Signature Electric

What do you think is holding back the other two thirds?

Toronto's fire chief said it plainly this week.

The frequency and intensity of lithium-ion battery fires are increasing.

Here's what's driving it: micromobility is growing faster than infrastructure and policy can keep up.

More e-bikes.

More e-scooters.

More batteries being charged, stored, and disposed of in places they should never be.

It's easy in times like this to reach for the ban lever.

But buildings and governments need to plan before they ban.

When places ban e-bikes, riders don't sell them.

They hide them.

And that creates even more danger.

Getting this right isn't about fighting micromobility.

It's about adopting the tools and policies that keep growing electric mobility safety.

Cheap third-party E-bike batteries are showing up in units, hallways, and storage rooms and it's putting buildings in danger.

Lithium-ion fires are fast, hot, and increasingly common in MURBs.

The liability is real. So is the insurance exposure.

But now there's a way for buildings to go beyond risk management: turn it into an amenity.

Solutions like PowerShelter give buildings a dedicated, lockable, enclosed charging environment purpose-built for the lithium-ion battery challenge.

These solutions turn what is a liability for your building into an amenity for residents.

E-bikes aren't going away. It's time for buildings to plan instead of ban.

Nothing kills the EV vibe like a charger that just… doesn't work.

Many early EV chargers were installed primarily to unlock government incentives.

And once the ribbon was cut, long-term planning kind of went out the window.

The installer finished the job, the supplier made a sale, and the software vendor gained a user.

Nobody really owned what came next.

Then, as stations began to age and break down, maintenance responsibilities were unclear, and costs weren't accounted for. Many site owners made the only logical call: remove them rather than foot the repair bill.

This is a solvable problem.

A charging station that generates revenue gets taken care of.

Like any business, a station will only be well managed and maintained if it is profitable.

The path forward is to build stations that make business sense, and reliability will follow.

E-bike bans don't prevent condo fires.

They hide them.

Toronto has now logged another condo battery fire, and boards are responding by drafting bylaws to keep e-bikes out of lobbies, elevators, and units.

It feels like the right thing to do. It’s also why the next fire will be harder to detect.

When a building bans e-bikes from residents who rely on them to commute, riders don’t sell their bikes. They hide them.

Folded frames go up in duffel bags. Batteries get tucked into closets. Charging happens overnight behind a closed bedroom door, away from sprinklers, neighbours, and anyone who could smell smoke before it becomes flame.

The buildings getting this right are not fighting micro-mobility. They’re absorbing it.

That means dedicated, fire-rated charging and storage.

E-bike adoption is rising faster than any board can keep up with.

This is an opportunity for condos to turn battery charging from a liability into an amenity.

Read the full article:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-lithium-battery-apartment-fire-9.7179948

A BC condo owner was fined $200 for "stealing electricity."

His crime? Charging his EV in his own building's parkade.

He won at tribunal. But the headline tells you everything about where we are.

EVs aren't coming to your building. They're already in it.

Across MURBs, residents are already plugging in, strata councils are scrambling to respond, and bylaw disputes are landing at the Tribunal.

The demand is here, and it's growing faster than most buildings expected.

The good news is that MURBs who plan ahead are winning across the board. EV-ready parking increases unit values, keeps residents happy, and costs far less to build than to retrofit later.

Planning the electrical capacity now is always easier than chasing it down the road.

If you're on a strata council, a developer, or a property manager, the buildings that act early are the standard everyone else scrambles to catch up to.

Tomorrow, the conversations get real.

The EV & Charging Expo kicks off in Toronto, and Signature Electric is looking forward to joining the people building what comes next for electric mobility.

We’ll be there at Booth 226, and tomorrow, Mark Marmer will be part of two important discussions focused on real-world infrastructure challenges:

One around safer e-bike charging and storage, where we’ll also be introducing PowerShelter in Canada for the first time.

And one around EV charger maintenance, because keeping infrastructure running well is just as important as installing it in the first place.

If you’re attending, come find us. We’re looking forward to the conversations happening on stage, at the booth, and in the hallway.

Thank you to Electric Autonomy for bringing the industry together.