By Sayon Deb, Director of Insights, UL Requirements & Engagement
In simply 5 years, lithium-ion battery fires linked to e-mobility gadgets have advanced from a fringe threat right into a mainstream security and legal responsibility disaster – significantly in dense city areas, like New York Metropolis, the place adoption of those gadgets has outpaced regulatory safeguards.
Along with the apparent public security risk, e-mobility battery associated fires symbolize a major and increasing legal responsibility publicity for insurers, property managers, and metropolis companies. Our newest report – developed in collaboration with Oxford Economics – units out to reply a extra elementary query: What is that this disaster actually costing town?
The reply, conservatively estimated, is as much as $519 million in mixed human and financial loss between 2019 and 2023. This determine contains fatalities, accidents, and structural property injury
Why Now? Why New York?
The dramatic rise in hearth incidents – an estimated eightfold improve from 21 in 2019 to as many as 187 incidents in 2023 – correlates strongly with the inflow of low-cost, uncertified e-bikes and scooters. New York Metropolis’s distinctive mixture of visitors congestion, delivery-based gig work, and dense multi-family housing has made it a case research in how shortly innovation can outstrip threat administration.
Information from the Fireplace Division of New York, the Shopper Product Security Fee, and UL Options’ Lithium-Ion Battery Fireplace Incident Database shaped the muse of our modeling. This helped us generate incident estimates of fatalities, accidents, and structural properties damages.
Oxford Economics translated these incident experiences into price estimates utilizing a rigorous, conservative methodology by making use of federal valuation metrics for lack of life and harm. Fatality prices had been calculated utilizing the U.S. Division of Transportation’s Worth of a Statistical Life, set at $13.2 million per life as of 2023. Non-fatal harm prices had been derived as severity-weighted fractions of that worth, starting from minor harm to important harm, in accordance with DOT and Workplace of Administration and Funds financial steering.
Our evaluation then built-in structural hearth price benchmarks from each Triple-I and the Nationwide Fireplace Safety Affiliation. Triple-I’s information was significantly necessary in defining the upper-bound estimates for property loss. Claims information on the typical insurance coverage payout for residential hearth injury supplied a grounded, actuarial counterweight to NFPA’s generalized nationwide averages.
This dual-source strategy allowed us to seize a extra real looking vary of possible losses throughout totally different housing sorts, from NYCHA public items to personal properties.
A rising blind spot for insurers
From a risk-modeling standpoint, e-mobility hearth incidents don’t map simply to standard insurance coverage classes. Many e-mobility customers, significantly gig economic system employees, depend on leased, used, or modified e-bikes and e-scooters to satisfy supply calls for. A few of these gadgets are powered by third-party or uncertified batteries or, in some situations, comprise second-hand elements. This creates a messy threat surroundings through which it’s laborious to know who owns what, the way it has been maintained, or the way it’s getting used. Furthermore, fires ensuing from these gadgets typically fall exterior the scope of normal product warranties or producer duty. This makes it troublesome to find out who’s accountable when one thing goes incorrect.
For insurers, this presents a rising blind spot. Conventional assumptions round property and contents protection didn’t embody high-risk gadgets charged in hallways or shared residing areas or for ignition sources that aren’t a part of typical product recall channels.
A $300 imported battery with no certification can set off a six-figure declare, and people dangers have gotten extra widespread.
The Path Ahead
Regulatory momentum is bettering. New York Metropolis’s Native Regulation 39, signed in 2023, bans the sale and lease of uncertified e-mobility gadgets. In July 2024, New York Governor Hochul enacted further statewide measures to assist battery security and person schooling. Federal laws aimed toward establishing nationwide security necessities for lithium-ion batteries utilized in e-bikes and e-scooters is making its manner by means of Congress. Whereas these are optimistic steps, enforcement and consciousness stay uneven, leaving vital gaps in client safety and threat mitigation.
From our perspective at ULSE, a multi-pronged technique is important:
- Higher enforcement of security requirements for batteries and chargers.
- Extra strong public schooling on secure charging practices.
- Commerce-in and swap packages that encourage supply employees to discard unsafe batteries.
- Underwriting fashions that contemplate gadget certification, client conduct, and constructing sort.
- Improved incident reporting frameworks that allow cities and insurers to gather higher information and subsequently higher observe threat publicity.
With higher information, smarter requirements, and extra coordinated public-private motion, the way forward for e-mobility will thrive with security at its middle.
Mr. Deb shall be among the many threat and insurance coverage business thought leaders talking at Triple-I’s Joint Business Discussion board (JIF) in Chicago on June 18, 2025. It’s not too late to register to attend this insight-driven occasion.
