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This is Germany. Here's a summary of the safety regulations.[1] Safety testing by an "accredited laboratory" is required.[2] The New York City Fire Department

This is Germany. Here's a summary of the safety regulations.[1] Safety testing by an "accredited laboratory" is required.[2] The New York City Fire Department reports that lithium-ion battery fires are a leading cause of fires and fire deaths in NYC.[3] NYFD got the city to require UL or equivalent testing for lithium battery fires.[4] This is working for sales within NYC but Amazon is still selling batteries with fake UL stickers. NYC's big problem is e-bikes and scooters being charged in apartments and stores. Several hundred of those a year now, and they tend to be severe fires. Entire e-bike stores have blown up. Those things need to be lithium-iron phosphate until solid state batteries become affordable. (A good political move would be to get the incoming administration to require UL or better certification for anything imported that has a lithium-ion battery or a wall plug.) [1] https://www.batterietechnikum.kit.edu/downloads/Safety_Guidelines_Li-Ion_20150217(1).pdf https://www.batterietechnikum.kit.edu/downloads/Safety_Guide... [2] https://www.tuvsud.com/en-us/resource-centre/blogs/mobility-and-automotive/understanding-the-new-eu-battery-regulation https://www.tuvsud.com/en-us/resource-centre/blogs/mobility-... [3] https://www.nyc.gov/site/fdny/news/Y40203/fdny-warns-lithium-ion-batteries-now-leading-cause-fires-fire-deaths-new-york https://www.nyc.gov/site/fdny/news/Y40203/fdny-warns-lithium... [4] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fdny-is-trying-to-curb-lithium-ion-battery-fires-but-online-sellers-may-be-putting-new-yorkers-at-risk/ar-AA1uL2pY https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fdny-is-trying-to-curb-lit...

metacritic12 2y ago
The incoming administration doesn't seem to really be pro upregulating anything. In fact core members of their team believe the firefighters have had way too much political power already in building requirements, etc.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  They don't have to add regulations. They just have to suggest that Amazon actually enforce the regulations on the books, instead of allowing fake UL/ETL listings to be accepted as seems Amazon's common practice.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
    Just tell them that enforcing these regulations will hurt Bezos who owns the Washington Post.
    - Syonyk 2y ago
      There shouldn't have to be any political reasons at all to enforce safety testing listings, and I would actively discourage anyone from taking that path regardless of their views on any given administration. Far too many Chinese vendors just treat the "UL circle" as a required marking to forge, along with everything else they're forging on the items. http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te... is a good teardown that highlights the problems with the fakes. Amazon has had more than enough chances to solve this problem somehow or another, and it's clear they do not care about it at this point. They cannot claim ignorance after a decade of people highlighting the problems to them. As much as I don't like Walmart, I'd go to Walmart over Amazon for anything electronic (realistically, I'll buy NewEgg or B&H Photo for most things), because I have somewhat more faith in Walmart's supply chains to actually get me the thing I'm buying, vs "binned product fraud" that seems to be Amazon's bread and butter these days. "Fraudulent markings on poorly designed, unsafe electronics that lack all the safety systems that the markings indicate exist" isn't a political problem. It's a basic consumer safety problem.
      - ak217 2y ago
        Walmart has the same exact marketplace sellers and the same exact problems as Amazon (unless perhaps you go to their brick and mortar stores). The only solution is to shop for only brands that are known to be good and have a reputation to protect, which of course doesn't scale very well beyond our personal preferences.
        reginald78 2y ago
        While they make it a pain and constantly reset it, it is still possible to set the filter for Walmart only on their website. I'm not sure shopping for known good brands works since counterfeits are so prevalent and many third party sellers on walmart seem to just be running an Amazon reshipping service.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  It’s time to enforce these on state and state compact levels tbh.
- parineum 2y ago
  Tariffs are regulations.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Depending on which requirement they mean, that case is actually interesting. There's a good video from Not Just Bikes about it https://youtu.be/j2dHFC31VtQ https://youtu.be/j2dHFC31VtQ ("How American Fire Departments are Getting People Killed")
  - spankalee 2y ago
    This is a great video. The main point is that fire departments oppose bike lanes and safer street designs because of their unnecessarily giant fire trucks.
floatrock 2y ago
It's important to differentiate a "Battery Home Storage" system like a powerwall, an EV, or even a bunch of stackable ecoflow's sold at Costco from small-enough-to-be-hackable e-bikes and scooters. Asphalt and gasoline are both "petroleum products", but completely different worlds. The NYC problems are caused largely by stores and race-to-the-bottom retailers doing DIY spot-welding, homebrew extending of battery packs with the cheapest cells found off aliexpress (and skipping the engineerey-bits like cell testing and cell balancing), and going for the cheapest chargers that skip things like a BMS or any regulator circuitry because it shaves a few bucks in power ICs. You'll see these things in the $100-1000 battery market. Your powerwalls and EV's are expensive enough that they probably didn't have to cut those corners. Plus the installation should be permitted and installed. I'd love to have Amazon require UL certification for anything with burn-the-house-down risk, but this defeats the whole purpose of the cheap-off-the-boat business model of Amazon so that won't happen. "We're just a marketplace, sellers should be able to sell whatever they want." Besides the outright fraud on there, there's also subtle fakery like "UL Certified" electronics where if you take the time to lookup the certification number, you see all that's actually certified is the steel box meets UL "steel box" box standards, nothing about what's actually inside.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  UL is also not the be all and end all. You can build a UL certified pack with pretty shit cells. The most important aspect of a good battery is just use good quality cells that don't blow up. LG produced a bad batch a few years ago and caused a bunch of fires, while other batteries in the same circumstance were perfectly fine.
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    Cell quality is one thing, but it is also possible and necessary to ensure that cell failures do not cause a thermal cascade that causes adjacent cells to fail. The whole "pack caught fire because of one cell" thing is optional. Ideally a catastrophic cell failure results in some venting of gas and a bunch of blown fuses at the cell interconnect level.
ortusdux 2y ago
I'd like to see wider adoption of battery swaps. This would mostly solve the problems you describe. https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/
whoitwas 2y ago
The only way I could see this being regulated by the incoming admin is if tariffs make the batteries too expensive which would only decrease the scope. The cult claims to want to eliminate all government regulation.
- gorby91 2y ago
  I feel like tariffs may make the problem worse as the cheaper the battery, the smaller the tariff hit, and so people may be incentivised to go even further down the quality ladder
  - whoitwas 2y ago
    Thinking about it, this sounds spot on.
oulipo 2y ago
Indeed there's been a LOT of e-bike battery fires, so that's why with designers and engineers in France we've spent some time designing a battery casing that efficiently contains explosions and flames, to safeguard your home, you can check it here if interested! (it's also a repairable battery, so it saves CO2 compared to a standard battery over the long term. Oh, and we're in the process of doing the UL certification right now) https://get.gouach.com https://get.gouach.com
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  This looks great! User-swappable cells, fire-proof casing, convenient handle. Price is still competitive. I'm currently charging my eBike battery at home in the oven, to contain thermal runaway should it ever happen. This thing would solve this.
  - oulipo 2y ago
    Thanks so much!! Appreciated
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  I've got a tern e-bike with a Bosch motor, I love taking it on long rides. You've made a compelling case for replacing the existing battery, but what does the story look like for replacing cells in 5 years? Do I have to replace them all at once? One at a time as they fail? Also, how swappable or parallel are the batteries? I'd love to be able to have two batteries for days when I want to ride 100 miles. My existing Bosch battery only has a ~60 mile range and I'd love to push that up. Also, do they have a usb port on the battery for power? Running lights, charging my phone, or powering a GoPro from the bike battery would be so helpful.
  - oulipo 2y ago
    Yes! It will work, and you can also combine it to have a dual battery setup
    - 2y ago

metacritic12 2y ago

The incoming administration doesn't seem to really be pro upregulating anything. In fact core members of their team believe the firefighters have had way too much political power already in building requirements, etc.

Syonyk 2y ago
They don't have to add regulations. They just have to suggest that Amazon actually enforce the regulations on the books, instead of allowing fake UL/ETL listings to be accepted as seems Amazon's common practice.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
  Just tell them that enforcing these regulations will hurt Bezos who owns the Washington Post.
  - Syonyk 2y ago
    There shouldn't have to be any political reasons at all to enforce safety testing listings, and I would actively discourage anyone from taking that path regardless of their views on any given administration. Far too many Chinese vendors just treat the "UL circle" as a required marking to forge, along with everything else they're forging on the items. http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te... is a good teardown that highlights the problems with the fakes. Amazon has had more than enough chances to solve this problem somehow or another, and it's clear they do not care about it at this point. They cannot claim ignorance after a decade of people highlighting the problems to them. As much as I don't like Walmart, I'd go to Walmart over Amazon for anything electronic (realistically, I'll buy NewEgg or B&H Photo for most things), because I have somewhat more faith in Walmart's supply chains to actually get me the thing I'm buying, vs "binned product fraud" that seems to be Amazon's bread and butter these days. "Fraudulent markings on poorly designed, unsafe electronics that lack all the safety systems that the markings indicate exist" isn't a political problem. It's a basic consumer safety problem.
    - ak217 2y ago
      Walmart has the same exact marketplace sellers and the same exact problems as Amazon (unless perhaps you go to their brick and mortar stores). The only solution is to shop for only brands that are known to be good and have a reputation to protect, which of course doesn't scale very well beyond our personal preferences.
      - reginald78 2y ago
        While they make it a pain and constantly reset it, it is still possible to set the filter for Walmart only on their website. I'm not sure shopping for known good brands works since counterfeits are so prevalent and many third party sellers on walmart seem to just be running an Amazon reshipping service.
aaomidi 2y ago
It’s time to enforce these on state and state compact levels tbh.
parineum 2y ago
Tariffs are regulations.
viraptor 2y ago
Depending on which requirement they mean, that case is actually interesting. There's a good video from Not Just Bikes about it https://youtu.be/j2dHFC31VtQ https://youtu.be/j2dHFC31VtQ ("How American Fire Departments are Getting People Killed")
- spankalee 2y ago
  This is a great video. The main point is that fire departments oppose bike lanes and safer street designs because of their unnecessarily giant fire trucks.

floatrock 2y ago

It's important to differentiate a "Battery Home Storage" system like a powerwall, an EV, or even a bunch of stackable ecoflow's sold at Costco from small-enough-to-be-hackable e-bikes and scooters. Asphalt and gasoline are both "petroleum products", but completely different worlds. The NYC problems are caused largely by stores and race-to-the-bottom retailers doing DIY spot-welding, homebrew extending of battery packs with the cheapest cells found off aliexpress (and skipping the engineerey-bits like cell testing and cell balancing), and going for the cheapest chargers that skip things like a BMS or any regulator circuitry because it shaves a few bucks in power ICs. You'll see these things in the $100-1000 battery market. Your powerwalls and EV's are expensive enough that they probably didn't have to cut those corners. Plus the installation should be permitted and installed. I'd love to have Amazon require UL certification for anything with burn-the-house-down risk, but this defeats the whole purpose of the cheap-off-the-boat business model of Amazon so that won't happen. "We're just a marketplace, sellers should be able to sell whatever they want." Besides the outright fraud on there, there's also subtle fakery like "UL Certified" electronics where if you take the time to lookup the certification number, you see all that's actually certified is the steel box meets UL "steel box" box standards, nothing about what's actually inside.

Panzer04 2y ago
UL is also not the be all and end all. You can build a UL certified pack with pretty shit cells. The most important aspect of a good battery is just use good quality cells that don't blow up. LG produced a bad batch a few years ago and caused a bunch of fires, while other batteries in the same circumstance were perfectly fine.
- 0_____0 2y ago
  Cell quality is one thing, but it is also possible and necessary to ensure that cell failures do not cause a thermal cascade that causes adjacent cells to fail. The whole "pack caught fire because of one cell" thing is optional. Ideally a catastrophic cell failure results in some venting of gas and a bunch of blown fuses at the cell interconnect level.

ortusdux 2y ago

I'd like to see wider adoption of battery swaps. This would mostly solve the problems you describe. https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/

whoitwas 2y ago

The only way I could see this being regulated by the incoming admin is if tariffs make the batteries too expensive which would only decrease the scope. The cult claims to want to eliminate all government regulation.

gorby91 2y ago
I feel like tariffs may make the problem worse as the cheaper the battery, the smaller the tariff hit, and so people may be incentivised to go even further down the quality ladder
- whoitwas 2y ago
  Thinking about it, this sounds spot on.

oulipo 2y ago

Indeed there's been a LOT of e-bike battery fires, so that's why with designers and engineers in France we've spent some time designing a battery casing that efficiently contains explosions and flames, to safeguard your home, you can check it here if interested! (it's also a repairable battery, so it saves CO2 compared to a standard battery over the long term. Oh, and we're in the process of doing the UL certification right now) https://get.gouach.com https://get.gouach.com

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
This looks great! User-swappable cells, fire-proof casing, convenient handle. Price is still competitive. I'm currently charging my eBike battery at home in the oven, to contain thermal runaway should it ever happen. This thing would solve this.
- oulipo 2y ago
  Thanks so much!! Appreciated
ternnoburn 2y ago
I've got a tern e-bike with a Bosch motor, I love taking it on long rides. You've made a compelling case for replacing the existing battery, but what does the story look like for replacing cells in 5 years? Do I have to replace them all at once? One at a time as they fail? Also, how swappable or parallel are the batteries? I'd love to be able to have two batteries for days when I want to ride 100 miles. My existing Bosch battery only has a ~60 mile range and I'd love to push that up. Also, do they have a usb port on the battery for power? Running lights, charging my phone, or powering a GoPro from the bike battery would be so helpful.
- oulipo 2y ago
  Yes! It will work, and you can also combine it to have a dual battery setup
  - 2y ago