Recall of DublinBikes electric battery packs due to overheating

— 396 users renting battery packs warned not to use or recharge them.
— Half of 1,600 DublinBikes have ‘hybrid’ electric function. 

Electric battery packs for DublinBikes, launched just three months ago, have been recalled due to overheating incidents in France.

JCDecaux, the advertising company which runs DublinBikes for Dublin City Council, said that there has been three overheating when charging incidents in Lyon.

The ‘hybrid’ battery system includes electric bicycles mixed in with the fleet of non-electric DublinBikes, and, users who wanted use the electric assistance, had to order their own personalised battery pack and pay extra per year.

When launched, it was noted as a strange setup as users would have to charge the batteries at home. Home charging was where the issues happened, JCDecaux has confirmed.

IMAGE: The power packs — which insert into a slot in the DublinBikes basket — were launched by Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan on March 30th. Launch photo showing the pack by Chris Bellew /Fennell Photography.

JCDecaux said: “Further to an issue arising in three individual electric bike batteries in Lyon a decision has been taken by JCDecaux to recall all electric bike batteries for the three existing schemes in Dublin, Lyon and Brussels. The three battery incidents in Lyon involved battery overheating during the charging process.”

“The identified risk is overheating which causes the battery circuit board to short circuit. The estimated incident occurrence rate is 0.003 per thousand. As user safety is our top priority, we have stopped distributing batteries to new subscribers and are asking e-dublinbikes users to stop using or recharging their batteries and we are recalling the 396 batteries currently rented in Dublin,” the company said.

JCDecaux said: “As soon as the battery manufacturer has inspected and made the necessary technical and firmware updates so that they can be independently certified to EU standards, the batteries will be returned to users. e-dublinbikes subscribers will be contacted by call centre staff to explain the returns procedure”

It added: “JCDecaux apologises for the inconvenience to e-dublinbikes subscribers and assures them that our staff are doing everything possible to restore the e-dublinbikes service as quickly and efficiently as possible.”


...That's the end of the article. Keep scrolling if you want to the comments, but IrishCycle.com *NEEDS* readers like you to keep it that way. It only requires a small percentage of readers to give a bit each month or every year to keep IrishCycle.com's journalism open to all. Thank you.


2 comments

  1. thankfully only a minor setback it was always a strange system the way it was done and like anything else some batteries can simply fail.At least they have come out in the open about it.

    Reply
  2. The new bikes are much heavier & tougher to cycle than the older ones despite having 7 gears as opposed to 3 on the older models. It seems to me they’ve gambled on a bigger uptake of electric bikes than they’ve achieved. They’re a tough cycle without the batteries especially for an aul fella like me.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Shea CarrollCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.