Lime pulls some electric scooters from 3 California markets, citing fire danger

Lime has pulled about 2,000 of its electric rental scooters from the streets of Los Angeles, San Diego and Lake Tahoe, saying a battery defect in one model could cause the vehicles to burst into flames.

Lime said in a statement that it found a manufacturing defect in an early version of the green-and-black scooters, produced by Segway, that could cause one of the onboard batteries to smolder or catch fire.

Lime wrote a software program to detect the scooters with flaws, and then deactivated them and removed all “vulnerable scooters” from the streets, the company said. A spokeswoman did not respond to questions about when the scooters were recalled or what the defect entailed.

Lime said that the defect put no riders or members of the public at risk, and that more recent scooter models have sturdier frames and redesigned batteries.

In late August, a night employee at a Lime facility in Lake Tahoe heard a loud bang, walked into a scooter repair room and saw flames shooting out of a scooter “as well as an adjacent chair,” according to the local fire department’s incident report quoted in the Washington Post.

When firefighters arrived, the report said, the flames had been sprayed with a fire extinguisher and moved outside to a parking lot, where it continued to periodically burst into flame and emit a chemical smell.

Lime’s recall prompted questions about whether the independent contractors who collect, charge and redistribute the scooters were aware of the fire risks. Like its main competitor, Bird, Lime typically pays people about $5 per scooter to charge the vehicles at their homes overnight.

The scooters in question will not be available to freelance chargers, whom the company calls “Juicers,” until “we are satisfied that there are no remaining issues with these scooter models,” the statement said. Instead, they will be charged at Lime facilities by workers “specially trained for the safe handling of these particular batteries.”

In Los Angeles, landlords have voiced concerns about tenants charging too many scooters at a time, saying the wiring in old apartments and houses can’t support a tangle of extension cords and the companies’ charging devices. In some cases, landlords’ complaints have resulted in their properties being banned from the Lime and Bird apps.

In September, the Los Angeles City Council approved a one-year pilot program for shared scooter companies that has yet to begin.

Some cities across Southern California have temporarily banned the scooters, including West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, El Segundo, and – on Monday – Ventura.