1 E-Bike or Scooter Catching Fire Each Week: Bans Likely for Low-Quality Devices from Apartments

The proposal comes amid a sharp rise in e-bike and e-scooter related fires in Australia.

Electric bicycles are parked on a sidewalk in Milan, Italy, on March 22, 2023. Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images

Australian apartment residents may face restrictions on storing cheap, imported or damaged electric scooters, bikes, and skateboards in their homes as strata owners advocate for stricter regulations to address growing fire hazards associated with lithium batteries.

Australia’s peak body representing strata owners launched a number of proposed by-laws regulating the use of battery-powered mobility devices in apartment buildings during a seminar held on Feb. 15.

The Owners Corporation Network (OCN) also introduced a “code of conduct” outlining safety guidelines for apartment owners and residents regarding the use of lithium-ion devices.

Those who violate the proposed by-laws could be held liable if they caused fires.

OCN chairman Fred Tuckwell clarified that his organisation was not seeking to impose a total ban on e-scooters or e-bikes but ruling out products that belonged to a high-risk category, such as damaged mobile devices or cheap imports.

“It does not seek to ban e-bikes or e-scooters, apart from those that are non-compliant,” he said.

“If somebody that does something that causes a fire in a building, that’s not just their home that’s going to be affected, it’s everybody’s home, so it is entirely legitimate for the owner’s corporation to be regulating something if it represents a real risk to other parts of the building.”

Prior to the introduction of the new by-laws, the OCN floated the idea of banning apartment residents from charging e-bikes or e-scooters inside their homes.

However, some experts were sceptical about whether it was feasible for strata schemes to enforce such a rule.

‘Most Fires Caused by E-scooters, E-bikes’

OCN’s announcement comes amid a notable surge in the number of e-scooter and e-bike fires across Australia.

Chris Wood, an emerging risks manager at the insurance company Allianz, said a recent analysis of 183 claims involving lithium-ion battery fires by his company showed that most fires were caused by electric scooters, bikes and skateboards, many of which were not produced by a reputable manufacturer.

He also noted that most of the mobile devices caught fire when being charged in unsupervised conditions.

“The devices, even though they only required an hour or two on a charge, they'd been left on (charge) for many hours, many days, and sometimes even weeks after they were fully charged,” Mr. Wood said.

A burnt out garage following an explosion caused by an e-bike charging in Sydney, Australia, on March 20, 2023. AAP Image/Supplied by Fire and Rescue NSW

Meanwhile, EV FireSafe chief executive Emma Sutcliffe said personal mobility devices run on lithium batteries had become a major fire threat in Australia due to quality issues and the way owners used them.

“In Australia, we’re seeing at least one e-bike or e-scooter catching fire each week,” she said.

“There’s no training for people to repair or maintain these. They take an enormous amount of wear and tear in daily use, and then people bring them inside their homes to charge them up, which is where we see issues.”

Amid the rise in battery-related fires, Strata Community Insurance technical director David Ellis warned that insurers could lift the price of their products if strata owners did not tackle the risk of electronic bikes and scooters.

According to Allianz’s recent data, the company reported a 440 percent surge in claims for lithium-ion battery fires, and a 900 percent increase in the costs of these claims between 2020 and August 2023.