The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has told owners of certain Rad Power Bikes e-bikes to stop using their batteries immediately, citing 31 reports of fire tied to the packs. Twelve of those fires caused property damage totaling roughly $734,500, and some ignited while the bikes were sitting in storage, unplugged and not in use. Rad Power Bikes has not agreed to a recall.
That gap between a federal warning and an actual recall is not a technicality. It is the reason the batteries are still sitting in garages and apartment storage rooms across the country months after regulators flagged them as a fire risk.
The battery models CPSC says to remove now
The hazardous packs carry model numbers RP-1304, RAD-S1304Y and HL-RP-S1304, and they were sold both as original equipment and as standalone replacement batteries for nine Rad Power e-bike models, including the RadWagon 4, RadRunner 2, RadRover High Step 5 and RadExpand 5. According to the CPSC’s public safety warning, the batteries can unexpectedly ignite and explode, a hazard the agency says is worse when the battery or its wiring harness has been exposed to water or debris. The packs sold for about $550 on their own, or between $1,500 and $2,000 bundled with a new bike, through RadPowerBikes.com, Best Buy stores and independent bike shops.
CPSC’s notice does not describe a handful of isolated incidents. Thirty-one separate fires is a large number for a single battery line, and the fact that some fires started with the battery neither charging nor installed on a bike in active use points to a defect that can activate on its own, not just under user misuse. The agency’s instruction is blunt: pull the battery out of the e-bike and take it to a household hazardous-waste site, because dropping a damaged lithium-ion pack in curbside recycling can start a fire in a garbage truck.
A company too financially strapped to recall its own batteries
Rad Power Bikes, based in Seattle, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2025, listing about $32 million in assets against $73 million in liabilities, with more than $8 million of that owed to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for disputed tariffs, according to TechCrunch’s reporting on the filing. That timing matters directly to the battery warning: CPSC says the company “has indicated to CPSC that it is unable to offer replacement batteries or refunds to all consumers” given its financial state, and that Rad Power “has refused to agree to an acceptable recall.”
Rad Power disputes the premise entirely. “Rad Power Bikes firmly stands behind our batteries and our reputation as leaders in the e-bike industry, and strongly disagrees with the CPSC’s characterization of certain Rad batteries as defective or unsafe,” a company spokesperson told CBS News, adding that independent labs retested the batteries and found they met international safety standards, and that the commission does not dispute those test results. The company says it offered to help customers upgrade to a newer “Safe Shield” battery design at a discount rather than replace or refund every unit, an approach CPSC rejected as insufficient.
Neither side has released the number of batteries covered by the warning. Rad Power told CBS News it could not say how many units were affected when asked directly, which leaves consumers with no way to know how widespread the exposure actually is.
A federal rule written for exactly this scenario
The standoff exposes a structural weak point in how CPSC polices battery fires: the agency can warn the public, but it cannot force a recall on its own, and a company in financial distress can simply decline to cooperate. That is the exact gap Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. described when the commission advanced a proposed mandatory safety standard for lithium-ion batteries in micromobility products. “Lithium-ion batteries can be ticking time bombs, and it’s leaving people on edge across the country,” Trumka wrote in a statement on the rulemaking, pointing to battery-management systems that would force a pack to stop charging or discharging once temperature, voltage or current limits are exceeded.
The proposed rule would also require battery packs to be tamper-resistant and ultrasonically welded shut, so cells cannot be swapped out with mismatched replacements, a failure mode fire investigators have linked to other e-bike blazes. None of those requirements are in force yet, which is part of why a company like Rad Power can dispute a hazard finding and walk away from a recall demand without breaking any current law.
For now, CPSC’s only enforcement lever against a noncompliant recall is public pressure: the warning, the retailer notifications and a request that anyone who has already been hurt or suffered property damage file a report through SaferProducts.gov, the government’s consumer incident database. Consumers who still own an affected Rad Power battery are being told to treat it as hazardous now, not after the rulemaking eventually takes effect.
The dispute leaves an unresolved question that neither the agency nor the company has answered publicly: how many of the affected batteries are still installed on bikes and charging in homes tonight, waiting on a recall that may never come through the standard federal process, described at Recalls.gov, that most product hazards eventually follow.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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