It appears that e-scooters catching fire isn’t just limited to incidents in Singapore.
An electric scooter caught fire at the Dropbox headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday (Aug 14).
The burning scooter was on the fifth floor, but the entire building was evacuated nonetheless for safety.
Read: E-scooters left on charge mode causes fire in Bukit Batok flat
Employees said they were evacuated for about two hours.
The San Francisco Fire Department stated that they extinguished the fire safely, and no one was injured.
According to Dropbox creative director Davy Rudolph, the scooter in question was a relatively “cheap” model called the Tianrun R3 priced at $250 (S$346). One of their employees owned the now-charred electric scooter but did not say where it was purchased.
My office was evacuated today because an electric scooter exploded and caught fire. Seriously living in an episode of Silicon Valley over here. pic.twitter.com/cX2iVvejtf
— Davy Rudolph (@davyr) August 14, 2019
Electric scooters are all the rage in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and other American cities as scooter startups like Skip and Bird (previously Scoot) as well as Uber and Lyft are flooding the streets with shareable e-scooters and e-bikes.
Skip, a scooter-sharing company based in San Francisco, was the topic of debate after one of its e-scooters burst into flames while parked on a DC sidewalk.
The e-scooter trend in major cities and business districts is seen as a more climate-friendly solution to traffic congestion during rush hour, but nothing is greener than riding an old-school bicycle or going for a walk. -/TISG
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