Why is the Department of Transportation paying an out-of-state middleman to buy electric bikes from a company that the city itself is investigating for violating safety rules?
It's a question that gets at the heart of the arcana of city procurement rules but also the dangerous practices of Fly E-Bike, the fake-it-till-you-make-it mobility company that Streetsblog recently revealed has skirted city regulations to flood the city with illegal mopeds and uncertified e-bikes that have sparked deadly fires.
To be clear, the Fly product that will be part of the city's $2-million battery and bike swap pilot program — the Fly 11 Pro and its battery — meets all the requisite safety requirements under city law. As such, the DOT said it had no concerns.
“This first-of-its-kind program will provide as many bikes and batteries as possible to eligible applicants — while also ensuring all the equipment is UL-certified and can meet the daily travel demands of delivery workers,” DOT spokesman, Vin Barone, told Streetsblog. “Any suggestion that the equipment distributed is not UL-certified would be a willful misrepresentation of our program and would harm working-class New Yorkers looking for safe delivery tools.”
There is no such suggestion. But there are questions about why the city would involve itself with Fly E-Bike, given the company's history of violating city’s rules, as well as the ongoing enforcement by other city agencies.
Between 2023 and 2024, the company amassed 64 summonses for allegedly selling uncertified batteries or micro-mobility devices and another 22 summonses for allegedly selling illegal mopeds since the city's regulations went into place in 2023, according to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The company has been violating the rules at a pretty constant rate, 45 of the total summonses occurred in 2023 and 31 in 2024 (10 were missing a date).
At one point last year, the company was facing eight lawsuits claiming its equipment caused fires that maimed and killed multiple people. (One of those cases settled in October.)
Fly E-Bike has also racked up over 100 fire code violations. In 2023, the FDNY alleged 116 violations of the fire code at Fly locations, according to data obtained through FOIL last year and analyzed by Streetsblog. The FDNY declined to provide numbers for 2024.
So how did Fly become the go-to company for the city's first battery-and-bike swap program? Technically, it didn't — it just ended up that way because of how the city does business.
For the swap program, the city won't be purchasing equipment directly from Fly. Rather, the city simply set the rules for the program, demanding bids from companies that could procure a certified e-bike with a range suitable for delivery work. That company turned out to be TerryWorldWide LLC, a Michigan-based middleman, which will, under the $1.43-million contact, procure 410 Fly 11 Pro kits, plus an extra battery each, as well as dispose of or recycle the swapped bikes and batteries, safely transport the new and old equipment to and from multiple distribution events, and create new tech to administer the program, DOT said.
The contract was just under the $1.5-million maximum for qualifying for the city's M/WBE Noncompetitive Small Purchase Opportunities program.
The DOT would not say why Fly's history of violations was not taken into account when the program was being implemented or when TerryWorldWide selected the Fly 11 Pro.
TerryWorldWide did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It's a certified Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise that is frequent contractor on various city projects, though it has no prior experience related to electric micro mobility, according to its website.
The DOT declined to say how many M/WBE contractors sought the bike-and-battery swap contract, just that TerryWorldWide submitted the lowest-priced bid.
The founder of Fly, Ou Zhou, was a main figure in the city's e-bike boom after the devices were legalized in 2019. Ou, a former delivery worker himself, capitalized on that change in state law to sell cheap and lightly regulated equipment imported from China to desperate delivery workers during the pandemic. Other entrepreneurs chose to operate in the shadows, but Ou, as Streetsblog's investigation showed, opened dozens of retail stores and took the company public on the NASDAQ market.
This e-bike boom led to battery fires. In 2024, the FDNY investigated 277 fires caused by lithium-ion batteries, up from just 30 in 2019.
Fly ignored multiple requests for comment. In a press release (which does not mention TerryWorldWide and explicitly states that DOT had selected Fly, which the agency says is wrong), Ou said, “At Fly-E, safety and sustainability are at the heart of everything we do. ... We are proud to support NYC’s efforts to create a safer, more sustainable future for delivery workers and communities alike. This selection highlights our unwavering commitment to quality, innovation, and environmental responsibility, and we remain committed to driving long-term growth and success for our company.”
Applications for the swap program opened last Monday. Click here for more info.
