fire, and when it does it normally is followed by notifications of a product recall.

  • Nothing is stopped at the border.
    • by Chas ( 5144 )

      Yep. Ask the people on the southern border...

      • If you want to stop people from crossing the border illegally, stop hiring them. It is really as simple as that.
        • They did that in Florida and now the farmers have no-one left to harvest their crops.
          People like the one you replied to are mad at the wrong people though. They've been trained.
          • by quenda ( 644621 )

            They did that in Florida and now the farmers have no-one left to harvest their crops.

            If their business plan requires low-cost illegal labour to be profitable, they need to plant different crops.

            • It doesn't require low-cost illegal labor for those farms to be profitable. Using low-cost illegal labor, however, makes them MORE profitable and there's nothing that corporations and wealthy people love more than exploiting people for profit.

          • by Chas ( 5144 )

            "No one left"

            This is such bullshit.

            • by mjwx ( 966435 )

              "No one left"

              This is such bullshit.

              It's fairly obvious he meant "no one left (that would be willing to do the back breaking work for the horrible pay on offer)".

              • by Chas ( 5144 )

                And what does a market do when it no longer works?

                It adapts or dies.

                Let it adapt.

        • by Chas ( 5144 )

          No, you want them to stop crossing the border, STOP ALLOWING THEM TO CROSS THE BORDER ILLEGALLY.

          Then they aren't there for some dipshit to hire.

        • by mjwx ( 966435 )

          If you want to stop people from crossing the border illegally, stop hiring them. It is really as simple as that.

          That will never happen as it means punishing rich white men.

          Alternatively you can make it easy for low skilled workers to get a visa, that way they can be hired legally, pay taxes, limits can be imposed on length of stay, work type, et al, they can be tracked and kicked out if need be.

          But that also wont happen as people seem happy to turn a blind eye to the immigrants doing the jobs they wont do for the money they'll never accept, they also don't want to stop complaining about "illegals ruining the pl

  • Seriously, we need to require anything coming from china to be UL or other honest testing lab. Certified.
    • Doesn't work. They'll just slap a UL label on it. Oh oh I know we can sue them. What was the company name again? Doesn't matter they filed for bankruptcy the same day they were served legal papers. Oh look a new company with another name is selling the same product, and it's not even lunchtime.

      What we need is for importers to be held criminally liable for breaching product safety laws. And we can start by holding Amazon to task for letting Xi Hua ship apiece of shit fake UL labelled charger from Guangdong a

    • by stooo ( 2202012 )

      >> Seriously, we need to require anything coming from china to be UL or other honest testing lab. Certified.

      Does not work.
      You'll have to also require anything assembled in the US to have NRTL marks.
      And this will kill off any small company that cannot afford to pay 50k per product line for third party cert -> Market distortion.

      Self signed compliance like UK and CE with reasonable oversight, and local importer responsibility is a better answer.

  • Lithium batteries are inherently unsafe. Even the ‘best’ brands frequently blow up and catch fire, either from manufacturing defect or keeping a product like a laptop in a hot car or behind a window in the sun. Even just slightly bending or deforming is enough to cause a fire.

    These e-bikes and similar products have to continuously stand in the sun, deal with severe cold and up to 100% humidity besides other repeated mechanical stresses.

    • >Lithium batteries are inherently unsafe. Even the âbestâ(TM) brands frequently blow up and catch fire, either from manufacturing defect or keeping a product like a laptop in a hot car or behind a window in the sun. Even just slightly bending or deforming is enough to cause a fire.

      Inherently unsafe? Frequently blowing up and/catching fire? Given the massive volume of batteries, shouldn't these incidents be much more common? There are hundreds of millions of these batteries in daily use, yet inc

      • by guruevi ( 827432 )

        The incidents are not newsworthy because usually they don’t burn down a building. I have a fleet of about 500 laptops to manage and related peripherals with lithium batteries (tablets, remotes, wireless headphones etc), so I’d estimate about 2000 complete battery packs we see at least 2-3 battery failures per year. Usually they swell and are hot to the touch, sometimes there is smoke, once it caused a small fire, nobody notified the local paper.

        But just type in battery fire in Google News, there

        • Now twitter search âoedied suddenlyâ and now you can make a case about vaccines being evIl!! It amazes me when people have limited understand of millions upon millions of humans, then take few thousand to make a case about any majority that is really a minority problem. Then when they have that minority they use insecure examples that usually donâ(TM)t even represent their point. Yes lithium explodes, now how many people drop things, leave things outside, mix one third party Chinese cable wit
          • by guruevi ( 827432 )

            Yes there are millions of batteries, but failure rates go up significantly depending on design and once certain aging thresholds or mechanical and environmental stresses happen which my point was vehicles of any kind have all sorts of mechanical and thermal stresses whereas most lithium battery are used in-doors in relatively stress-free environments.

            It's not just the fact they fail (everything eventually fails) but the dangerous ways in which they fail.

  • The ones in devices that get stored in drawers and basements for 30 years? Does the plastic degrade and eventually they all catch fire?
    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      No, old batteries are not the problem. They don't even leak acid/alkali like older chemistries.

      Fires are usually a result of over-heating while charging. It is much easier for large batteries to overheat, than the smaller ones in phones & laptops.

    • Lithium batteries don't store charge indefinitely. They lose charge over time and eventually will be below a threshold where the chemical reaction that cause spontaneous explosions can occur. This is something that is usually limited to fully charged (if not overcharged) batteries.

      Bottom line is if your battery has been in your cupboard for a couple of years it won't spontaneously combust.

  • Appreciate the consumer advocacy on the part of NYC's mayor regarding a useful mode of city transit. It is unfair to forget the deaths, noise, and destruction caused by automobiles and their owners though. This is something NYC is also attempting to regulate, but needs to do much, much more.

    It really strikes me as odd that it was no problem geofencing and speed limiting scooter shares, but the same cannot be done to an off-the-shelf motor vehicle.

    • Whataboutism is stupid. A car's safety is known and a very significant amount of expense is gone into continuously to improve that safety. Most people do not know that buying a piece of equipment from Amazon will burn their house down.

      Actually I take it back. Your whataboutism is on point. If we spent even a small fraction of what we do on car safety on preventing importing dangerous goods from China we'll effectively eliminate all consumer goods fires.

  • That sounds low. Only 1 out of every 130 nyc residents owns an e-bike?

    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      I had assumed that was 65,000 on the street at one time.
      But google says only half a million e-bikes were sold in the US in 2021, implying there are only a few million in use in the whole country.
      Around one per hundred people! Can that possibly be right?
      With less than half of NYC households owning a car, I'd have expected the place to be swarming with bikes, e-bikes and scooters.
      But then NYC does have close to the worst climate on earth, freezing cold for 3 months and stinking hot for another 3.

      • by guruevi ( 827432 )

        You also need a place for an expensive bike like that to be stored and not immediately get stolen. Crime is sky high in NYC right now, and new crime policy makes sure neither the criminal nor the crime gets reported, any bike or car is fair game in the city.

      • I had assumed that was 65,000 on the street at one time.
        But google says only half a million e-bikes were sold in the US in 2021, implying there are only a few million in use in the whole country.
        Around one per hundred people! Can that possibly be right?

        Yes of course, have you seen the average American?

        • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          These are not bikes, they are Ebikes. Basically 2-wheel mobility scooters but without the stigma.
          • by quenda ( 644621 )

            These are not bikes, they are Ebikes. Basically 2-wheel mobility scooters

            I thought they were silly in flat cities until I visited Beijing in summer. Stinking hot and humid, I now understood why ebikes were so popular there.
            New York is similar, no?

  • Is this story a joke? You actually think Biden will stop anything or anyone at the border? He loves fentanyl and human trafficking to pour across our open border.
  • Stop allowing such a high population density and maybe a battery fire won't be as devastating.
    All you get is high prices, crime, pollution, noise, and impossible traffic.
    • >> All you get is high prices, crime, pollution, noise, and impossible traffic.
      Not really.
      Impossible traffic only gets really worse with urban sprawl.
      Pollution is similar, spreading it would increase the combined pollution because longer transport routes are needed.
      5 miles ebike ride vs 30 miles car ride, which pollutes more ?

      High price are due to legislation favoring speculation over personal ownership, not solved with urban sprawl.

  • Yes, all current lithium batteries are flammable. But not all of them are so problematic when they burn. NMC batteries release oxygen when heated which is why they are such a problem. LFP batteries do not, and they are also much less susceptible to thermal runaway to begin with in addition to being much easier to extinguish.

    NMC has only one advantage, slightly higher power density. But in addition to being more flammable it is also more toxic, and contains more conflict minerals. Ban NMC.

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