Electric scooters and e-bikes are one of the UK’s fastest growing fire risks. In total:
At least 16 people across the UK have died as a result of e-bike or e-scooter fires since July 2022.
By May 2023, at least 190 people across the UK had been injured in e-bike fires. Many more have been injured since.
Up until the end of September 2024, there were three e-bike fires a week in London alone.
Electric scooter and E-bike fires are devastating. They are generally caused by the scooter or bike’s lithium-ion battery pack, which, if defective, can lead to a chain reaction called “thermal runaway”.
An average lithium-ion e-bike battery is said to contain as much explosive energy as six hand grenades. Within minutes of thermal runaway, homes can be destroyed and lives lost.
How can we ensure that members of the public are safe when buying and using e-bikes and scooters? And how can those who have suffered injury, lost their homes, or even loved ones at the hands of defective e-bike batteries secure justice for themselves and their families?
Claims in negligence
One way to hold the manufacturers of dangerous and defective e-bike batteries to account is to bring a claim against them in negligence.
Do manufacturers owe a duty of care?
Manufacturers of e-bikes and batteries owe a duty of care to consumers at common law. This duty of care was established in the landmark tort law decision in Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562.
The claimant, Mrs Donoghue, suffered personal injury after drinking ginger beer, purchased in a café, which contained a decomposed snail in the bottle. The House of Lords held that the manufacturer of the ginger a beer owed a duty to Mrs Donoghue, even though they did not have a direct contractual relationship with her.
Manufacturers of e-bike batteries will therefore owe a duty of care to e-bike purchasers in negligence, even where they have purchased the battery from a third-party supplier.
Claims in negligence are not restricted to the purchaser of the e-bike. Even where the injured party is not the direct consumer, they are still owed a duty of care by manufacturers of products, where the harm caused by the negligence production of the e-bike battery is foreseeable.
How we can help
