DON'T BUY CHEAP

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Twisted mountains of charred bikes, scooters, wheels, and battery casings. The distinctive, acidic smell of burnt chemicals. And where delivery workers once stood in line chatting while waiting for repairs, now blackened ruins and a somber crowd of neighbors behind police tape. This was the scene – one that’s become horrifyingly common – after yet another deadly lithium battery fire in New York City. Four people died in the inferno – the latest victims of a growing problem that’s now claimed the lives of 13 people this year in the nation’s densest city, compared with six such deaths in all of 2022.

The fires are caused by the cheap, dangerous electric batteries powering the two-wheeled devices that the city’s 65,000 delivery workers use to meet the demands of Silicon Valley gig platforms. 

Tuesday’s disaster, the 108th lithium-battery-related fire this year in New York City, started at a shop called HQ E-bike Repair and quickly spread to the apartments above. The shop had been cited before for violations related to charging the batteries, said New York’s fire commissioner, Laura Kavanagh. But lithium battery fires often cause explosions that give victims almost no chance to react, she said. “The volume of fire created by these lithium-ion batteries is incredibly deadly … We’ve said this over and over: it can make it nearly impossible to get out in time.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/ebike-battery-fire-new-york-gig-workers?mc_cid=2960376d90&mc_eid=62d36e4ccb

While the fire department advises that people only use batteries that have been certified by UL Solutions, a rigorous safety testing lab, e-bikes that use these batteries easily cost thousands of dollars. That’s beyond reach for most delivery workers and immigrant city dwellers, who tend to buy no-name vehicles, batteries and chargers, for a fraction of the cost. Walk into one of New York City’s e-bike shops and you’ll often see rows of these batteries juicing up side by side on overloaded power strips. But even if they’re not being charged, batteries stored in tight quarters can still catch fire and cause a chain reaction.

New York’s city council recently passed a measure banning the sale of non-UL certified electric bikes, scooters, and batteries, as well as their reconditioning and resale. That doesn’t do much for the countless New Yorkers who still use uncertified equipment – and who don’t have the means to ditch it.

One is Mr Wu, another former customer of the shop, in his 60s. Even as we stand before the smoldering vehicles, he tells me that he can’t stress about his cheap e-bike catching fire; the chances of it happening would be like “winning the lottery”, he reasons. “What matters most is that it’s good and cheap.” Another onlooker is Terence, a 57-year-old Bronx e-bike owner whose father was a firefighter. But “I’ve had my e-bike now for five or six years, and I’ve been using this sort of battery, and I’ve never, ever had a problem,” he says.

Even those who fear the risks feel stuck. Gustavo Ajche, a delivery worker and founder of the labor group Los Deliveristas Unidos, carries two batteries when he works so that he can go longer distances – there’s simply no way to make a living without them. But he can’t afford to replace the packs, which aren’t UL-certified, so all he can do is charge them more cautiously. “I charge it a little bit when I get home and the next day, I charge it a little more, because I don’t want to be in this kind of mess with this fire,” he says.