During the summer of 2023 a New York City resident purchased a new electric car, a $70,000 Audi e-tron that he loves. He had planned to charge it in the garage of the condo where he lives, but without warning in August his Homeowner Association/condo board banned all EVs from the garage due to “fire risk.”

He posted the details of the ban online, writing, “When I pointed out that all the ICE [internal combustion engine] cars literally have tanks full of liquid explosive in them during our town hall, I was showered in all manner of FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt]. … I have no intention of going back to a gas car.”

This EV-owning resident lives in a Trump building, explaining, “Condo board is controlled by him as sponsor, and so is management. This will be fun.”

By “This” the resident means the conflict over how to keep electric vehicles from catching fire, endangering everything and everyone in the vicinity, and raising insurance rates sky-high on the way to a net-zero economy in which electric vehicles replace the ICEs now emitting planet-destroying greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

But New Yorkers are worried. There have been 13 deaths in the city caused by EV fires in the first seven months of 2023.

One fire in an exclusive high-rise building at 429 E. 52nd St. on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in November 2022 forced fire crews to conduct a daring roof rope rescue from the 20th floor, bringing two residents to safety, but at least 38 people were injured.

“The cause of the fire is a lithium-ion battery connected to a micro mobility device,” said Fire Department of New York (FDNY) Commissioner Laura Kavanagh from the scene. “I cannot emphasize enough the extraordinary work of our members this morning in unbelievably dangerous conditions.”

It was one of nearly 200 fires touched off by lithium-ion batteries that the FDNY investigated last year. But FDNY data shows that most of these fires are happening in modest apartment buildings or in single-family homes far from wealthy districts like the Upper East Side.

Today there are about 158,000 electric vehicles in the New York City metro region, about 27,000 EVs and 65,000 e-bikes in the city’s five boroughs, and analysts expect that number to increase tenfold by 2030, the “New York Times” reported in March.

Food delivery by quick, maneuverable e-bikes is popular. But delivery riders work long hours for low wages and can only afford the cheapest electric bikes with the cheapest batteries – the ones that most easily catch fire.

Still, the Trump building resident could prevail in his conflict due to a New York State law passed late last year that prohibits homeowners’ associations in the state from preventing the installation of electric vehicle charging stations on private property.

The measure is intended to make it easier for homeowners to install charging stations as New York seeks to transition to more renewable forms of energy and phase out gas-powered vehicles by the next decade.