We live in a world increasingly filled with lithium batteries in everything from cellphones to laptops to personal mobility devices. But while they’re fantastic for providing power in a compact form, one of their downsides is their extremely rare (but still very disconcerting) tendency to fail and catch fire.
Such was the case with an e-bike that exploded spectacularly in Singapore on Sunday evening along Bedok North Drive, as can be seen in this video originally shared by the Roads.sg Facebook page yesterday:
The crackling blaze can be seen shooting off sparks as it engulfs the bike while one witness sings a few lines from the viral BBQ Le song (that you’ve no doubt heard if you’ve spent any time on #SGTiktok).
Another witness posted several more videos of the incident to Facebook, including this one of a person who looks like a Foodpanda delivery driver standing close to the flames (we really hope that wasn’t his bike, we can only imagine how awkward it would be telling their next customer why their delivery was going to be so late…)
SCDF firefighters soon arrived on the scene to extinguish the flames for good.
There were no reported injuries caused by the incident.
Experts say that only about 1 in 10 million lithium batteries fail, but that those failures almost always lead to a fire. Common causes for lithium battery failure include shoddy manufacturing, overcharging or improper charging, and keeping batteries in high-temperature environments.
