The Guangdong Provincial Fire and Rescue Corps issued a residential fire prevention notice on March 2, emphasizing the need to raise awareness of fire prevention and strengthen the management of electric vehicles, and strictly prohibit parking or charging electric bicycles in areas that affect the evacuation of people, such as public foyers, evacuation passages, stairwells, and safety exits in residential buildings.
In recent years, the safety accidents of electric bicycles have increased at a rate that is visible to the naked eye. According to the statistics of the National Fire and Rescue Administration, a total of 2 electric bicycle fires will be reported nationwide in 202310,000, an increase of 17 compared to 20224%。
It is worth noting that people are not unfamiliar with all kinds of knowledge about fire safety, and all kinds of publicity in the society can be said to be overwhelming, but the problem has always been difficult to be effectively solved, and the key to this is probably that there are too many electric bicycles.
According to statistics, the number of two-wheeled electric bicycles in China has been at least 3500 million vehicles, an average of 1 in 4 people own an e-bike. This has led to the difficulty of implementing many management measures: there is a serious shortage of parking space, illegal charging pipes cannot be used, and grassroots governance units, including property management and neighborhood committees, are almost powerless to do anything about these in many cases.
The bigger problem is that there is no "way back" for the governance of electric bicycles. Considering the large volume of electric bicycles and the deep reliance of people on electric bicycles, it is impossible to ban electric bicycles. It is also impossible for society to return to the "pre-electric car era", and people can only be accompanied by electric bicycles for a long time.
Therefore, the governance of electric bicycles does need to gather huge strength, and it is not an exaggeration to call it a drastic move. For example, the new community needs to include the electric bicycle charging area in the planning, while the old community needs to readjust the area and convert some public areas into charging areas.
Whether it is a community or a public space, it must accept the reality that the public space needs to "make way" for e-bikes. There will definitely be some losses, such as the possibility of public green space and event venues. But for the sake of safety, this is the cost that must be paid, just like the large-scale renovation of the old community in the past period of time to set aside parking spaces, and now in order to solve the problem of electric bicycles, the society should also have such an awareness.
For example, Lanzhou issued an emergency notice on February 28 to include electric bicycle parking and charging facilities in the renovation of old residential areas. This is a kind of demonstration, in a variety of urban planning, community transformation, electric bicycles should be placed in a more conspicuous position, get high-standard care.
In addition, the problem with e-bikes is also the quality itself. On February 26, Beijing reported electric bicycle fire cases, and since February this year, a total of 28 electric bicycle fires have occurred in Beijing, including 9 cases in the parking and charging state, 9 cases in the uncharged state of parking, and 10 cases in the driving state.
It can be seen that irregular charging is not an inevitable condition for electric vehicle accidents, even if there is also a risk in normal use, which is actually related to the battery. Compared with traditional lead-acid batteries, lithium batteries have higher energy density and shorter charging time, but there is also a risk of electrolyte leakage, and the battery is prone to spontaneous combustion when the temperature is too high.
It can be seen that if the battery quality problem is not improved at the source, only changing the management itself may not be able to solve the problem. The mandatory national standard "Safety Technical Specifications for Lithium-ion Batteries for Electric Bicycles", which will be officially implemented in 2024, is also expected to promote the standardization of the industry.
But even so, considering that there are many electric bicycle manufacturers, there are many upstream and downstream businesses in various modifications and transformations, which also requires the market supervision department to form a dense supervision grid and improve the industry ecology as a whole, which is also a big challenge.
In any case, the tragic lesson of the "2.23" fire accident shows that the governance of electric bicycles is imminent, and considerable social resources need to be invested.
But if you think about it carefully, the governance of electric bicycles is not simply a burden, electric bicycles are green, small in size, low in cost, and its popularity is a targeted solution to urban congestion, pollution and other problems. Therefore, there is considerable benefit to tilting public resources (urban space, public policy, regulatory power, etc.) towards electric bicycles, and people do not have to hesitate anymore.
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