Rad Power’s E-Bikes Could Explode, Showing Your Tax Dollars Are Working
Rad Power e-bikes that do not meet UL standards have been involved in at least 31 fires, but the company won't offer refunds.
You may remember a while back that NYC created a trade-in scheme for delivery workers, whereby they could trade in any e-bikes that weren't certified by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and receive a new e-bike and two new UL-certified batteries—a win-win by all accounts. Well, the third-party company testing organization might actually be doing a great job. Enter Rad Power Bikes.
Federal watchdog, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), issued a warning on November 24th, which stated that batteries in certain Rad Power bikes can "ignite and explode" without warning. Now, usually only a few incidents happen before an emergency warning to immediately stop using a vehicle is issued, but this took a few. The lithium-ion batteries with model numbers RP-1304 and HL-RP-S1304 were linked to 31 reports of fire, which included 12 reports of property damage that came to a whopping $734,500, according to the UPSC report.
At the time of writing, I can only find four Rad Power e-bikes that meet UL certification, and those are the Radster Trail, Radster Road, RadWagon 5, and the RadExpand 5 Plus. All these models use a UL-certified 2271 lithium-ion battery pack.
If you own any of the following Rad Power bikes, stop using them immediately:
- RadCity High Step 4
- RadCity Step Thru 3
- RadRover High Step 5
- RadRover Step Thru 1
- RadRunner 2
- RadRunner 1
- RadRunner Plus
- RadWagon 4
If you own any of these bikes, well, you're screwed because Rad Power isn't issuing a refund or offering replacement batteries, citing the company's finances and the cost of a full recall. “Rad Power Bikes firmly stands behind our batteries and our reputation as leaders in the e-bike industry, and strongly disagrees with the C.P.S.C.’s characterization of certain Rad batteries as defective or unsafe,” the company said in a statement posted on its site.
The statement mentioned the proposed UL standards that some of its batteries meet; however, none of those batteries have dangerously malfunctioned. Instead, batteries that the company maintains were tested by "reputable, independent third-party labs." It sounds to me like the UL certification is working, so far.
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