TikTokers have been making videos about how to steal batteries from Lime e-bikes to make upgrades to their own pedal bicycles.
Several posts on the social media app tell viewers how to remove the batteries from the popular electric bikes, available to rent out in cities across the UK, and get around their safety features.
The bikes – which are stored out on the street, around the clock – are powered by lithium-ion batteries, stored in a case glued to the frame.
Some criminals are taking the batteries to sell online – they are worth up to £300, experts have said.
Others, having stolen an expensive battery, use cheap conversion kits – not governed by safety regulations – to make their pedal bicycle electric for a low price.
Giuseppe Capanna, a product safety engineer at charity Electrical Safety First, said there is a ‘real risk’ that modified e-bike batteries could catch fire from overcharging.
He told the Times: ‘The fires are absolutely ferocious. You will have seconds to get out of the building.’
TikTok has now removed the videos since news of them emerged, saying they violated community guidelines on violence and criminality.
TikTokers have been making videos (pictured) about how to steal batteries from Lime e-bikes to make upgrades to their own pedal bicycles
Several posts (pictured) on the social media app tell viewers how to remove the batteries from the popular electric bikes, available to rent out in cities across the UK, and get around their safety features
The bikes – which are stored out on the street, around the clock – are powered by lithium-ion batteries, stored in a case glued to the frame. Pictured: One of the videos in question
One clip shows someone making what they dubbed a ‘DIY e-bike’ using a stolen Lime battery. Alongside laughing emojis, it is captioned: ‘I hope I don’t blow up my house.’
Another video – also showing a souped-up pedal bike and racking up more than 85,000 views – saw users head to the comments section to share their own experiences of stealing Lime batteries.
One admitted they had about 40 of them – while another warned prospective battery thieves to charge them outside as they can ‘blow up easy’.
Lime, estimated to have around 30,000 rental e-bikes in London, is one of the biggest players in the sector in the capital – and has since expanded to Manchester, Nottingham, Derby and Milton Keynes.
But it is certainly not the only rental e-bike provider besieged by battery theft.
Forest, which runs across 14 of London’s 33 boroughs to Lime’s 17, saw around ten battery thefts every month last year.
This comes despite them installing a ‘thick glue which forms a cake-like substance’ around the battery case to stop people getting into it.
Swedish company Voi – which runs in more than 100 locations across Europe, nearly 20 of which are in the UK – said more than 700 batteries were stolen from their e-scooters in Liverpool two years ago.
Some criminals are taking the batteries to sell online – they are worth up to £300, experts have said. Pictured: File photo
Others, having stolen an expensive battery, use cheap conversion kits – not governed by safety regulations – to make their pedal bicycle electric for a low price. Pictured: File photo
Giuseppe Capanna, a product safety engineer at charity Electrical Safety First, said there is a ‘real risk’ that modified e-bike batteries could catch fire from overcharging. Pictured: File photo of a Lime bike in Oxford Circus, central London
It cost the business more than £500,000.
But the industry would be even harder hit by mass theft of e-bike batteries, often more expensive and more powerful than those in e-scooters like Voi’s.
Ben Hubbard, who edits Zag Daily, which reports on sustainable mobility, said theft of ‘highly valuable’ batteries has become ‘a much more organised and calculated challenge’ for all UK rental e-bike operators in recent years.
Reports of battery theft need to be followed through and lead to convictions, he added, to stop people thinking it is a ‘free-for-all’.
Campaigners want e-bike batteries and conversion kits to be more regulated – while the London Fire Brigade has said people should not buy secondhand batteries.
It comes after MailOnline revealed as many as 300 Lime bikes are being illegally hacked in London every week.
Tens of thousands of young Londoners are thought to have worked out how to take a Lime without registering or paying – which is known as ‘hacking’.
Lime own and operate most of the estimated 30,000 bikes now in London, and with as many as one per cent of these having been hacked at any one time, that means up to 300 vehicles have been rogue on the city’s streets.
A gallery of recent images assembled by MailOnline shows how frequently the branded e-bikes have been dumped in locations that make them a menace for pedestrians or a danger to motorists
Many of the dumped bikes, left strewn across cities across the country, are thought to have been hacked
One user posted on X an image of a Lime bike abandoned in the Leg of Mutton Pond in Bushy Park, Richmond, London
Hacked bikes are effectively stolen from the company – meaning it has no knowledge of who is using them and no control over where they end up being left.
A gallery of recent images assembled by MailOnline shows how frequently the e-bikes have been dumped in locations that make them a menace for pedestrians or a danger to motorists.
Many of the dumped bikes, left strewn across our capital’s pavements, are thought to have been hacked.
While the company fines users who park in an unacceptable way, it has no control over hacker riders, who face no such disincentive.
The bikes work using an app and cost a flat fee to unlock and then a further amount based on how long they are ridden for.
But as they are ‘dockless’, riders can register, pay and unlock a bike and ride off to their destination – where although Lime encourages them to use designated bays or park responsibly, many do not follow this advice.
According to Lime more than four million Londoners have chosen their bikes since they were launched in 2018, and 16million commuting journeys were made on them last year alone.
Half of Londoners aged 18-34 use the bikes on a weekly basis.
Lime bikes lie scattered chaotically across the pavement in Charlton, London with no thought for pedestrians, wheelchair users or parents with prams
Lime bikes completely block the pavement, in a shocking image posted by Westminster City Council
While the company fines users who park in an unacceptable way, it has no control over hacker riders, who face no such disincentive. Pictured: An X post about a ‘hacked’ Lime bike dumped in Kings Cross, London
A spokesperson for Lime said: ‘Stolen batteries account for only a small fraction of our total inventory, and we have no evidence of our batteries being used to power personal bikes.
‘We strongly condemn any criminal behaviour and report any known instances of battery theft to the police.’
Previously, they said: ‘Antisocial behaviour is rare and hacked trips now account for 1% of total trips.
‘We are committed to addressing any instances of antisocial behaviour, as this is not how we intend our service to be used.
‘While most users ride responsibly, we encourage the public to report any instances of antisocial behaviour to us, including the location and time, so we can investigate and take appropriate measures.’
The Department for Transport and Transport for London referred MailOnline to local councils when asked what was being done to keep pavements clear of e-bikes.
A Department for Transport spokesman said: ‘Local authorities already have powers to remove e-cycles from pavements where they are causing an obstruction and are responsible for working with rental operators to keep pavements clear where possible.’
Lime and TikTok were contacted for comment.
THE BOSSES BEHIND LIME BIKES BLIGHTING BRITAIN’S STREETS
Lime Bike’s UK operation is headed by a privately educated graduate who is the son of friend and former business partner of Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson.
Hal Stevenson
Hal Stevenson, 29, previously briefly worked for then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s operations team planning events in target seats in the run up to the Conservative’s successful campaign in 2019.
He took on the role after working as a researcher and after leaving went on to become a senior executive at a major PR firm whose clients included the e-bike firm.
Founded in the US and headed by Harvard-educated chief executive Wayne Ting – the UK arm of the operation is headed by tech-savvy millennials in ‘early-stage careers’.
According to his LinkedIn account, Stevenson was hired by Lime as a public affair manager in October 2020 before being promoted to senior public affairs manager then appointed director of policy for UK and Ireland in September 2023.
He describes his role as having ‘responsibility for launching, expanding and maintaining services across the region’.
Stevenson, who has two brothers and a sister, grew up in a large house in the Oxfordshire countryside and was educated at £23,000-a-year Magdalen College School in Oxford.
Founded in 1480, the school’s famous alumni include Skyfall director Sam Mendes, sports presenter Jim Rosenthal and Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey as well as Meghan Markle’s friend and biographer Omid Scobie.
Wayne Ting
He went on to obtain a 2:1 in Politics at Durham University in 2017.
Stevenson’s father Hamish founded Fast Track in 1997, with the backing of Sir Richard Branson.
The firm tracked the progress of Britain’s fastest-growing unquoted companies and published annual league tables for more than 25 years before closing in 2021.
He describes himself as an entrepreneur and an ‘angel investor’ in a number of venture capital funds and early-stage companies.
Hal’s mother is Kay Langdale, 61, a former copywriter who began writing romantic novels when her children were at school.
Working alongside Stevenson in London is Imaan Williams who is operations manager at the huge ‘sustainably-designed’ mega-depot the firm recently opened in Tottenham, north London which is the largest of its kind in Europe.
She recently explained how data plays a key role in operating the UK arm of the firm known as Lime Technology Ltd which made £63.5million in turnover in 2023 – a huge increase on the firm’s £20.2million turnover the previous year.
Ms Williams, who gained a degree in Geography and International Development at the University of Sussex, had previously worked as a delivery operations manager at Amazon after starting out in 2016 as a transfer pricing intern at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) then joining the Sky get Into Tech programme.
Imaan Williams
Meanwhile the firm’s general manager Kaan Tas claims he has helped generate rapid growth in the firm as it went on to establish itself as market leader.
Mr Taas, who is originally from Turkey, gained a MSc in construction management at the University of Reading.
Before joining Lime as operations manager in 2021, he ‘spearheaded AI-driven strategies’ at ‘a cutting-edge property investment platform’.
Prior to that he worked as a project manager at hotel and hospitality platform OYO.
Also based in London is Manish Kharel who is Lime’s head of global pilots – tasked with growing operations at the firm.
According to his LinkedIn page his goal is ‘to make convenient, affordable and environmentally friendly short-distance transportation a reality across the UK’.
Mr Kharel, who has a BSc in chemistry from Warwick University, also previously worked at PwC. Starting off as a management consulting associate he went on to become a senior associate before joining Lime as a senior operations manager in July 2021.
Manish Kharel
He went on to become operations director before taking on his latest role in which he says his team design and execute ‘experiments’ to test latest innovations across the world.
Lime’s UK operation is overseen by a European director, Brussels based former business analyst Romain Dekeyser, who is the firm’s regional director in charge of Northern Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand.
As well as the UK and Ireland he oversees operations in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The company is keen to promote its green credentials and mission ‘to build a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free’.
Mr Ting, 41, recently hit back at complaints about his e-bikes being abandoned on pavements.
Announcing a £20million investment in London in January he told of his hopes that the capital will become ‘another Amsterdam’
Mr Ting, who is chief executive of San Francisco based Neutron Holdings Inc which trades under the name Lime, said: ‘While demand has surged, infrastructure and our ability to ensure riders always have somewhere to park safely and considerately has not kept pace, leading to parking challenges across our industry.’
He said he wants Lime to continue to ‘work collaboratively with boroughs and Transport for London’ which is due to get powers from the Government to set London-wide rules for e-bike firms, to tackle parking problems.
