How E-Bikes Are Torching California's Affordability

You could go to sleep tonight in a perfectly safe apartment and wake up homeless tomorrow.

The threat is not an earthquake, a wildfire or a sudden job loss.

It is the subsidized e-bike sitting completely unplugged in the apartment right across the hall.

California families are already crushed by housing costs but now the buildings we desperately need are literally going up in flames.

The culprits are the e-bikes and e-scooters sold as the green replacement for cars.

This disaster is exploding in our neighborhoods right now. It is a devastating one two punch to our affordability and safety.

The first punch lands on your housing.

On March 3 an e-scooter battery ignited at San Diego State University. The fire forced a full evacuation, hospitalized a student and destroyed 16 dorm rooms.

This is no fluke. Los Angeles Fire Department crews are battling an average of 45 lithium ion battery incidents every single week.

San Francisco has seen a 300% increase in these fires over the last decade.

They have caused more than $10.6 million in property damage in that city alone.

These are not ordinary fires. They are chemical infernos.

A cheap or modified battery slips into thermal runaway in seconds. The flames exceed 2,000°F. Many ignite while the device sits completely unplugged in a hallway.

The toxicity is just as dangerous. These fires release hydrogen fluoride gas. This flesh eating poison turns hallways and ventilation systems into hazmat zones.

One blast destroys the building structure. Dozens of my neighbors are displaced overnight. Entire floors become uninhabitable.

These blazes cause triple the damage of standard fires. Average property insurance claims are hitting $222,000. Nationally, multifamily property insurance premiums surged an astounding 27.7% in a single year, driven heavily by catastrophic losses and lithium-ion fire damage.

Landlords pass every dollar straight to tenants through higher rent. HOA assessments are skyrocketing to cover the massive new insurance policies.

The second punch lands directly on our streets and your health insurance.

We are not just talking about fires. We are dealing with unlicensed motorcycles dominating our bike lanes and sidewalks.

Heavy e-bikes are frequently modified to reach highway speeds. They weigh vastly more than a pedal bike. A rider flying through a crowded intersection at 30 miles per hour is a disaster waiting to happen.

Statewide crash records show e-bike collisions have surged more than 18.6x in just five years.

They are 3x more likely to hit a pedestrian than a standard bicycle. Emergency room doctors explicitly compare the severe bone and internal injuries to motorcycle wrecks. Head trauma from e-bikes has multiplied 49x since 2017.

The sheer weight and velocity make impacts devastating.

The fatality rate after an e-bike crash is 37x higher than a standard bicycle accident.

When a rider or an innocent pedestrian gets leveled in a high speed impact the hospital bills are astronomical. Severe e-mobility trauma cases easily average well over $95,000 per patient.

Health insurance companies do not absorb these massive new costs. They pass them straight back to you by hiking monthly premiums for every family in the state.

Now look at the insane policy loop.

California has spent billions through the Active Transportation Program to tear up perfectly good roads for protected bike lanes. The state even handed out millions of dollars in direct consumer vouchers through the California E-Bike Incentive Project.

The goal was to pack people into dense apartments and pay them to trade their cars for e-bikes. We subsidized the transition to save the planet.

The reward is chemical explosions that gut buildings and rogue vehicles that send pedestrians to the trauma ward.

We literally used taxpayer money to fund the very crisis that is spiking your housing and health care costs today.

We cannot keep paying to burn down the housing we need most.

California's recent attempt to regulate these batteries, Senate Bill 1271, is a masterclass in half measures.

The law was passed in 2024 but intentionally delayed. By the time it finally took effect on January 1, 2026, it was already obsolete.

When New York City faced this crisis they outlawed all uncertified batteries in the secondhand market and instantly empowered the fire department to padlock non compliant shops.

By closing those loopholes New York City cut lithium ion fire deaths by 67% in a single year.

California took the opposite approach.

California gave manufacturers an extra year to legally flood our state with the cheap dangerous inventory they could no longer sell in New York.

Worse the California law completely ignores the hundreds of thousands of uncertified batteries already sitting in our apartments right now.

It left a massive loophole for the secondhand market ensuring the worst batteries keep circulating on our streets legally.

We do not need more weak technical regulations. We need accountability.

New Jersey is mandating driver's licenses and DMV registration for these devices. California must do the same.

A green transition cannot come at the expense of our physical safety or our housing supply.

Stacking chemical time bombs inside high density housing is not a climate strategy.

It is suicide by subsidy.