Lime and Segway trade blame over scooters catching fire

Lime says it’s a manufacturing issue, while Segway claims it’s due to lack of maintenance

Segway Ninebot, the primary manufacturer of shared electric scooters, is hitting back three days after one of the biggest scooter-sharing companies said manufacturing issues had led some vehicles to smoulder or even catch fire. In a statement on Friday, the company suggested that maintenance of the vehicles — not manufacturing problems — was to blame.

On Tuesday, the scooter- and bike-sharing company Lime issued a statement saying it had learned of an issue with the batteries of some older model of Segway scooters in August. Lime, based in San Francisco, said it had worked with Segway to identify the affected vehicles and removed them from Los Angeles, San Diego and the Lake Tahoe area. About 2,000 scooters were pulled, according to Lime. “At no time were riders or members of the public put at risk,” Lime said in a statement posted to its website. “Unfortunately, despite our efforts, we’ve recently received an unconfirmed report that another Segway scooter model may also be vulnerable to battery failure, which we are currently investigating.” Lime also said it had taken several other safety steps, including a new daily testing program to monitor scooters for battery issues.

On Friday, Segway defended its vehicles, saying that they meet all global and U.S. regulations, and work safely under normal operating conditions. “We have observed that opera- tional hazards do rise from extreme abuse and vandalism of the vehicles in the scootersharing market,” it wrote in a statement posted to its website. “We strongly recommend that operators strengthen their capability of fleet operation and maintenance to avoid potential safety problems caused by the improper use of damaged vehicles.”