Ebike and E-Scooter Fires Are at Record Highs in the UK — Here's What Every Rider Needs to Know

Imagine parking your ebike in the hallway of your flat, plugging it in overnight, and waking up to find your home ablaze. It sounds dramatic — but for hundreds of UK households last year, that nightmare became reality. As The Guardian has revealed, 2025 was the worst year on record for ebike and e-scooter fires in Britain, and the numbers are stark enough to demand serious attention from anyone who owns, rides, or lives near one of these increasingly popular machines.

What the Figures Actually Show

According to The Guardian's investigation, at least 432 ebike fires and 147 e-scooter fires were recorded across the UK in 2025 — representing increases of 38% and 20% respectively on the previous year. These aren't minor incidents. Lithium-ion battery fires burn at extraordinary temperatures, can reignite hours after appearing to be extinguished, and produce toxic fumes that are lethal in enclosed spaces.

Fire and rescue services across the country have been flagging the problem for several years, but 2025 marks the point at which the data becomes impossible to dismiss. The London Fire Brigade — which has been at the forefront of raising the alarm — has repeatedly warned that the majority of these fires start during charging, often overnight when residents are asleep and escape routes may be blocked by the very vehicle that's on fire.

What makes this particularly troubling is that these figures almost certainly undercount the true scale of the problem. Many fires go unreported, are attributed to other causes, or occur in circumstances where the vehicle's involvement isn't immediately obvious. The real number is likely considerably higher.

Why This Is Happening Now

To understand the scale of the crisis, you need to understand the market that's created it. Ebikes and e-scooters have exploded in popularity over the past five years, driven by rising fuel costs, urban congestion, environmental awareness, and a post-pandemic shift in how people think about commuting. The UK market for electric micromobility grew by an estimated 40% between 2020 and 2024, with millions of machines now in circulation.

The problem is that this growth has outpaced regulation almost entirely. The UK market is flooded with cheap imported ebikes and e-scooters — many sold through online marketplaces — that carry substandard lithium-ion battery packs. These batteries may use inferior cells, lack proper battery management systems (BMS), or have been assembled without adequate quality controls.

A quality lithium-ion battery pack, properly engineered, is remarkably safe. But a cheap counterfeit or poorly manufactured equivalent can suffer from thermal runaway — a catastrophic chain reaction in which heat causes cells to fail in sequence, releasing enormous energy in seconds. Unlike a conventional fire, thermal runaway is extremely difficult to suppress. Water can actually make some lithium fires worse.

The secondary market compounds the problem further. Second-hand ebikes and e-scooters are frequently sold with damaged, degraded, or incompatible replacement batteries. A battery that looks fine externally may have internal damage from a previous crash or improper storage that makes it a ticking time bomb.

The Legal Landscape — and Its Glaring Gaps

Here is where things get genuinely complicated, and where the UK's regulatory framework reveals some serious weaknesses.

Product safety law in the UK is governed primarily by the General Product Safety Regulations 2005, which require that all consumer products placed on the market are safe. In theory, this should catch dangerous ebike batteries. In practice, enforcement is patchy, and the sheer volume of products entering the country through online platforms makes meaningful oversight extremely difficult.

The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) has powers to recall dangerous products and issue safety alerts, and it has used these powers in relation to specific ebike models and battery packs. However, critics — including consumer groups and fire services — argue that these interventions are reactive rather than preventative, and that the pace of enforcement lags dangerously behind the pace of the market.

There is currently no specific UK standard that all ebike batteries must meet before being sold. The closest applicable standard is EN 15194, which covers electrically power-assisted cycles, but compliance is not mandatory for all products sold in the UK, and many cheaper imports simply ignore it. Post-Brexit, the UK has diverged from EU product safety frameworks, and the Product Safety and Metrology etc. (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 left something of a patchwork in place that consumer advocates have long argued needs urgent reform.

For e-scooters, the legal picture is even murkier. Privately owned e-scooters remain illegal to use on public roads and pavements in Great Britain under the Road Traffic Act 1988 — they are classified as motor vehicles and require insurance, a licence, and compliance with construction standards that most cannot meet. Rental e-scooters operating under government-sanctioned trials are legal in participating areas, but private ownership occupies a legal grey zone that has left millions of users essentially unregulated.

This legal ambiguity matters for fire safety because it means there is no licensing regime, no mandatory safety inspection, and no insurance requirement that could be used to enforce minimum battery safety standards for private e-scooters. Owners are largely on their own.

What Riders and Owners Should Know Right Now

If you own an ebike or e-scooter, or are thinking of buying one, there are concrete steps you can take to dramatically reduce your risk.

When buying:

• Buy from reputable UK retailers with clear returns policies and verifiable after-sales support. Avoid buying solely on price from unknown online marketplaces.
• Check for UKCA or CE marking on the product and its battery. This doesn't guarantee safety, but its absence is a significant red flag.
• Look for compliance with EN 15194 (for ebikes) or UL 2849 (an internationally recognised e-bike safety standard). Ask retailers directly.
• Be extremely cautious with second-hand batteries. If you're buying a used machine, consider having the battery inspected by a qualified technician before use.

When charging:

• Never charge overnight or when you are asleep. This is the single most important piece of advice fire services give.
• Never charge in a hallway, stairwell, or any route that doubles as an escape route. If a fire starts, you need to be able to get out.
• Use only the charger supplied with your vehicle, or a verified compatible replacement from the manufacturer. Cheap third-party chargers are a major cause of battery fires.
• Charge in a cool, well-ventilated space — garages or outbuildings are preferable to inside the home where possible.
• Unplug the battery once charging is complete. Leaving batteries on charge indefinitely increases wear and risk.

At home:

• Install interlinked smoke alarms in every room, including where you store and charge your vehicle. The London Fire Brigade recommends interconnected alarms so that one trigger activates all of them.
• Consider a fireproof charging bag — these are widely available and can help contain a battery fire in its early stages.
• Know your building's fire evacuation plan. If you live in a flat or HMO, check that your landlord has conducted a proper fire risk assessment that accounts for lithium battery storage.

Looking Ahead — What Needs to Change

The record figures for 2025 should serve as a genuine wake-up call for policymakers, not just riders. The UK government has been consulting on product safety reform for several years, and the Product Safety and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 gave ministers new powers to update product safety requirements more rapidly. But the pace of legislative change has not matched the pace of the fire statistics.

There are three areas where reform is urgently needed. First, mandatory minimum safety standards for lithium-ion batteries in consumer micromobility products, with real enforcement teeth rather than voluntary compliance. Second, platform liability — online marketplaces that facilitate the sale of non-compliant products need to bear greater responsibility for what they sell. Third, clearer guidance for landlords and housing providers on managing the storage and charging of ebikes and e-scooters in multi-occupancy buildings, where the risks are concentrated and the consequences of a fire most severe.

The popularity of ebikes and e-scooters is not going to reverse — nor should it. These vehicles have a genuine role to play in reducing urban congestion and emissions. But a market built on cheap, unregulated hardware is storing up a crisis that 2025's record fire statistics have made impossible to ignore. The question now is whether government, industry, and consumers will act before the numbers get worse.

Source: The Guardian, 7 April 2026. Original reporting by The Guardian's investigations team.