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Comment by icegreentea2 | Hacker News Reader

The linked through article is much much better (https://www.fastcompany.com/90935615/e-bike-companies-are-fi...) than the original story.

It drills down to the key challenge in the e-bike space right now, which is that effectively no-one (not even the manufacturers) does battery repair. There is no equivalent tooling, parts or manual for bike manufacturer's to provide, because the current approach is just to chuck (recycle) problem batteries.

Certainly we should be consider the safety implications, but we should probably also consider that e-bike batteries not being covered under right to repair laws will not stop people from tinkering with them - we know that because being exempted from right to repair laws represents the status quo. And the less documentation and tooling provided, the more likely that tinkering will be risky.

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That's fine, batteries being a black box that you replace wholesale is generally fine by me so long as we also put the appropriate recycling processes in place. I just don't want manufacturers making part swaps more difficult than they need to be in the interest of "safety".

> That's fine, batteries being a black box that you replace wholesale is generally fine by me so long as we also put the appropriate recycling processes in place.

There's an additional part which is crucial: No DRM-crap (secret APIs, cryptographic handshakes) preventing other companies from selling safe replacements for the original Sealed Danger Boxes.

Oh absolutely. I love that my E-bike's battery is just an off the shelf BMC and a bunch of standard lithium cells in a plastic box. That's what they should all be.

I disagree personally: I'm generally against any form of hardware DRM, especially as someone who loves cars... but there's no way to fairly compete on batteries in a globalized market.

The price winners will be deadly unsafe replacements, and I can 100% see why you wouldn't want to open yourself to that kind of liability. It only does so much good to find out in court that a random no-name battery caused a fire after your brand gets dragged through the mud for burning down someone's house (and you can't bring their house back either)

There are already epidemics of battery fires in major cities of shoddy no-name bikes because of batteries specifically, there's no way those companies should be allowed to infect the market outside of their own bikes too.

That's not an argument for DRM, it's an argument for coming down hard on manufacturers of blatantly defective goods. Or adding (non-secret) safety features to the battery interface like thermal sensors.

I'd test that idea by checking if it fits broadly across other industries and products. For example, do you feel the same way about brakes in cars and power-supply units in computers?

Would you accept a company like Ford or Lenovo using the "our branding is more important than your property" logic when forcing you to buy parts from themselves and literally nobody else, no matter how well-regarded the third-party parts are?

You're applying a simplicity in logic that doesn't scale to the real world.

The problem is, we have reasonably tight control on a lot of other safety-critical supply chains where the only way to get cheaper is to be straight up unsafe. That's why your brake pads don't need DRM.

But the horse is out of the barn on batteries. For a myriad of reasons, lithium ion batteries just somehow flew under the radar long enough that now literal boatloads of fire hazards are landing daily and no one has been able to stem the problem.

Thermal sensors can only do so much for a bad battery design if they're on the bike rather than the battery, this isn't an engineering problem, but the closest thing to an engineering solution is to completely disincentivize 3rd parties from making batteries over a certain size as far as your own product goes.

There is a reason that their are different safety standards to achieve - regardless if you have DRM or some nonname brand.

What I mean is that with a rigorous check any battery no having a CE mark (here in Europe) or other type of certification then it can’t be imported. I believe there is a world where reputable battery brands make all sort of battery for Ebikes, vacuum cleaners etc that fit the device and have an appropriate mark. No need to have a price tag like the bike manufacturer just a plain good battery maker.

I agree with you in principle but the predicate accountability mechanisms currently are not functioning as they should for certain imports. E-bike batteries pose an outsized risk, hence the NY DRM carve-out.

E-bike manufacturers don't do repairs down at the level of individual cells because it's impractical to do so safely. The only sensible pack repair is replacing modules. Bicycle battery packs are often implemented as a single field-replaceable module, resulting in frustrations over not being repairable.

My understanding of Right to Repair is that it would give anyone access to the same tools and parts as authorized repair centers to replace the packs/modules. That wouldn't change the risk of using a deficient third-party replacement part (which is the culprit the article suspects) or converting an authorized part to your own unverified design ("tinkering").

Agreed. It's not just about batteries too; e-bikes being exempted from right-to-repair laws in NY for example also affects customers' ability to repair or replace all the other electronic components in the bike. That means the bike controller, the motor, etc.

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