There's not much difference between electric bike and MacBook Pro chargers. But San Francisco's new law treats one as a serious threat to public safety and the other as a harmless feature of everyday life. Some e-bike retailers in the city are now saying that differentiation could force them out of business.
In response to an increase in fires caused by improperly charged e-bike batteries, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in February to amend the city's fire code to address the e-bikes and their lithium-ion batteries that can be sold. regulated methods. Among other things, the law establishes minimum distances between charging stations in stores and, perhaps most costly, requires sprinkler systems to be installed in stores that charge five or more bicycles. The fire department will work with owners to ensure compliance.
“It basically goes to any bike shop. [sprinklers] We went out of business,” said Eugene Dickey, owner of Third Rail E-Bike in the Mission District. “We're in an old building. We don't even have plumbing in here, so we're talking about $50,000 to $60,000 to buy sprinklers.”
The pandemic has been a boom time for e-bike retailers, with battery-powered devices popular as an alternative for getting around San Francisco without a car or just getting some exercise. But as gyms reopen and the threat of the coronavirus begins to recede, bike manufacturers and retailers are faced with a different challenge. It's an explosion of a battery cell that produces toxic gases and scary headlines.
The San Francisco Fire Department currently responds to an average of 30 battery explosion fires a year, some of which are quite serious, such as the one in a mid-to-high-rise residential building in November 2020 that injured five people and displaced 15. There is also.
Brett Thurber, founder of The New Wheel, an e-bike shop in Bernal Heights, agreed that safety concerns about cheaply made e-bike batteries are real. But despite some headline-grabbing incidents, he said the increase in fires was far from a sharp increase in the use of e-bikes. Cheap imported bicycles that can be purchased online often do not meet safety standards. That's where most fires tend to start, Thurber believes, but that's just one reason The New Wheel doesn't stock them.
Thurber believes the city is overreacting to the new law. In New York, tens of thousands of food delivery drivers, many of them immigrants living in substandard housing conditions, are daisy-chaining power strips, sometimes charging dozens of cheap e-bikes at once, causing severe causing a fire. That wasn't the case in San Francisco, he says.
“It's not like these bikes haven't been tested,” Thurber said of the Benno Boost and Tern HSD, which cost more than $4,200, far more than the $500 electric bikes sold on Amazon and Alibaba. Talked about inventory. The law allows retailers like The New Wheel a six-month grace period to comply, “but they're not aware that many high-quality e-bikes can be charged in San Francisco apartments.” They say it's gone.”
At Scenic Route Community Bike Shop in the Richmond area, it is our policy not to leave charging items overnight or unattended without an employee present. But co-owner Jay Beeman argued the law's safety concerns are misplaced when compared to the dangers on San Francisco's streets.
Mr Beeman said regulators should “talk about road deaths” rather than worrying about the minimal number of fires caused by e-bike batteries. “More pedestrians and cyclists are losing their lives than ever before.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who authored the battery-charging law, insisted the city has no intention of putting bike shops out of business, much less going door-to-door looking for illegal bikes. In drafting the bill, he worked with a group of e-bike retailers and Lyft, which operates Bay Wheels e-bike sharing service.
“We tried to make any compromise that the fire marshal didn't think would jeopardize public safety,” he said. “But there were times when the fire chief said, “If you're going to do something like this, you better not worry about it.''
One such compromise concerns safety certification. Although the e-bike industry is rapidly evolving, some high-quality e-bikes may not yet have so-called EN or UL certification, referring to the European Standards and Underwriters Institute. So Peskin rewrote the bill to allow the San Francisco Fire Department to independently determine whether certain e-bikes are safe.
Kash of Warm Planet Bikes, one of the bike shop owners who works with Peskin and uses only one name, praised supervisors for taking certification standards into account. But he noted that the law does not address another safety issue that is even more pressing for e-bike owners: theft.
“If you stand on Market Street, you'll see someone riding a stolen e-bike with a battery stolen from another e-bike duct-taped to the frame, and this guy with an unrated charger. You can tell they're charging,' whatever they're doing,” Kash said.
San Francisco Fire Marshal Ken Coughlin pointed out that the bill doesn't actually specifically target electric bikes. It also covers e-scooters and hoverboards, i.e. all electric mobility devices except wheelchairs. He also believes the change was necessary because it is common for damaged lithium-ion batteries to burn out of control, a chain reaction known by the Chernobyl-esque term “thermal runaway.”
“Lithium-ion batteries don't burn out. They don't disappear in water,” Coughlin said. “You have to keep it cool. You can't drag it outside in a high-rise building.”
In some ways, the success of lithium-ion batteries is what is exacerbating these concerns. Since their introduction in the early 1990s, they have become cheaper and more powerful as a key element in the transition away from internal combustion engines. Powerful batteries can cause more intense fires, an unpleasant trade-off for consumers and lawmakers working to encourage climate-safe transportation.
“We understand that the city wants to have more bicycles to reduce its carbon footprint,” Coughlin said. “We're not trying to stop it. We want to get to zero fires.”
Update: This article has been updated to note that shops must install sprinklers when charging five or more e-bikes.
