The electric scooter company Lime announced that it has taken some of its scooters off streets in Los Angeles, San Diego and Lake Tahoe due to concerns that their batteries could catch fire.
Lime said its employees learned in August of an issue with the batteries of one of its manufacturers, Segway Ninebot.
"The issue arose in one of the two batteries housed on early versions of the scooter; in several isolated instances, a manufacturing defect could result in the battery smoldering or, in some cases, catching fire," Lime said in a statement.
The company has also received an "unconfirmed report" that another Segway Ninebot scooter model might also be vulnerable to battery failure.
While they are investigating the unconfirmed report, all Segway Ninebot scooters will now be charged only at Lime's scooter storage facilities and will no longer be available to employees to charge on the street until the investigation has concluded, the company said.
In the same statement, Lime added that it's learned that the baseboards of scooters made by another one of their manufacturers, Okai, can break "when subjected to repeated abuse." Lime said its employees are studying this issue as well.
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