How Ted Cruz is preventing safer e-bike batteries in the US

It’s a widely held opinion that improving safety in lithium-ion batteries used for electric bikes and e-scooters is generally considered to be a good thing. And yet you may be surprised at why Texas senator Ted Cruz is obstructing a bipartisan bill to improve battery safety in the US. Believe it or not, it largely comes down to a strange culture war over gas stoves.

While e-bike battery fires are exceedingly rare compared to the millions of units charged every day in the US, such fires still cost American lives each year. The main culprit is the influx of poorly constructed lithium-ion batteries flowing into the US, many of which have cut corners in production quality in order to reduce costs for use in ultra-budget products. The phenomenon is rarely seen in higher-quality e-bikes due to the voluntary adoption of higher-quality production methods.

Even so, the issue of lithium-ion battery fires is an important one, and Washington has taken notice. A pair of House and Senate bills intending to give the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) the mandate to regulate lithium-ion battery safety standards have been progressing with rare bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. However, as reported by The City, Senator Cruz has been working to scuttle the Senate bill.

As the ranking minority member of the Commerce Committee where the Senate bill was pending, Cruz added an amendment that the bill’s sponsors said “would gut the consumer agency’s ability to regulate the safety of the potentially volatile batteries.”

And it all comes back to gas stoves.

Nearly two years ago, CPSC commissioner Richard Trumka floated the idea of reducing emissions in home stoves. Gas stoves have been proven to be harmful to the health of occupants in a home and also contribute to emissions that exacerbate climate change. The idea to further regulate them was rejected by the CPSC, but not before it inspired a gas stove crusade among many conservative firebrand politicians such as Cruz.

Since then, Cruz has come out strongly against the CPSC, and has labeled the proposal that would give the CPSC a mandate to regulate lithium-ion batteries as an “anti-gas stove” initiative.

Both bills are concerned purely with lithium-ion battery safety regulations and neither contain any mention of stoves.

Safety certifications such as UL-listing for batteries and electric bicycle systems has become a more popular feature among many leading electric bicycle companies in the US, though there is still no federal mandate for such certifications. Some cities, such as New York City, have passed their own UL certification requirements. Many organizations and universities have also either passed regulations regarding safety certifications or have outright banned the parking and/or charging of electric bicycles on their premises.

Such cases of battery fires in the US are still quite low in comparison to use figures, but a single fire can still prove lethal, and the rapidly growing rate of e-bike adoption has led to increasing calls for some type of federal safety standards to stem the flow of inferior quality battery cells.

Other countries, such as China, have already instituted national standards for e-bike battery safety. Now with increasing obstruction from conservative politicians such as Ted Cruz engaging in strange gas stove crusades, it appears that the US is still set to lag behind.