e-bike repair shop fire - 4 dead

It's been said for a while now that safety needs to be improved in electric vehicles
Interesting article from last year -
https://cesafety.co.uk/news/data-reveals-extent-of-electric-vehicle-fires-around-the-uk/

then again, a quick google and... "Every year in the UK, over 100,000 cars which equates to nearly 300 a day go up in flames and around 100 people die as a result."
https://www.fireservice.co.uk/safety/vehicle-fires/
(Although probably slightly more rare in normal bicycles...)

Hmm.. there were only 152,000 or so fire brigade callouts for fires in 2022?  Are ~66% of callouts due to burning petrol and diesal cars?  Or do people just leave them to burn and clean up the mess after?

That 100 000 car fires figure is nonsense.  The site linked does not appear to be an official site

https://cesafety.co.uk/news/data-reveals-extent-of-electric-vehicle-fires-around-the-uk/

https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/safety/on-the-road/car-and-vehicle-fires

 Or do people just leave them to burn and clean up the mess after?

Looking at some other sources, a huge number of them are just smoking electrics/brakes/transmissions/engines, and never result in a call out. Just a trip to the garage.

Well I did say it was a "quick google"

There was an ebike place near where we stayed in NY earlier in the year. It looked somewhat scungy, mainly aimed at keeping couriers in the road in their converted normal bikes. I doubt they bothered too much about battery fire precautions.

Ebike fires are a huge problem for the FDNY. The huge surge in popularity and people storing them in their apartments , charging them etc has caused a massive spike in fires related to them, many of them fatal. If you follow the FDNY fire wire app (as saddo fireys like me do) you'll see these fires constantly, resulting in massive resources required because they can spread so quick.

HOw relevant is the US experience given their much lower safety standards on most stuff?

TJ, I think it's probably more the fact that they are being charged with ropey devices bought on eBay, Amazon etc... FDNY however can flood a scene with resources, they have a massive amount of firefighters and equipment available at any one time. This country thanks to successive governments not so much. We also don't have the same domestic model they have with large blocks of apartments, well, we kind of do but not to the same scale. Just look at Grenfell, just happened to be a fridge that time.

HOw relevant is the US experience given their much lower safety standards on most stuff?

I’m interested to know where that perception comes from. They are strong in some areas weak in other. For example weak laws in one use in cars, weak safety checks on older cars, low minimum insurance levels

We also don’t have the same domestic model they have with large blocks of apartments, well, we kind of do but not to the same scale.

There’s the thing - New York, particularly Manhattan, The Bronx, etc, are made up of long streets of multi-storey apartments, which we’ve all seen many times on tv, so anyone buying an e-bike or escooter is forced to charge it in their apartment, and it’s almost always going to be some cheap Chinese item with a ropey charger - this is already a problem in the U.K. as well, but it’s usually just a single home that’s wrecked. It’s not just fires, the collapse of a multi-storey parking garage in Manhattan recently was down to poor building standards and checks not being properly monitored, and a building dating back over a century having too many vehicles in it, and those were much bigger and much heavier than anything the building was intended to accommodate, especially if many were EV’s, which can weigh two or three tonnes.

So far this year there have been 13 deaths and 108 fires in NY as a result of Lithium battery fires. Here’s a good background piece on why it’s happening, and it’s pretty much as I said, many gig workers who can only afford cheap bikes, scooters, batteries and chargers, and hope for the best.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/ebike-battery-fire-new-york-gig-workers

Happened last year in Bristol in a tower block. The fire was contained, thankfully, but one poor soul died:

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2022-09-26/electric-bike-caused-fatal-bristol-tower-block-fire

It’s been said for a while now that safety needs to be improved in electric vehicles

Many EV cars are now coming with LFP batteries (ie Tesla RWD) which don't suffer thermal runaway or overheating and therefore much safer. I think I've also read that if they are on fire they don't release oxygen (I presume the inference was that a L-ion battery does)

It’s been said for a while now that safety needs to be improved in electric vehicles

From what I understand the rate of EV fires is significantly lower than for ICE cars.

https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/are-electric-car-fires-really-that-common/

From what I understand the rate of EV fires is significantly lower than for ICE cars.

What you need to look at is the rate of fires for each year of a car's life. Fires will be more common among older cars than newer cars. There are many more older ICE cars than older EVs so the overall rate won't give a useful indication.