cat0020

Here in NYC, business location have annual inspection from FDNY (among many other City Departments).
If violations present, resolution can result in fines, court cost, fees and likely re-inspection cost.

If the fire/building code is updated or changed, businesses are responsible to bring their location up to code, which can involve architect, surveyor, engineer, contractor, waste management, etc.
After work on the building has been completed, FDNY will still need to inspect and pass the changes to the building, than it's another round of application cost, fees to received a replacement Certificate of Occupancy for the building. Usually a 6-9 months process and cost of few thousands to $50k. BTDT, during pandemic time, too.

Problem is NYC have nearly 100 y-o electrical wiring that are still in use with modern high demand.
Electrical fire is not always easily determined how they are started.

tungsten

'round these parts the lower cast criminal class has been lighting themselves afire and burning to death or death from gravity leaping out of window to escape the fire they ignited trying to jury-rig charge the battery of the e-bike they stole!

Leisesturm

No you didn't say that with a straight face! Fire resistant bedding is a bad thing? I have had a high quality e-bike battery for 3 or 4 years now and I don't do ANYTHING special to or for it. And it's a monster. But a well made very expensive monster. But the batteries in the cheap delivery bikes are not well made and they do spontaneously combust. Are you denying that that happens? Modern fire depatments transitioned to "first responders" to medical (mainly) and other emergencies of all kinds because modern, first world, cities are largely free from frequent fires.

Leisesturm

more everything than anywhere else, except maybe L.A.

Calsun

Factories catching fire is nothing new. Billions are spent on fire departments across the country every year and it is not to deal with battery fires. Where I live more than half the calls to the local fire departments is for vehicle fires on the freeway that runs through the county. 100% of these fires are with vehicles with internal combustion engines.

Unless someone is a boater they are unaware of just how explosive gasoline is and it is the vapor that is explosive. The vapor from just one gallon of gasoline in a 250-gallon fuel talk has as much explosive energy as 83 sticks of dynamite.

Years ago dry cleaning was done using gasoline and the dry cleaning plants were in stand alone brick buildings as there was the known risk from this cleaning agent. Only after dry cleaners switched to perchloroethylene (PERC) as the cleaning agent could they be located in strip malls and industrial parks.

The e-bike and EV paranoia is emotional and ignores the facts which is not unusual with the inability to do critical thinking by the vast majority of people.

Leisesturm

I have had plenty of people tell me they would never, ever, ever, own an electric car. They don't have to tell me they wouldn't own an e-bike because they don't own any bicycles now. When bicycle owners think about e-bikes, its range anxiety that dominates their doubts, and the amount of time spent considering a possible battery fire is exactly zero. Same with car owners, range anxiety is why they think ev's are a bad idea, or, at least, bad for them. Prius and Tesla and Chevy Volt/Bolt cars are the models that they have heard of and these cars do not catch fire in garages while being charged. Trek and Giant e-bikes do not catch fire in basements! You are the emotional one imagining that everyone is full of fear and loathing for dangerous Li-Ion batteries when nothing could be further from the truth.

blue192

My guess is that because NYC has about 65,000 bicycle delivery drivers and they operate the entire year 365 days.

tds101 

I just got back from a trip to London, and the taxi driver informed me that there's been numerous ebike/escooter fires in the UK. This isn't a USA only issue. These companies need all need to be certified, and people need to be properly trained in the care and handling of small electric vehicles.

BMC_Kid 

E-bikes are the work of the devil. Everyone should see the light, buy vintage steel! 🤣

BMC_Kid 

You just made the case that it is not just emotional. There was a real risk in using kerosene to dry-clean clothes, it was dangerous and so safer methods were developed. Now we have learned even more and determined that kerosene’s replacement, PERC has health and environmental risks, such that it too is being phased out with safer water based cleaning solvents. As we will find with the proliferation of e-bikes (really everything going battery powered) is that there are different risks to be considered and saying there is EV paranoia doesn’t help.

cat0020

and then there are people like this:

George Mann

Yes, absolutely!

jon c. 

That's as compelling as the argument that battery fires should be ignored because unrelated fires also happen.

cat0020

Nobody said it should be ignored.
How unintentional many gasoline fire do you think occur every single day vs ebike battery fires?

jon c. 

I have no idea. And I have no idea what point you're intending to make.

If battery fires should not be ignored than it would be reasonable to think that safety regulations might be considered to reduce the number of such fires. The number of fires stemming from other causes doesn't seem to be relevant to that consideration.

cat0020

If you have no idea, you can always ask.

Vehicle fires, including ebikes & regular ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles are more common than you think.
If you think ebike fires are common, you should also consider other types of vehicle fires.
Safety regulations or not, ICE vehicles are likely to catch fire more often than ebikes, just due to the sheer number of them.
But you don't see them reported in media nearly as much as ebike fires in recent days.
In reality, you're far more likely to have a car accident than most other vehicle accident, but is that reported in media?

jon c. 

Seems an apples and oranges comparison. The ebike battery related fires I've read of are considered newsworthy because they ended as major structural fires. I would guess that they might get more coverage than a similar fire with a more mundane cause like faulty wiring because the source is relatively novel. And they would get more coverage than a car fire because car fires usually involve only the car in question. If a car fire started the rest of the cars in a parking lot on fire, it would be news.

Modern battery technology has created new breeds of batteries that exhibit new behaviors. They're newsworthy because they're new. Any story is more newsworthy if you haven't heard it before. I don't think there is any conspiracy to portray ebikes in poor light. Why would there be? I don't think such stories have any impact on ebike sales. And those who make the decision to run such stories have no vested interest in that one way or the other.

cat0020

Popularity & growth of automobiles & ebikes are not apples to oranges.

As if hundred year old electrical systems in buildings in NYC do not contribute to the ebike fires?

I live & work in NYC, I talk to the firemen few blocks down from my resident & work.
The ones that I talked to, that have seen similar fires with ebikes in remains,
firemen seem to think the old electrical grid can't handle the high demand in power in modern appliances,
especially in time of heatwaves & cold snaps.
With A/C, electrical heaters, washers, dryers, dishwashers, multiple TVs, routers, devices in an apartment buildings that have dozens of units;
all adds up to overloaded electrical wiring.

Battery for ebikes may not be the cause of this specific fire in NYC, you can see the batteries still intact, even after the fire in the picture in earlier post.
Some tires are still inflated with air, which indicate that the fire may be burning at low temperature,
unlike battery fire that combust which burns at much higher temperature and melt the tires.

As I said in my earlier post in this thread:
There is no specific evidence that battery that caused this fire is a lithium battery, any other type of battery or something else;
it just happen that fire occurred at a ebike shop with prior violations.

Propaganda the promote use of automobiles & infrastructures for cars in this country have been long and well documented.
https://www.bikeforums.net/22973975-post76.html

If you think that there are no vested interest to promote fear to impact EVs in general, than you're likely wrong.
Electric cars have been invented decades before Tesla, and efforts to avoid the public from switching gas burning cars to EVs have always been there, even today.

The ebike surge in the last few years allow the number of incidents or accidents to become more frequent and reported in the news.
Like you said, ICE or gasoline fire incidents would be too mundane to report,
not many people would be interested in that if most of them get reported in the news, and that doesn't help the media company's ratings.
Since the trend of EVs is new, what better time to promote fear among the public and gain more audience?
Is that vested interest?