The moral and constitutional problems of federal mandates and subsidies for “electric vehicles” and “green tech” schemes are manifest and numerous, but the practical horrors of these centrally-planned, politically-pushed “products” only now are appearing on many “radar screens.”
For example, in December, I got to write for MRCTV about the inherent fire risks of EVs. Now, we see this…
One of the most prominent organizations promoting so-called “sustainable energy solutions” – i.e. electric vehicles, solar schemes, and unreliable wind farms, to name a few – just BANNED electric bikes and scooters inside its Golden, Colorado headquarters due to… FIRE RISKS.
The org is called The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); as Electrek’s Micah Toll tells us, it is federally funded, and, also as he explains, this big promoter of electric bikes just told workers and visitors that bringing their vaunted “e-bikes” and scooters inside the building is a big no-no.
“According to the NREL’s fire marshal Nicholas Bartlett, micromobility devices such as electric scooters and bikes are no longer permitted to be charged or stored in the buildings.”
Enjoy thinking about that if you live in an apartment building and can imagine how many tenants near you might store such “e-vehicles” inside their pads.
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Toll quotes Bartlett, who explicitly warned people at NREL:
“The data in the past few years shows an alarming trend of injuries and deaths, as demonstrated by entities such as NYFD and the UL Fire Safety Research Institute. The fires and explosions are attributed to a wide variety of causes such as mismatched chargers, overcharging, uncertified/Listed batteries, poor manufacturing quality, home made devices, etc. We cannot necessarily control what people purchase and use, but in some instances we are able to put restrictions on where and how an activity can be done (and we routinely do for everything from experiments with chemicals to fall protection).”
Indeed, for reference, we can visit my September 5, 2023, MRCTV piece, and its quote from the Institute for Energy Research:
“Not only are there more fires due to lithium-ion batteries in E-bikes and in electric vehicles, but they are far more intense and difficult to put out than other fires, burning with an energy that is twice that of a normal fire. The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. And, last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries in e-bikes, electric vehicles and other devices. The fire commissioner warned New Yorkers that such devices typically explode in such a way that renders escape impossible. Further, in just three years, lithium-ion battery fires have surpassed those started by cooking and smoking as the most common causes of fatal fires in New York City.”
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Such horrible statistics, reflective of personal tragedies and financial loss, are common, worldwide.
In 2021, the government of Toronto, Canada, banned the storage of e-scooters in apartment complexes.
Two weeks ago, that same city saw a terrible fire in its subway system, caused by… and e-bike.
The London Fire Brigade recently revealed that it has responded to “one e-scooter or e-bike fire every two days since the start of 2023.”
And, though London Transport banned e-scooters on the Tube and buses in 2021, the central-planners pushed on people electric BUSES, themselves, seeing, yep, a massive electric-double-decker bus fire there, last week.
If private businesses operated in this way, and put their customers at such insane levels of risk and higher expense to get from point A to point B, those businesses would go bankrupt.
But the feds keep taking our money, issuing automobile “regulations” (better known as threats), and embracing the darkness of authoritarianism, rather than leaving us alone.
By the way, as Electrek’s Toll notes, NREL has 2,600 employees, its budget last year was $783.5 million, and one can see at NREL’s website that it is a division of the US Department of Energy and its funding comes from us taxpayers, taken away by the feds, and handed to NREL without our real consent.
If our righteous anger over being manhandled and misled and robbed and threatened could be turned into a source of fuel, it’s possible that America would, once more, lead the way as the world’s largest energy producer.
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