PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A fire in a New York City e-bike repair shop last week killed four people, raising the alarm about the dangers of exploding lithium ion batteries. But Philadelphia bike experts say such fires are easy to avoid and unlikely to be a problem here.
The most important measure to prevent an e-bike battery fire is to use a high-quality battery, according to Nate Bowman-Johnson, general manager of the Philadelphia bike-share company Indego.
About 1,200 Indego e-bikes are used every day. In its five years of operating e-bikes with lithium ion batteries, the company has never had a fire. It uses Bosch, a “top-notch product,” Bowman-Johnson said.
“Bosch makes the charges that we use as well and it’s a smart charger, so if the battery heats up too much, it shuts off,” he explained. “We’ve got a good manufacturer who’s got a really reliable product, and our team takes safety really seriously.”
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Staff members are trained in battery fire suppression. The charging area is in a dedicated space in Indego’s warehouse.
“It’s like a refrigerator in there,” said Bowman-Johnson. “We have all these specialized fire suppression tools like CO2 extinguishers, buckets of sand, high heat gloves.”
The Philadelphia Fire Department said there have been no fatal battery fires in the city, whereas New York has lost 13 people in battery-related fires just this year.
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John Boyle, research director for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, said the landscape in New York is much different, with some 65,000 delivery workers — most of them riding e-bikes.
“They don’t have a high profit margin and they wind up going to someone who refurbishes batteries, and then they come back with a battery that’s probably not as safe as what they had originally,” he noted.
It’s never a good idea to leave a battery plugged in overnight, Boyle advised, because most of these fires occur when batteries are charging.
New York City is getting $25 million in emergency funding from the federal government for new e-bike charging stations. The hope is these stations will provide a safer way for delivery workers to recharge the batteries used to power their bicycles.
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