FDNY Commissioner Hails House Passage of E-Bike Battery Safety Bill as Safety Breakthrough

The passage this week of a House bill that aims to bring federal oversight over the sale of e-bike batteries is a game-changer in the ongoing effort to crack down on unsafe and potentially volatile devices that have triggered hundreds of fires across New York City, city and federal officials say.

On Wednesday the U.S. House, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 378 to 34, passed HR 1797 , a bill sponsored by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx) that would require the Consumer Product Safety Commission to create its first-ever safety standards for micro-mobility devices and their batteries.

Torres says the effect of the law would be a prohibition on the sale of batteries that haven’t been certified as safe by a recognized test lab such as UL Solutions: “It will essentially ensure that lithium-ion batteries in the American market are safely manufactured. It would have the effect of rendering illegal poorly manufactured batteries mostly from China.”

The bill now has a very high chance of becoming a law: the Senate version is sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), has bipartisan support there, and is co-sponsored by her fellow New York Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who in his leadership role controls if and when it gets to the Senate floor for a vote.

“I look forward to getting it passed in the Senate and to the president’s desk immediately,” Gillibrand said in a statement released Thursday.

For city Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, whose department has for the last five years battled an increasing number of alarming lithium-ion battery triggered fires that have killed 29 New Yorkers and injured 447 more, the federal oversight she has long sought would change everything.

“Right now there are batteries coming in in the thousands in the mail that at point of sale are dangerous. It would remove that entirely,” she said. “If these are federally banned, they could be seized at the ports. They could be seized in the thousands rather than our efforts where they’re seized one by one,” she said of uncertified batteries.

As THE CITY reported Thursday, local laws passed aimed at curbing the scourge of e-bike battery fires have failed to stem the tide of uncertified batteries — the most vulnerable to conflagration — being sold online to New York City residents and in stores across the five boroughs.

THE CITY found that both the FDNY and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection have issued hundreds of summonses related to the sale of uncertified batteries and also the unsafe storage and charging of the devices, but again and again both on-line and brick-and-mortar retailers who’ve received multiple summonses have continued to flout the law with continued sales and unsafe conditions that are not addressed.

“It’s a numbers problem. If thousands upon thousands are being shipped here, we have to go find them one by one. That’s sort of an impossible challenge no matter what we throw at it,” Kavanagh said. “And online — they’re just too easy to get online. And even with those we can go after them but it takes weeks and months and it’s being sold in the interim.”

Kavanagh said by effectively barring the sale of uncertified batteries, the new law would in turn create a disincentive for the manufacturers of these devices to continue to manufacture them.

“There’s not a lot of incentive to make them if they’re seized. We’re hoping that that happens,” she said.

Torres said federal oversight is essential because so far, with the sellers of these devices, “There’s been no attempt at self policing. It has long been legal to sell fire hazards, ticking time bombs.”

He said he’s “supremely confident” the bill will be signed into law.

“I’m confident we’re going to get the legislation done in a matter of weeks or months,” he said. “It’s going to be done in 2024.”

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