No, they really have that right. Messing around with e-bike battery packs without the right tooling, and without knowing what you are doing is a large risk, much larger than other DIY risks.
I've built a 2.2 KWh pack and spent weeks preparing for the build and did that in my own house in a spot right next to a door just in case I f'd up. Which I didn't, but I was fully prepared for that. You should never do something like this in an apartment building, any more than you would start a metal welding shop or a chemical plant in your living room. The risks are not compatible with shared accommodation.
Right. But right to repair requires providing access to parts, tools, documentation and software to products. Right to repair does not actually grant the right/ability/means to individuals to tinker with their batteries and put everyone in their apartment building at risk - they already had those.
There could even be a reasonable harm reduction argument that providing proper parts, tooling and documentation would actually reduce the risk. I could see reality going either way on this.
But in any case, arguments from safety should be directed and focused on actual risks. We have laws and building regulations for this reason. As you say, you wouldn't start a melding shop in your living room, but we don't ban anyone from just buying a welding machine.
People don't generally use their welding machine inside shared accommodation, their kitchen or their living room. Guess where your average DIY person is going to try to rebuild their battery pack? Will they have their safety set up properly?
Seriously: on the scale of 1 to 10 for risky things you could do I think DIY e-bike battery repair should rank higher than parachute jumping.
I agree that DIY battery repair is quite dangerous. But my point is that we should regulate and control the danger directly, instead of indirectly and very imperfectly by just grant ebikes an exemption in right to repair laws, especially as there are plenty of none battery components that (motors, controller boards, actual control inputs, etc) do not carry nearly the same safety concern.
Finally, the degree of access required by the NY law is broadly summarized as "same level that an OEM would/does provide to dealers or authorized repairers". E-bike manufacturers could easily (and quite reasonably, based on safety concerns) limit that to whole battery packs (because for exactly the safety reasons you noted, basically no repair shop is going to want to do cell level tinkering).
I think e-bike exemptions would be acceptable to me under the condition that the manufacturer would have to supply refurbished packs (new cells) for a token fee.
The apartment building should have proper equipment to mitigate the risk, and one has the right to know it's there, or find another apartment building better suited to their concerns.
Then we should be outlawing the act of messing with a battery pack in an environment that cannot handle a disaster. Giving companies a pass to make non-repairable junk and/or charge an arm and a leg to repair or replace components is completely unnecessary and contrary to what a healthy society needs.
I don't doubt at all that you are already liable in that situation. But that doesn't mean that it is a good idea to do this. Most people that start on a project like this will have absolutely no idea of how dangerous this is. They will see the 18650's and will make all kinds of assumptions based on their experience with other batteries that have nearly the same form factor (say AA's) and think that this is equally dangerous.
There's a middle ground between "no right to repair" and "you can legally modify volatile Lithium battery packs in a multi-tenant building".
NYC has had over a dozen e-bike related fire deaths year to date, almost entirely killing bystanders. One guy was modifying battery packs in his kitchen, ran out the front door with his arms on fire and his whole family burned to death. A shop in Chinatown was letting dozens of customers charger their batteries overnight in the store and the fire killed tenants upstairs.
So we obviously need right to repair on electronics, but people questioning if we need carve outs for things like battery packs are not Unabomber luddites.
I have some home power tools that use lithium battery packs and they are extremely rugged and overpackaged for safety reasons compared to what I see on these e-bikes. That may be another avenue of regulation is simple minimum standards to thermal runaway resistance and containment in consumer grade lithium battery packs.
> A shop in Chinatown was letting dozens of customers charger their batteries overnight in the store and the fire killed tenants upstairs.
And this bit even has nothing to do with right to repair! People will do stupid shit that puts innocent bystanders at risk. That's just life. We should put into place measures that disincentivize that sort of behavior, of course. But giving companies a pass to make hermetically-sealed, unrepairable garbage is not how to do that. Ensuring that customers have detailed documentation and access to affordable, well-made parts so they have the ability and understanding of how to safely do repairs would be a good start.
