All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

In our daily work as we deal with bicycle safety, technology and user manuals we come across lots of safety risks. The most frequent ones are published in articles of the leading German special-interest magazines TOUR – Europas Rennrad-Magazin Nr. 1, BIKE – Das Mountainbike Magazin Europas Nr. 1 and E-Bike – Das Pedelec-Magazin to make this information important for the sector accessible to a wider public.

For many years now the Eurobike Show Daily accompanying the annual international Eurobike Show has given us the opportunity to publish our perspective on major developments in the cycle industry in full-page articles.

We also speak regularly in independent lectures about all topics relating to bicycle technology and bicycle market. In addition, we are regularly cited by further special-interest magazines or trade journals as well as more and more by radio and television and in their media reports, which shows us that we are completely right with our information. The section NEWS informs you about the latest news from our specialist fields. The reports and publications of this section are listed chronologically or according to topics of interest.

RadMarkt.de 2017/02/09
Reading time 1:30 minutes

E-bike shop in Hanover destroyed in fire – Zedler warns of blanket judgements on pedelec batteries

For Hanover’s police it’s an exploded pedelec battery that caused a major fire on Tuesday, February 7, 2017, in which a downtown bicycle shop was completely destroyed. According to the police, the fire had broken out in the specialist shop for e-bikes at the raised ground floor of a car park building at Osterstrasse.

The loss caused by the flames in the building is provisionally estimated by the police at 500,000 Euro. Meanwhile, the parking levels have been reopened.

Now, the publicly appointed and sworn in expert, graduate engineer Dirk Zedler, warns of marking down pedelecs as dangerous in general. According to him, the fire had not yet been extinguished completely, when media and private individuals already started questioning the safety of pedelec batteries in general; in his opinion it would be better to keep calm: Blanket speculations on the safety of pedelec batteries based on this event of loss alone are not reasonable.

He is convinced that not all vehicle batteries can be measured by the same yardstick: "We know that various reputed battery manufacturers use every technology available to successfully prevent their products from malfunction. On the other side we had to state that the shop in question offers complete vehicles, conversion kits, batteries from little known suppliers as well as tuning kits on their website. With some of these products the statutory guide values for the legal operation of pedelecs and further vehicles on public roads can most probably not be fulfilled. This raises doubts as to the safety awareness of the shop. Final statements cannot be given until the official findings as to investigations of the causes of fire will be available."

Author: bz

Read the entire article here.

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