Once again, the city of Toronto votes to ban something extremely common that doesn’t actually cause problems because of one case that they got hysterical about.
This city is honestly fucking dumb as fuck. Keep banning all e-scooters from our roads too guys, real effective policies you come up with.
Like Jesus Christ, how many people are seriously injured in car accidents every day in this city and we’re still hand wringing about fucking bicycles?
Canada needs HEAVY regulation of imported, high watt-hour, batteries. It’s easier to get a poorly manufactured lithium hand grenade than it is to get a properly protected battery.
Again, this is hysterical handwringing and over exaggeration.
No, it’s really not. Poorly protected cells get charged too quickly, discharged too quickly and over-discharged which makes them much more likely to fail in a violent way. I have seen loads of off-brand tool batteries burn up in power tools because they do not have the, expensive, protection circuit that comes with a name brand battery.
Good luck enforcing that. Delivery riders won’t just poof out of existence in a cloud of smoke.
Yeah:
As to who will enforce the ban, Myers said that has not yet been decided. Instead, the TTC says it will focus on public education.
“I know we already have trouble enforcing the bike ban during rush hour, so this will be another layer on top of that,” the chair said, referring to the agency’s bylaw prohibiting bikes on TTC vehicles during peak hours.
Mind you garbage variety ebike lithium batteries are a problem. They’re large in capacity and because of that can cause significantly worse fires than your typical laptop battery. Just a simple comparison - a typical laptop battery has 6-9 cells (18650). The typical ebike battery starts at 36 and can go as high as 50-60 of the same cells.
Unfortunately until we stop the unregulated drop shipping from China under LETTERSOUP brands on Amazon and such, we won’t be able to solve this. Well executed lithium batteries are extremely safe. Chinese manufacturers make many of those. Unfortunately they cost more so that’s typically not what’s installed on $1000-1500 LETTERSOUP ebikes. The federal government has to come up with some regulation on what’s allowed to be imported. Trying to solve this downstream is more difficult and it puts people who don’t know any better or can’t afford any better at odds with such measures. It shouldn’t be on individual people to avoid buying the expensive fire hazards.
I was going to say: isn’t there something that they can do?
Allow and deny lists for brands or models of bikes?
Rules based on battery Ampere-hours?
Fire-proof bags or storage area (automatic lithium-fire extinguisher) for small ebikes?
Free certification/condemnation by a bike shop or other licensed technician?
Battery+charger swap* programs (free or very cheap) for safer batteries of similar voltage/amps? Though I don’t know if the production is there yet. (And it may be way too expensive.) *=the lithium batteries (or even cells) being reused and managed in more controlled settings
Could they give free public charging that monitors battery temperature (with temperature alerts), particularly if safe slow charging is ideal for the battery tech anyway. (Also perhaps expensive, but maybe less expensive than some water fountains)
Or just city-owned battery swap stations, though I expect battery compatibility would not be great.
A better de-icing solution?
Free certification/condemnation by a bike shop or other licensed technician?
The way similar things are handled is disallow importation of anything in the category without a certification. We have UL/CSA certifications for lithium batteries. In fact I heard that North American ebike shops began selling only certified batteries recently because insurers required it. Of course that doesn’t affect LETTERSOUPs. The gov can use those certifications to stop items rolling of the boats. So allow lists based on certification.
But if you’re talking about local governments - municipal - they can’t do much with this because they can’t enforce it. They will need people to go and check ebikes and issue fines. They already can’t enforce bikes on trains at rush hour as the article states. Once the bikes are in people’s hands, it’s too late. They’ll keep using them because they are a means for transportation for many and because even if they’re cheap LETTERSOUPs, $1-1.5K is no small amount of money. They ain’t just gonna swallow that and not use it. Municipalities could theoretically forbid ebikes with uncertified batteries on public premises with a prohibitive fine if caught and do some enforcement blitzes to send the message. Of course this would be pretty terrible for the people caught, especially if the law wasn’t there when they bought their ebike.
