SAN FRANCISCO — Lyft on Wednesday pulled all of its black and pink electric bikes from the East Bay, San Francisco and San Jose after reports of at least two bikes catching fire earlier this week.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, an anonymous witness on Wednesday reported seeing flames coming from an e-bike that was docked near Page and Scott streets. And on Saturday, San Francisco resident Zach Rutta spotted a burnt e-bike at the corner of Second and Folsom streets.
Don’t think I’ll be going on a @lyft @baywheels any time soon. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/MOU9wIjgII
— Zach Rutta (@zrutta44) July 27, 2019
Although Lyft spokeswoman Julie Wood said the company “will always be proactive and transparent when it comes to putting rider safety first,” she did not respond to repeated questions about whether the two known incidents of batteries igniting this week were the only malfunctioning bikes reported to Lyft.
Wood said the bikes were made unavailable to customers on Wednesday.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we are temporarily making the e-bike fleet unavailable to riders while we investigate and update our battery technology,” she said.
Lyft last year acquired Motivate, the company that runs the Bay Area’s only publicly-sponsored bicycle-sharing service, which was formerly known as Ford GoBike. It rebranded the bikes as Bay Wheels and began rolling out the new black and pink ebikes in San Jose in June, followed by San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville last month.
There were no reports of injuries from the malfunctioning bikes, Wood said, and the issue was limited to the Bay Area. Motivate operates on-demand bike rentals in cities across the country.
She said it’s unclear whether the bikes and batteries were tampered with or vandalized.
“We are seeing increased rates of vandalism on our bikes in San Francisco,” Wood said.
Lyft manufactures its own e-bikes, she said. And its not the first time there have been issues with them. The company in April pulled its black electric-assist bikes, that were still being branded as Ford GoBike, after users reported issues with the brakes that caused some riders to careen over the handlebars.
The company still has 2,500 blue pedal-powered bikes available for riders throughout its service area, Wood said.