E-cycles are faster, heavier and more
deadly: As death toll shows, it’s time
to end them

They are motorcycles with an incendiary twist. Dangerous in many different ways.

See those little electric scooters in groceries stores and Walmart? That is the future for EVs. Our masters will tell everyone to get one and move to a 15-minute city. Those scooters do disassemble into 30-pound pieces so no trouble getting them up steps (/s).

Gas powered mopeds are new??? Has this chick been living under a rock for fifty years?

In Florida authorities have issued a special warning to Tesla owners. If the car even comes in contact with salt water, there is a likelihood of an electrical bridge made of salt crystals to form when the accumulated the water evaporates. Connecting the multiple cells and causing the lithium battery to spontaneously catch fire. Even when you are parked next to one you are out of luck.

After Hurricane Ian last year and this year's Hurricane "Sounds-like-it-should-be-married-to-Alec-Baldwin," numerous electric cars that had been exposed to seawater spontaneously burned, along with the houses their garages were attached to. Those who live at very low elevations in hurricane evacuation zones should forget about any e-vehicle, whether it has two or four wheels. Firefighters absolutely hate e-car fires, which can reignite either minutes or weeks after the initial fire. When they explode, lithium ion batteries burn at about 5,000 F., some 1,500 degrees hotter than a propane flame. Some e-bikes cost well above $5,000, can exceed 50 mph, and are too valuable to leave charging outside. So people bring these bikes and scooters into their own living rooms. Over the past month I've seen several dozen videos of e-bikes and e-scooter going up in fireworks in all sorts of inconvenient places, including elevators in motion. One scorched e-car that had absorbed 80,000 gallons of water, its battery inferno being put out several times was finally loaded onto the tow truck, which started back to the junk yard. The tow truck had to stop when the car caught fire again. I agree with the author: End all e-vehicles that aren't, like golf carts, based on lead acid batteries. They're expensive, dangerous toys, boutique transportation, useless for most Americans. There's too much danger in all but the tiniest Li-ion batteries. (And windows have been blown out of cars by overcharged, defective cellphone batteries.)

Ten people killed by a combination of mopeds and e-bikes in the past 3 years, in a city of what…11 million? Heavens! Just as with guns, the problem is people, not the bikes. Living in NYC is pure chaos. No amount of banning/regulatiing e-bikes is going to help that. You want an orderly city? Stop electing democrats. As for the e-bikes themselves, I love mine. It has enabled me to ride comfortably and safely in a city full of hills and inclines. But yes, you do have to understand how to ride them. Personally, I wouldn’t ride mine anywhere NYC, but I wouldn’t ride a regular bike there, either, due to the heavy congestion.

While I generally agree with the premise, one death, however tragic, shouldn't end the e-bike experiment. We don't do that for other vehicles. What SHOULD stop them is the risk of fires from the lithium.

They should be classified as motorcycles & require license plates, driver's license & insurance. They are not toys. The local governments that allow them to take up parking spaces & let anyone ride them should all be sued. The fire hazard issue is something else altogether. Very scary.

By all means let’s urge the government to ban anything that some people think may be risky (including speech). Question. What would NOT fall into that category?

Been thinking for a while that its crazy to classify them as bicycles and not motorcycles. Do they not have a motor? I see kids well under 15 everyday riding them in traffic just as a motorcycle. I assume there must be many accidents and deaths not being reported because they are E bikes. When I was a kid we got tickets for riding mini-bikes with motors (engines) smaller than most e-bikes.

Ms. Gelinas's article focuses more on bike wrecks than on the general fire hazards that e-bikes and e-scooters are. Yes, they are heavier than pedal powered bicycles; collisions will be more severe, same as with e-cars and trucks. (The ICE Hummer weighs 5,060 pounds; the e-Hummer weighs over 9,000 with a battery that weighs 3,000. Can you imagine how well that would burn?) In the last year in NYC alone there have been over ten people killed in house or apartment fires caused by e-scooters and e-bikes, not in collisions. Collisions can usually be avoided by pedestrians' and bikers' just paying attention. It's the fires that are much deadlier. The problem is the batteries, and the production of the raw materials for Li-ion batteries (lithium, cobalt, rare earths), arguably much worse for the earth than pumping petroleum for ICE vehicles. The biggest problem with e-vehicles is their tendency to burst into uncontrollable fire when exposed to salt water, when damaged, when manufactured poorly, when overcharged, when charged with an improper charger, or .... The fire hazards are too extreme. I don't see how any insurance company could afford to cover e-vehicles. If they could, coverage might have to be more expensive than a "Rolls Royce" private medical insurance policy. A new car battery frequently costs more than half the new car price, if it's available at all. In my area houses have burned down because e-cars burned in the garage or carport. E-cars should be stored under the stars in rock quarries, far from human habitation. That way, if they burn, they won't damage anything other than the valuable limestone. Elon Musk could make an ICE car that would put Porsche and Ferrari to shame. Why doesn't he? Why does he waste his time with these electrified white elephants? Sooner or later, they have to go away. And whoever manufactures them has to go out of business. Bad planning. Never listen to Al Gore.

The incidence of E-cycle injuries to pedestrians could be reduced substantially through the judicious, carefully timed, SUDDEN full opening of car doors in slow or non-moving dense traffic as the E-cycles weave back a forth through the traffic. Just a thought. Nothing that I personally would ever actually do !! ;-)