Basements and bicycle stores no longer hold only traditional bicycles: more and more lithium-battery e-bikes and e-scooters are ending up in the common areas, often plugged in to charge on the spot. This type of battery carries a different fire risk than a traditional vehicle or object – and that is worth a building's risk management taking note of. This article looks at how insurance relates to this risk, and what the community can do about prevention.
- Storing and charging lithium-battery vehicles in the common areas carries a different fire risk than traditional bicycle storage.
- A fire that breaks out in a common area typically involves the building's property and liability insurance, while damage to the vehicle itself is the owner's separate concern.
- Here, prevention – the storage and charging rules – matters at least as much as the insurance itself.
Why is this different from traditional bicycle storage?
Lithium-ion batteries – whether in an e-bike, an e-scooter or a similar device – can enter what is known as thermal runaway if damaged, faulty, or charged incorrectly: this is a fast-developing fire that is difficult to extinguish and is typically more intense than an ordinary object burning. This does not mean these devices are dangerous in everyday use – it means that charging large numbers of them unsupervised in an enclosed basement room is a different risk category from a few padlocked bicycles. Condominiums are well advised to manage this distinction consciously, before a claim shows why it would have mattered.
Whose claim is it, if damage occurs?
If a fire that starts in a storage room or basement spreads to the common parts of the building – walls, building systems, other residents' storage units – that involves the building's property and liability insurance, just like any other damage arising in a common area. The vehicle and its battery themselves, however, are the owner's own property: replacing them is not a matter for the building's policy but for the owner's own insurance, if they have one. If the fire also damages items belonging to other residents, the question of liability follows a similar logic to the one set out in our article on the logic of communal cover: the community carries the shared risk together, while personal belongings remain everyone's own concern.
What can a resident do for their own device?
Alongside the community's own rules, it is worth residents thinking through a few things themselves. Home contents insurance typically treats a bicycle or an e-scooter as part of the household contents, but the exact limits and the storage location – inside the flat or in a shared basement – can make a difference to the cover, so it is worth checking your own policy's terms. Charging according to the manufacturer's instructions – the right charger, supervision, not overnight, not unsupervised in a crowded corner – is not just good practice; it can also determine whether, in the event of a claim, the insurer is able to rely on gross negligence to be released from paying. It is worth keeping the user manual that came with the device: in a claim, this can be the first evidence that it was used correctly.
What can the community do for prevention?
Here too, the best protection is not the insurance but order: a designated, ventilated charging spot away from escape routes, a supervised charging window, and a clear rule on where battery-powered devices must not be plugged in. This kind of rule fits well into the building's existing loss prevention routine, and it is worth adding it to the resident information sheet too – so it becomes part of the building's standing practice rather than a one-off warning.
Worth remembering
Insurance provides the financial answer once damage has occurred – the storage and charging rules are what make that answer necessary less often. The two come together here too: a consciously managed risk shows up in the building's claims statistics and in the next round of quotes as well. There is no need to ban e-bikes from the building – it is just worth knowing that they need something different from a traditional bicycle.
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