After Spate Of Sydney E-Bike Fires, New Warnings Issued
Regulators, governments and strata schemes are grappling with how to manage a rise in fires caused by faulty or misused e-bike chargers after Sydney fire crews were called to three incidents within 24 hours in the past week
A two-story home was destroyed when an e-bike lithium battery that had been left on charge exploded in Oyster Bay on Thursday.
Hours later, quick-acting fire crews avoided disaster in a Burwood shop by dumping a garbage bin of water over an overheating e-scooter after a service technician used the wrong charger.
On Friday morning, an e-bike with a homemade charger caused another blaze in Wentworthville.
NSW fire crews have attended at least 40 fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes and e-scooters this year, up from 22 across all of 2022.
Lithium batteries are used to power portable rechargeable electronic devices, such as mobile phones, laptops, solar panels, and e-bikes.
While quality products have safety switch-off features to prevent overheating, there have been an increasing number of “thermal runaway incidents”, where a lithium battery overheats to the point of explosion, emitting toxic gas.
The fires are prone to reignite once extinguished.
“It’s explosive force, it’s a jet reaction,” Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Adam Dewberry explained. “A jet flame comes out, an intense jet flame.”
A shocking vision of an e-bike battery explosion was captured on CCTV inside Mad Monkey backpackers in Kings Cross earlier this month. [Pictured above]
Photographs from a fire at Darlinghurst two weeks later show a burnt-out unit where an e-bike was charging.
Dewberry urged users to check they were using the correct charger voltage for their battery, to not purchase cheap replacement chargers online, and to avoid overcharging devices or charging devices overnight while they sleep.
In a report released earlier this month, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission said it was concerned about lithium-ion batteries overheating or exploding, particularly when chargers were mixed and matched and left running after a device had fully charged.
A spokesperson said the ACCC had received 254 product safety reports about lithium-ion batteries since April 2017. While only 19 related to e-bikes and e-scooters, six of those reports have been received since March.
Last month, the NSW Parliament’s joint standing committee on road safety announced it would conduct an inquiry into hazards posed by electric and hybrid vehicle batteries. Submissions close on November 24.
NSW Minister for Better Regulation Anoulack Chanthivong said Fair Trading worked with Fire and Rescue to inspect e-bikes and was monitoring products available on the market, with the power to investigate if they were deemed unsafe.
“This is an emerging challenge and we’re working through the ACCC’s report, as are other jurisdictions across the country,” he said.
Fire risks from e-bikes are also a new issue for Sydney’s apartment complexes, said Stephen Brell, president of the NSW branch of the Strata Community Association. …
“As this is an emerging issue, legislators are a little way behind. What we may see transpire is insurers [for strata schemes] placing restrictions on e-bikes and e-scooters.”
Bicycle NSW chief executive Peter McLean, himself an e-bike rider, said the fire risk posed by faulty chargers was “undoubtedly an issue”.
“We have to make sure we are using either the Australian or European standard [of charger],” he said.
While it would be ideal for e-bike riders to be able to access safe, public charging infrastructure, McLean said this was more difficult for e-bikes than electric vehicles.
“There is a different charger for every brand and they change them all the time,” McLean said, instead advocating for import restrictions on cheap chargers and better surveillance of cheap e-bike hire companies.
Dr Lee Roberts, a researcher at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, agreed there needed to be better regulation of cheap imported batteries and chargers, which were easily available online.
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Charles Higley
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‘” to avoid overcharging devices or charging devices overnight while they sleep.”
Who cares if they are asleep or not, they cannot stop the fire. It’s all about being awake to escape alive.
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Howdy
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Faulty chargers? If a supplied charger is unfit to charge the chemistry it is supplied for it is not defective, but perhaps insufficient safety measures built in? Maybe even a generic charger that fits a range of applications is used? Terminal voltage is critical to safe use, and Lithium Ion cannot be floated.
If a device/chemistry cannot be left alone without fear of damage or death by it’s tendency to ignite, it is not acceptable as a mass market item. It appears Li-Ion electric powered devices and machines are the only ones that skirt this requirement.
Lithium cells use regulated charging within a small tolerance, overcharging is not, and should not be a problem if all due diligence is observed in manufacture, charge/discharge cycles, and care in use.
The trend seen shows insufficient care somewhere along the line, or safe parameters are maybe being exceeded, yet described to users as normal operation? It is up to investigators to discern if that is the case.
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