My employer forbid to charge E-bicycle batteries in the office. Not because some weird electricity theft bullshit, but because of working hazard statistics. My employer is a really big corporation with 8 branch offices in my region alone. 11,000 workers from all kinds of departments are reason enough to do serious hazard management.

Anyway, two years worth of data stated that about 3% of the office workers use an E-bike to come to office on a daily basis. Everyone of them charges their battery in the office or in the back of their service vehicles at least once per week. In two years we had 12 related tripping accidents that caused about 200 manhours lost due to sick days. One could argue that it takes a pretty clumsy worker to trip 12 times over a cable or a misplaces battery, but we're talking eleven-thousand potentially clumsy workers over a period of 730 days. These numbers add up to about 4000 € worth of working power lost per year. Nothing to worry about on the financial side of a hundred-billion dollar corporation.

BUT there were also 2 incidences where damaged batteries started a fire. One started smoking and was thrown out the window before worse could happen. The other lit up a nearby stack of paper. The fire was extinguished, but the entire building was evacuated for another 800 manhours worth of time. Now we're talking 20,000 € in total and these were just "turned out to be lucky" situations. Now what if some worker leaves their battery over night and it starts a fire?...

Anyway, my employer decided to invest and install a secured battery charging station at the bicycle stands at every office in my region. Since today no worker tripped over a charging cable and one more fire incident happened outside the building and only ruined the paint on the wall.