Lyft Pulls Its Electric Bikes From the Bay Area After Four Catch on Fire

“Lyft’s Wednesday move to pull all its black and pink electric bikes from the East Bay, San Francisco and San Jose came after flammable battery packs or vandalism caused at least four bikes to catch fire,” reports the Bay Area Newsgroup: San Jose city officials are encouraged by the fact no one was injured when a bike caught fire there on Tuesday, said Colin Heyne, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation… “They have no intention of re-introducing the bikes until they know what the problem is and have fixed it,” Heyne said. “We’ll work with them to get a full picture of what they are doing to investigate these batteries and what they will go through for safety testing before they relaunch the bikes….” Representatives from Lyft reached out to the city on Wednesday after two fires were reported in San Francisco over the past week, he said, and told them it would deactivate the e-bikes until it could remove them from its fleet… Lyft spokeswoman Julie Wood declined to answer questions about the incidents, other than to say no one was injured…. Wood on Thursday didn’t respond to repeated questions from this news organization about whether there were any fires involving the e-bikes outside of San Francisco. Lyft told the paper at least one of the fires was causd by vandalism (and not a malfunctioning battery) but acknowledged they weren’t sure what caused the next two bike fires. One frequent cycler wondered why Lyft didn’t simply offer their customers regular (non-electric) bicycles? He told the newspaper that the disruption in service was frustrating — though “I understand the safety concern and I don’t want there to be a battery exploding between my legs when I’m riding the bike around.” The paper also notes reports that Lyft “pulled its black electric assist bikes in April after problems with the brakes caused some riders to careen over the handlebars.”