First scooters that set on fire, now scooters that break in half. The electric scooter company Lime issued a global recall of one of its models after finding that the scooters could easily break apart during use, according to a report in the Washington Post.
Lime told the Washington Post on Friday that it was “looking into reports that scooters manufactured by Okai”—the manufacturer Lime blames for this particular malfunction, which the Washington Post was unable tor reach—”may break and [is] working cooperatively with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the relevant authorities internationally to get to the bottom of this.”
The company said it would decommission all Okai scooters in its fleet, but could not provide an estimate for the number of scooters affected by the recall. A mechanic for Lime in California, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity said employees at his warehouse had found the scooters to be at risk of cracking over a period of several months. The mechanic added that managers did not “aggressively follow up” about their concerns.
“I would suggest that these are unsafe for public use,” another mechanic said on the company’s Slack messaging channel, according to the report. “It’s only a matter of time before someone is severely injured … if not here, somewhere else.”
“Safety is Lime’s highest priority,” the company said in a statement emailed to Fortune. “The vast majority of Lime’s fleet is manufactured by other companies and decommissioned Okai scooters are being replaced with newer, more advanced scooters considered best in class for safety. We don’t anticipate any real service disruptions.”
The company had acknowledged broken scooters a few weeks ago and said that scooters of this model were breaking apart due to “repeated abuse.”
This recall follows a Lime recall last month of Segway Ninebot scooters whose batteries were reported as “smoldering or, in some cases, catching fire.” The company said at the time that it would investigate the issue.
A Lime spokesperson told the Post that this pattern is “not indicative of the products not meeting the safety standards for [electric scooters],” and suggested that the repeated problems are a form of growing pains as consumers get used to riding scooters.
“It’s more that consumers are having mishaps due to limited familiarity of their use and a lack of protective equipment and operating them in congested and distracted environments,” a Lime spokeperson told the Post.
The recalls arrive as Lime and its competitor Bird continue to battle with regulators skeptical of electric scooters in their cities.
