I've got a fair amount of experience with ebikes at this point. Tl;dr, the real estate crisis forced me to move somewhere distant and hilly. I use one now as my daily driver.
Ebikes are here to stay. They're everywhere.More and more are ending up as part of CBS' donation stream. And - some people really need them.
Something Gordon left out: the #1 culprit in battery fires, outside of situations where the battery or charger are damaged, is low-grade chargers.
A properly engineered charger will have circuitry that senses battery states and adjusts its output accordingly, many also feature internal fans to regulate heat. Such chargers are expensive, on the order of five times moreso than cheap, underbuilt chargers. Cheaper, and a few rush-to-market ebike manufacturers, will skimp on the charger to lower costs or hit a production window. Batteries by themselves, not in any kind of charging state, rarely if ever spontaneously combust, UL listed or not. It's charging that's the weak link.
Nobody should ever have to strategically plug and unplug a battery, the charger should be properly designed to handle every possible battery state. manually managing power cycles is only a necessity when dealing with questionable or unknown chargers (which TBH a CBS probably will be).
I think, simplifying, the flow is as follows:
Determine insurance and hazardous material compliance requirements.
- If such requirements encumber you, determine if you can accommodate
them.
- Craft a shop policy around charging and storing batteries. This should
involve a fireproof chamber for any batteries requiring long-term storage, and a fireproof area for charging. For defense-in-depth or if you're especially paranoid, there could be a policy against batteries being left to charge at all if no staff are present. Make certain to have fire extinguishers that are properly rated.
- Realize that most problems with ebikes have nothing to do with the "e"
components. They're 90% just bicycles. A great deal can be done for them addressing the mechanical issues alone.
- Realize that even electronic problems can in most cases be treated with
a mechanical mindset; process of elimination by itself can isolate faulty components, which in most cases can be simply swapped out for a new part
a mechanical process.
Craft a policy addressing deeper electronic issues. For instance, whether
or not you get into the weeds rewinding stators, using a programming cable to alter controller settings, or soldering anything may depend on your staff or volunteer competence. If you don't have anyone with electronics experience, you may want to relegate your processes exclusively to the mechanical, as defined above. Keep in mind that even if you do have knowledgeable and willing personnel, some of these deeper diagnostics and repairs can be huge time sinks, and you may want to avoid them on that basis alone.
- Lastly, start having fun in a whole new region of capabilities and creativity!
I've seen some of the coolest bike designs and ideas come from CBS environments, and we all know better than most LBS that default, factory bike design can be pretty stale and underperformant. I look forward to seeing what CBS end up doing with old ebikes over time once they become knowledgable and comfortable with the tech.
~cyclista Nicholas