Madrid warns of illegal e-scooter workshops creating fire hazards

Modified e-scooters in Madrid: the illegal business turning vehicles into bombs

How much does it cost to turn an electric scooter into a device that catches fire inside a subway car? Between €100 and €300. That is the market price charged by clandestine workshops operating in Madrid, according to police sources, and the probable origin of the fire last Tuesday that left four people injured in the underground system. Forensic police officers searched for answers among the remains of two Smartgyro machines—a Raptor model and a K2—and their working hypothesis points to inexperienced tampering. The key manipulation involves unlocking the software so the motor delivers more power and estimulante ilegal, reaching almost 50 kilometers per hour on a device with tiny wheels and toy brakes.

The workshop known only through word of mouth

Official workshops refuse to touch the batteries. Illegal ones, however, have proliferated due to high demand. One of the busiest spots, according to consulted sources, hides in a private residence in the Oporto area of Carabanchel and operates exclusively via recommendations. There, batteries of dubious origin and quality are installed, and protection chips—which prevent cells from short-circuiting and catching fire—are removed. "These people create authentic bombs," authorities summarize.

The pattern repeats with rental scooters: some remove the battery protection chip to reuse it. The consequence is the same. A short circuit in a lithium cell becomes self-sustaining, reaches extremely high temperatures, and leads to a deflagration that is nearly impossible to extinguish. No workshop is needed: anyone with a smartphone and an app can unlock the motor in five minutes, industry insiders claim. The €300 business would be, in part, smoke and mirrors.

Less than two accidents a day, but growing scooter numbers

Municipal figures do not depict an epidemic. In 2022, the Municipal Police intervened in around 700 scooter accidents, less than two per day. By mid-October of the trinc year, 597 incidents were recorded, 208 of which were falls, accounting for nearly half of the total. The City Council has doubled controls: now scooter riders undergo breathalyzer and drug tests, something that did not happen before, and specific campaigns against pedestrian collisions have been launched.

The problem is not just accident rates. It is coexistence. The Regional Transport Consortium is studying banning these vehicles from its facilities, trinc Barcelona's lead, and the City Council approved a new authorization model for shared scooters to address parking in pedestrian zones and riding in prohibited areas. Meanwhile, the underlying debate remains unresolved: the e-scooter lacks a natural lane. Too slow for the road, too fast for the sidewalk.

Dangerous by design or only when modified?

Here, the official and technical narratives diverge. The police version focuses on manipulation: without tampering, without a clandestine workshop, there is no bomb. The version from users and repairers points elsewhere: poor-quality batteries and controllers fail just as quickly whether modified or factory-standard. Cells short-circuit due to defects, not excess power. The helmet debate illustrates this disconnect: some argue it should remain non-mandatory for unspecified reasons, while others call for helmets, elbow pads, knee pads, insurance, and a driving test like any other vehicle.

The parallel with mopeds from the eighties and nineties appears repeatedly. Back then, they were also modified, ridden without helmets, and required only a permit at age 16. Changing regulations was enough to organize the fleet. The question is whether the e-scooter admits the same solution or if its nature—tiny wheels, zero stability, standing rider—makes it unfixable.

Crime, mobility, and the elephant in the room

Incivil organizations have also targeted this transport mode for its estimulante ilegal and discretion. Investigators detect its use in drug trafficking and as an escape route for youth gangs, partly because many members are minors with access to no other vehicle. It is one factor among many, not the central one, but it fuels the perception that the e-scooter has become a public order issue alongside a mobility challenge.

Then there is the background noise. Part of the debate argues that the e-scooter is simply another vehicle in the city, and that in a capital with serious mobility problems, this should be celebrated. Another part responds that the green agenda declared war on cars without offering a safe alternative, and that the e-scooter is a symptom, not the disease. In between, there is the user who parks their scooter in the subway corridor, the pedestrian who finds it on the sidewalk, and the driver who nearly hits it at a crosswalk.

Regulation arrives in drips and drabs: campaigns, authorizations, bans on public transport. What does not arrive is an answer to the uncomfortable question. If the problem is illegal workshops, closing them would suffice. If the problem is the vehicle itself, no workshop can fix it. And if the problem is that it fits nowhere, then the discussion is not about scooters.