Back in early 2024, Eric Adams's Department of Transportation launched a pilot to prevent the steady increase of deadly fires caused by lithium ion batteries used to power e-bikes. The year before, 18 New Yorkers had been killed in the blazes, which start when batteries malfunction and explode—often in the homes of the delivery workers who rely on them.
So the DOT installed five public charging cabinets in locations around the city, where delivery workers could pay a small fee to drop off depleted e-bike batteries, safely charge them, and take another one from the cabinet for use.
The stations were a hit: the DOT facilitated 12,000 battery swaps in over six months, and reduced at-home charging among participants by more than a third. When the pilot wrapped up at the end of that year, the DOT recommended a citywide expansion of the program, which eventually grew to 25 new charging stations installed where deliveristas work the most—Midtown Manhattan, the Upper East Side, and the Upper West Side.
Two years later, the Mamdani administration has installed just one more public charging cabinet—a small cabinet at the deliverista hub next to City Hall—and says there won't be any more until 2028. Public comment about the proposed 25-site launch wrapped up this August, but the City has yet to announce which sites it has decided it will move forward with for the project's design phase.
The administration's inaction comes as nine and possibly as many as 15 New Yorkers have died this year due to fires believed to be started by e-bike batteries. The FDNY has already responded to 406 of these types of fires in 2026 so far, up from the 241 that were reported over the same period of 2025.
Both fire safety experts and advocates for delivery cyclists agree that this timeframe is unacceptable.