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In 2023, lithium-ion battery fires killed 18 people in New York City, which marked the deadliest year the city had ever recorded for this specific hazard. The following year, after NYC made UL certification a legal requirement for every e-bike sold, leased, or rented in the five boroughs, deaths fell to six. In 2025, just one person died. That's a 94% drop in three years, and city officials point directly at the certification mandate as the reason, according to UL Standards & Engagement's writeup of FDNY Commissioner Bonsignore's comments.
Here's the twist that makes this a live story instead of a tidy success narrative: 2026 has seen a sharp reversal. Fires are up more than 70% year-over-year, and the city logged its first lithium-ion battery fire death of the year in June, according to amNewYork's coverage of an FDNY press conference. Officials are now pointing at aging batteries and a rise in outdoor charging incidents as the next wave of the problem.
That whiplash — proof the standards work, followed immediately by proof the fight isn't over — is exactly the backdrop for a proposal now sitting in front of the federal government: the Consumer Product Safety Commission wants to take what NYC did locally and make it the law everywhere in the US. This proposal is currently making its way through Washington, with public comments closing on August 24. Here's what the certifications actually mean, what the federal rule would change, and why "UL certified" printed on a listing isn't always what it claims to be.
Alphabet Soup, Decoded
If you've shopped for an e-bike, e-scooter, or EUC recently, you've probably seen a jumble of acronyms slapped on spec sheets — UL 2849, UL 2271, UL 2272, EN 15194 — usually with zero explanation of what those numbers and letters actually signify. They're not interchangeable, and the difference is worth taking the time to understand if you are an e-bike or PEV enthusiast.
UL 2271 is the narrowest of the bunch: it tests the battery pack by itself, specifically cell quality, how it holds up to overcharging, short circuits, and physical abuse like crushing or puncturing. It's the standard most often cited for standalone replacement batteries.
UL 2272 covers the electrical systems of "personal e-mobility devices" broadly — hoverboards, e-scooters, electric skateboards, EUCs — basically everything with a battery and a motor that isn't technically a bicycle.
UL 2849 is the one worth paying the most attention to if you're buying an e-bike specifically. Rather than testing the battery in isolation, it evaluates the entire electrical system working together: battery, charger, motor, and controller, tested both individually and in combination under stress conditions like overcharging, thermal abuse, and vibration meant to simulate real riding. Tern Bicycles' own explainer puts it well, stating a battery-only certification is like crash-testing just a car's fuel tank, while UL 2849 is closer to testing the fuel lines, engine, and battery all together under real driving stress. That's why several manufacturers and testing labs refer to it as the gold standard. A bike can carry a UL 2271-certified battery and still have a poorly engineered charger or controller that UL 2271 alone would never catch.
EN 15194 is Europe's answer to the same problem, and it's engineered differently on purpose. It's mandatory in the UK and France, voluntary elsewhere in the EU, and it bundles safety testing together with performance rules that don't exist in the UL framework at all: a hard 250W continuous power cap and a motor cutoff at 25 km/h (about 15.5 mph), since those limits are what legally define an "e-bike" rather than a moped under EU law. An American e-bike carrying EN 15194 certification but no UL mark isn't necessarily unsafe, it just means it was engineered against Europe's rulebook instead of America's, and the two rulebooks test different things.
These Standards Have Always Been Optional, & That's The Whole Problem
Here's the part that surprises most shoppers: none of these UL standards are currently required by federal law. They're voluntary industry standards, developed by Underwriters Laboratories and adopted by manufacturers who choose to pay for the testing. New York City became the exception when it wrote UL 2849/2271/2272 compliance directly into local law in 2023. Almost everywhere else in the country, a manufacturer can sell a completely untested, uncertified lithium-ion battery and break no federal rule at all, provided they don't falsely claim a certification they don't have (more on that in a second).
Fire-safety researchers have been pushing to close that gap for a while. Steve Kerber, head of the Fire Safety Research Institute, told Consumer Reports plainly that the fix is building batteries to the standards that already exist, and the problem is those standards are still voluntary when they should carry the same legal weight as electrical outlet safety codes. Per that same Consumer Reports article, UL Solutions has tracked more than 3,000 fires and 188 explosions nationwide tied to lithium-ion consumer devices since 2022...a number that includes far more than just e-bikes, but illustrates the scale of the underlying chemistry problem.
The CPSC Wants To Make This The Law Everywhere
This is exactly the gap the CPSC's new proposal is aimed to fix, once and for all. On June 24, the agency published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would take modified versions of UL 2849, UL 2271, and UL 2272 and make compliance a legal requirement nationwide, not just a voluntary badge of honor. Acting CPSC Chairman Peter Feldman framed it as a response to "well-documented hazards" including thermal runaway, fires, and explosions, and pointed specifically at ongoing quality problems with batteries imported from China. The justification isn't abstract: CPSC has tracked 227 unique incidents involving fires, explosions, burns, and smoke inhalation from these products between 2019 and 2023 alone.
The scope is broader than most people might guess. It's not just complete e-bikes, the proposed rule would also cover e-scooters, hoverboards, e-skateboards, EUCs, replacement battery packs sold separately, aftermarket chargers, and e-bike conversion kits, meaning the sketchy off-brand battery someone buys to replace a dead OEM pack would be legally on the hook too, not just the original bike. If the rule is finalized, manufacturers get 180 days to comply, plus an anti-stockpiling provision meant to stop companies from rushing noncompliant inventory into the country right before the deadline hits. And for anyone worried about the e-bike already in their garage: the rule wouldn't be retroactive. It would only apply to products manufactured after a final rule takes effect, so nothing currently owned suddenly becomes illegal overnight.
Here's the piece that makes this more than a paperwork change: CPSC just built the enforcement pipeline this rule would actually run through, and right now it's sitting empty. As of July 8, importers of CPSC-regulated products have to electronically file compliance certificates with Customs and Border Protection before their shipments even clear the border, which is a new system built specifically to flag noncompliant goods before they reach the market, rather than after. But because there's currently no mandatory battery standard, e-bike batteries pass through that new border checkpoint completely unchecked. As one industry attorney bluntly told Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, the rule "only affects CPSC standards, not UL standards," and "there is not currently a CPSC battery standard yet" for the new system to check against. If the proposed rule is finalized, that changes! Batteries would become something Customs can actually flag and hold at the border, not just something UL has to chase down after the fact through private litigation.
A Logo Isn't Proof, Just Ask Amazon
This discussion brings up the limits of certification as it currently works, even where a standard already exists. A federal judge signed a permanent injunction on July 7 against a group of sellers who had been putting fake UL certification marks on e-bikes and e-scooters sold under the Aipas and A4 brands, according to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. Amazon and UL brought the case jointly, and it's a good win, but a narrow one. It took a federal lawsuit backed by two of the best-resourced companies in the industry to catch a single operation selling seven mislabeled models, which raises the obvious question of how much more fake "certified" gear is still out there, undetected, per one detailed writeup of the case.
As economics point out, pasting a certification logo onto a product photo costs a dishonest seller nothing. Actually engineering and testing an e-bike's full electrical system to meet a UL standard costs significant time and money. That imbalance means a seller willing to lie gets all the marketing benefit of "certified" without ever paying for the testing that's supposed to back it up, and this scenario is exactly why a legal requirement with border-level enforcement has more weight than a voluntary standard ever could. A voluntary standard only stops honest companies; but a mandatory one, backed by Customs checks, is at least aimed towards the dishonest ones too.
How To Protect Yourself As A Consumer
Until the rule is finalized — and even after, since counterfeiters and scammers aren't going to disappear overnight — a few habits go a long way:
- Verify, don't trust. UL's own Product iQ registry lets anyone look up whether a certification is real, searchable by manufacturer name or by category code. FTBV covers e-bikes and related systems (UL 2849), FZWV covers light-electric-vehicle batteries specifically (UL 2271). It takes thirty seconds and it's free.
- Watch the wording. "UL Certified" and "UL Listed" mean a product actually passed testing. Phrases like "UL compliant," "built to UL standards," or "UL pending" often mean it hasn't, and vague language is doing a lot of quiet work in an abundance of product listings.
- Look for the real mark, not just letters. An authentic UL certification mark includes specific security features, not just the letters "UL" typed into a product image.
- Be extra cautious with aftermarket batteries and conversion kits. These are explicitly named in CPSC's proposed rule for a reason. They're sold separately from the original bike, often skip testing entirely, and are often flagged in incident data as a leading cause of fires.
The Freshly Charged Verdict
If you're reading this close to publish, the comment period on CPSC's proposal is set to close soon, on August 24. Whatever happens with the rule itself, the underlying lesson isn't going anywhere: New York City already ran this experiment at a local level, and the results were about as clear as safety data can get. Certification requirements, actually enforced, save lives; and on top of that, they can also aid consumer protection and raise the cost of cutting corners for everyone from carless manufacturers to outright counterfeiters. The question the rest of the country is now facing is whether that protection stays a NYC-only privilege, or becomes the baseline everywhere else too.
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