Posted on 04/04/2026 7:35:13 PM PDT by artichokegrower
SAN JOSE, Calif. - One person died Friday morning after trying to extinguish a fire caused by an e-bike’s rechargeable battery at a San Jose apartment, fire officials said.
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What’s amazing is that you can have chargers with widely different voltages and currents all with the same end on them. When you plug the high voltage charger into the low voltage toy or bike, you have a fried battery at best and often enough, a battery fire.
That CA law is terrible-—as usual for CA. The innocent people who do not own e-bikes in the other apartments are all in danger from the tech nerd owning one.
My area apartments one by one added to leases through the years “no water beds” “no grill use on balcony” “no aggressive dog breeds” and other good ideas.
Well at least the climate is saved.
Some brainiac needs to design and patent outdoor “charging lockers” for various high capacity LiON batteries...complete with individual metering charged to the user’s card.
IF I WERE THE LANDLORD OR THE INSURANCE COMPANY-—I WOULD SUE THE STATE
THIS MAY QUALIFY AS A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT
4 Sacramento firefighters injured by toxic fumes of EV battery fire
“That CA law is terrible-—as usual for CA. The innocent people who do not own e-bikes in the other apartments are all in danger from the tech nerd owning one.”
The deaths of a few innocent people here and there is a small price to pay for the opportunity to be a green virtue-signaler. It’s one of California’s “values”.
Motorcycles are probably safer. A gas-powered generator is okay too, just don’t run it indoors!
E-bikes...for those who are to weak to ride a bike and not manly enough for a motorcycle.
I didn’t know we have to be worried about ebike batteries, too.
Your comment is something I’m totally unaware, especially considering I’ve never had one of these “green” batteries.
I can’t imagine chargers being made with excessive voltages.
I do have a story that is way off topic. I had a couple “smart” battery chargers to recharge and off-grid battery. A battery to power 12v items where house current was not available. The smart chargers determined the batteries were no good after about a years service. So I would take them back to warranty them at Walmart, they would test them and find them OK. I had to argue like hell that they would not take a charge.
So I bought an old conventional analog charger. I took a battery that sat in a bone pile for a year that went through several freeze cycles. That battery tested at 14v, takes a charge with conventional charger and that was 3 years ago.
The smart chargers are not smart at all.
landlords cannot prohibit tenants from owning or storing e-bikes.
When rules get burned so do other things.
Anything which gets people outside doing any level of exercise is a good thing these days. On an e-bike, you can get as much of a workout as you like by adjusting the pedal-assist level (PAS), you’ll just go much further than you could on a regular bike. If you want a brutal workout, just set the level to zero. For instance, an afternoon ride might be 50-75 miles on an e-bike. On my newest bike, a Veloctric Temo, a heart rate monitor was included and the bike will automatically set the PAS level to maintain the target heart rate.
We went on a smell of smoke call in a person’s garage one time and it ended up that several of the kids had Power Wheels toys that were 12 or 24 volt and one kid had a scooter that was 36 or 48 volts and they all had the same connector end. It looked like the end you would find on a laptop charger. One of the Power Wheels batteries was just about to go critical.
I hear you on the battery chargers. The “smart” ones won’t charge a battery if it’s very low. Mine flags it as “sulfated bad battery” I put it on an old style charger and most will come up unless it’s really old.
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