The electric scooter giant, Lime, recalled recalling scooters while some feared to ignite

This statement followed questions from the Washington Post about Lime's scooters catching fire. Although company officials said in an interview that Lime had recalled about 2,000 scooters, the risk of burns and fires was only real in a very small percentage of cases. The company said it removed a much larger number of streets as a precaution.

"All vulnerable scooters have been quickly removed from traffic, which has a minimal impact on services serving our markets in Los Angeles, San Diego and Lake Tahoe," the company said in its statement. "At no time have runners or members of the public been put in danger."

[Class-action lawsuit accuses e-scooter companies of ‘gross negligence’]

At the same time, the company acknowledged that it could face ongoing challenges. He said he received an unconfirmed report that another scooter model used "could also be vulnerable to battery failures".

And he said that, in an independent problem, he is trying to find out if some of his scooters "can sometimes break when they are subjected to repeated abuse". The company said it was possible for these scooters "to crack or break if they were avoided at high speed."

Before Lime's statement Wednesday, some employees expressed internal concerns about the company's ability to manage scooters against security risks, according to a Lime mechanic who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal for commenting publicly. The mechanic provided images of Slack internal messages in which another employee also raises concerns.

"I feel that these scoots, or the product as a whole, should be removed from the market until they can be handled and operated safely," wrote the other employee in the room. mechanics ". "I understand that scooters are consumable and replaceable, but are we now resigned to saying the same for the safety of employees and customers?"

According to a department report, firefighters were called in August at the company's Lake Tahoe facility after a scooter fire.

Like many of his competitors, Lime has raced across the country in recent months, dropping his vehicles in dozens of cities. Scooter start-ups have become powerful forces at the local level, prompting city officials to rewrite the regulations by promising to share quality data and reduce traffic.

But the rapid growth of businesses has come at a price, according to critics. Emergency room physicians have reported a slight rise in serious injuries – including head trauma and fractures – since the appearance of electric scooters in the country's streets. Critics have raised concerns that some scooter companies have failed to properly maintain their vehicles, most of which were designed for personal and non-general use.

[Scooter use is rising in major cities. So are trips to the emergency room.]

In response to critics, the scooter industry emphasized that safety was its top priority and that cars were causing far more deaths and injuries than scooters.

"Scooters are a new mode of transportation and lime, as well as the micromobility industry, remains committed to ensuring everyone can drive safely," said Lime in his release.

Lime said the battery problem concerned a scooter brand manufactured by Segway mobility company Ninebot. Segway did not respond to requests for comments. The lime stated that some of the solder surrounding the battery could have weak spots, resulting in a short circuit of the battery.

External cases that hold Lime scooter batteries often suffer damage when vehicles hit the ground and hit objects. Tim Ellis, a metallurgical engineer whose battery recycling company RSR Technologies said he was unable to make a decision without directly examining the battery, said damage could make a lithium ion battery more likely to catch fire.

"Anything you do that juggles, vibrates, hits or mechanically hits will absolutely increase the possibility of failure," Ellis said. "The box in which the battery is located looks really heavy. This suggests that it can handle a tremendous amount of damage, but at some level, everything breaks. "

Within the company, some employees are worried about the safety of their products for months.

In an interview, the Lime mechanic explained that he feared that people paid by Lime to recharge their scooters at home overnight, called "juicers", may not be aware of the risks. d & # 39; fire.

The employee cited an internal Slack message provided to The Post in which a lime manager ordered an employee to retrieve a "red code" scooter – abbreviated for scooters with battery failure – at a centrifuge center in August. When the centrifuge refused to hand over the vehicle, the manager asked the employee to "warn him that it was urgent", but did not mention the threat of fire.

"These people hook up their scooters at home at night and fall asleep thinking they are safe and just won $ 15 easy," said the employee. "When I asked my officials if we were going to tell them, all I got was shrugging and I do not know."

Lime did not comment on the mechanic's claim, but said in his own statement that the Segway Ninebot scooters would be charged only to Lime's "scooter storage facilities" and "would no longer be available to Juicers after one hour of loading. also employs 24-hour global charging facilities with employees trained to handle "these particular batteries".

The only known case where a Lime scooter caused a fire was in the company's facilities at Lake Tahoe on August 27th. Upon arrival of the fire department, a burning electric scooter was destroyed with the aid of a fire extinguisher and placed in a rear parking lot, according to the incident report of the fire service.

The vehicle was still smoking, the battery periodically re-erected in flames, indicates the report, its vapors filling the air with a pungent chemical odor.

A night employee told investigators that the fire had started with "a loud bang", prompting him to enter a "scooter repair room" where he had witnessed "flames from the battery area of ​​a scooter as well as an adjacent chair, "according to the incident report.

The fire prompted the fire department to ask the company to remove all scooters suspected of having defective batteries in the parking lot "to prevent scooter fire inside the building".