\u201cThere\u2019s no comprehensive plan to deal with the battery life cycles,\u201d said Herzfeld. \u201cThere\u2019s a fictitious belief that battery fires don\u2019t happen unless batteries are charging. People are basing their safety guidelines on something that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another expert who analyzed the recent FDNY data dump said the acceleration in fires this year can be tied to batteries dying en masse. <\/p>\n
\u201cFrom 2023 to 2024 to 2025, [the number of fires] is almost a flat line. [But] now the rate of change is increasing and batteries are reaching the end of their life,\u201d said Adrian Kombe, whose company, Nomoto<\/a>, is developing a safety device that detects warning signs of battery failure.\u00a0<\/p>\n Orlando said despite FDNY\u2019s best efforts to educate e-bike users, most don\u2019t really think about the battery\u2019s end of life. Like people, lithium-ion batteries age a tiny bit with every \u201ccycle\u201d of charge. If a delivery worker is recharging a battery multiple times every day, the battery will age rapidly, creating an ongoing cycle of batteries reaching the end of their life and becoming a higher risk.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a part of the consumer that thinks, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s just a battery, we throw this in the regular waste bin,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s enough information. It\u2019s in the booklet, but who reads through the whole booklet?\u00a0Or who looks at the booklet two years later if you still have it, or three years later, when the battery\u2019s not working and you have to get rid of it?\u201d<\/p>\n The fires this time<\/p>\n One recent fire in Corona, Queens at a Fly E-Bike<\/a> shop, a company known for poor battery safety, is emblematic of the growing trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sal Lopez, who works at the store a few days a week, said the fire started from a battery in a customer\u2019s bike that was left at the shop, not from one that was charging. Customers often call asking if they can dispose of their old batteries at the shop, but the shop doesn\u2019t permit it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey have to take it with them,\u201d he said of customers coming in with old or damaged batteries. Most of the store\u2019s customers are delivery workers, he added. \u201cThere should be a place to dispose of [the batteries]. Sometimes people call or ask, they want to leave it or want to find out where to throw it out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In this case, the sprinkler system suppressed the blaze for long enough to everyone escape safely. But witnesses expressed horror at how quickly the blaze spread.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really fast,\u201d Elias Casta\u00f1eda, a mechanic at another bike shop on the street that only services traditional bikes, said in Spanish of the fire. Regular bikes cause \u201cless problems\u201d and have \u201cless risks.\u201d<\/p>\n The FDNY acknowledged the increase in fires, but said the increase in non-structural fires shows that a key part of the safety messaging is working.<\/p>\n \u201cThe FDNY has shared consistent safety messaging with the public about storing and charging these devices outside where possible. The number of \u2018structural\u2019 versus \u2018non-structural\u2019 fires leads us to believe that message is being received,\u201d said spokesperson Clare Bourke.<\/p>\n But fires that spare the lives of those around them still scare residents and damage property. <\/p>\n On May 29, an e-bike battery sparked a blaze in a residential building in the Navy Yard section of Fort Greene, and smoke \u201cspread throughout\u201d the entire floor and went into \u201call the apartments,\u201d said one neighbor.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I did look through the peep hole I couldn\u2019t see anything \u2014 too much smoke,\u201d said Anette Diaz. \u201cOnce the smoke went a little bit, I saw that everything was burnt up. \u2026 Everything was destroyed and there was a big hole in the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n Another fire at the Albany Houses in Brooklyn in August killed 18-year-old Caleb Matthews. His mother told Eyewitness News<\/a> that the fire was caused by an e-bike battery exploding while charging. She urged the city to act.<\/p>\n Federal inaction<\/p>\n The city and state passed laws when regulating the sale of e-bikes and their batteries, requiring a UL certification, the gold standard for safety. The city also created a lithium-ion battery task force to educate<\/a> delivery workers and other e-bike users about battery risk. But federal regulation around e-bikes and e-scooters is lax, so it is easy to get risky batteries online.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though we put all the regulations in place [and] were able to shut down bad actors in the retail space, it\u2019s still not illegal for somebody to buy a cheaper uncertified bike. You can still get it direct-to-consumer,\u201d said Orlando.<\/p>\n The online marketplace for e-bikes is often referred to as the \u201cWild West<\/a>.\u201d Whether it\u2019s over-powered illegal<\/a> \u201ce-motos\u201d that have high speed capacities and are falsely marketed<\/a> as street-legal e-bikes, or shoddy batteries, it\u2019s hard to know what you\u2019re buying online.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, we\u2019re still just a local fire department, so any ordinance we pass is just for New York City, so we really need the the federal government because this stuff is just coming in unfettered, or or the components are coming in unfettered through the borders and through shipping,\u201d Orlando said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency that regulates goods shipped to the United States, has proposed rules<\/a> to deal with the e-bike and e-scooter battery problem, which is not unique to New York City. The domestic e-bike market grew 31 percent between 2018 and 2024, according to the document. If the rule is adopted, UL certification would be required at the federal level.\u00a0<\/p>\n What has the city done? <\/p>\n The city\u2019s plan to tackle lithium-ion battery fires was laid out in the \u201cCharge Safe, Ride Safe\u201d action plan issued<\/a> by the Adams administration in 2023. But most of the initiatives detailed in the plan have either stalled or never made it past a pilot phase. Part of this is because the FDNY regulations are so strict.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I want to install a battery cabinet in New York City, it takes me a year and a half. If I want to install one in Philadelphia, Jersey City, two weeks,\u201d said Herzfeld, whose company was a part of the city\u2019s successful public battery-charging pilot program.<\/p>\n Last year, Streetsblog reported<\/a> that the department changed the type of UL certification required for outdoor cabinets before there was even a way to get said certifications. The department later softened those rules and extended its deadline for compliance, allowing companies to continue using a \u201cletter of no exemption\u201d as proof of safety. But that extension ended on Oct. 1, Herzfeld said. Now it is again impossible for his company to get approval for new sites because that new UL certification is still out of reach. <\/p>\n \u201cIt should not be this hard to get life-saving equipment into outdoor parking lots. We should all be embarrassed.\u201d<\/p>\n The pilot ended in 2024. Now, two years later, the Department of Transportation just closed<\/a> its feedback portal to help it decide where to place 25 permanent battery-swapping cabinets, though they won\u2019t be up and running until 2027 at the earliest.<\/p>\n As part of the action plan, the DOT started allowing businesses and landlords to apply<\/a> for a permit to install battery charging cabinets on public sidewalks last February. But because of the FDNY\u2019s location requirements, this is nearly impossible, too. To date, zero applications have been approved, but \u201cseveral\u201d are pending, according to an agency spokesperson.\u00a0<\/p>\n For delivery workers, who are one of the largest groups of e-bike users in the city, thinking about properly disposing of a battery can be low on the list of priorities when their livelihood is being threatened<\/a> by a precarious work arrangement. The risk of getting your account deactivated takes precedence over everything.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have literally over 100 workers every single day showing up at our center because they\u2019ve been deactivated, and everything else takes a backseat to \u2018I\u2019ve lost my job and can\u2019t make a living and can\u2019t deliver,\u2019\u201d said April Herms, the deputy director of the Worker\u2019s Justice Project, which organizes the Los Deliveristas Unidos.<\/p>\n Even at the Worker\u2019s Justice Project headquarters in Williamsburg, where hundreds of delivery workers flock on their bikes to use the organization\u2019s many services, building an outdoor charging cabinet was impossible. There was no place on the large corner lot that fit all of FDNY\u2019s rules, the DOT told Herms.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt some point the policy needs to meet the reality because if it doesn\u2019t then what happens is you still have people charging indoors because they don\u2019t have any options. Effectively the FDNY policy is don\u2019t charge inside, don\u2019t charge outside. In fact, just don\u2019t have these batteries,\u201d said Herms.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/corona-fire-store-e1791399027238.jpg\")
A fire broke out at an e-bike battery store in Corona, Queens. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/delivery-worker-grubhub-bag-e1791398874192.jpg\")
A delivery worker rides through SoHo during the lunch rush on a bike powered by a lithium-ion battery. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n