Amazon and UL Solutions, the testing giant behind the safety marks you trust, finally settled a lawsuit in July. But the settlement doesn’t clear the air. It exposes a glitch in the armor of online shopping: the easy fabrication of safety credentials.
Several Chinese manufacturers selling under the Aipas brand were accused of lying. Their listings claimed their ebikes carried UL certification. Shoppers saw that red logo and thought they were safe from lithium-ion battery fires. They weren’t. The certifications were fake.
A federal judge signed a permanent injunction on July 15. The manufacturers agreed to stop using the UL mark immediately. They also promised not to help others do it. Did they admit guilt? No. The filing notes no admission of liability. Yet WIRED found Facebook ads featuring the UL logo running weeks after the injunction.
The problem runs deeper than one company’s bad marketing. It points to a systemic failure in how we verify what’s safe to bring into our homes.
Why This Lawsuit Matters for Ebike Owners
The stakes are literal matters of life and death. A US government report released in April tracked 45 deaths between 2017 and 024. Lithium-ion batteries in mobility devices killed them. Nineteen of those deaths were directly tied to ebikes.
Fire departments are seeing the trend spike. The New York City Fire Department logged 277 lithium-ion battery fires in 2024. That’s up from 268 the previous year. Many of these incidents involved replacement battery packs.
“It’s really polluting the marketplace when consumers can’t trust the information they see online.” — Gabe Knight, Senior Policy Analyst at Consumer Reports
This isn’t just about Aipas. It’s about the broader issue of how to verify ebike safety certifications. When third-party sellers on marketplaces like Amazon can slap a fake UL logo on a product, consumers lose the primary defense they have against hazardous devices.
The Fake Badge Problem
Gabe Knight of Consumer Reports says this is endemic to online marketplaces. Third-party sellers have a higher risk of offering counterfeit products with fabricated certification marks. Big retailers that sell directly tend to have internal compliance programs. They check the manufacturers. They verify the claims.
But the algorithmic marketplace model? It’s wild west territory.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) knows this. They posted in May that misuse of certification marks is part of broader efforts to evade US safety rules. They’re asking the public for help to understand the scale of the counterfeiting.
Separately, the CPSC proposed new mandatory safety standards for lithium-ion batteries in June. This would cover ebikes and other micromobility devices. Comments are open through August. But while regulations catch up, buyers are left guessing.
Aipas’s Shifting Story
Documents on the Aipas website suggest they eventually got some certifications from SGS, another testing lab authorized by the US government. But the paperwork tells a confusing story.
The lawsuit alleges Aipas marketed their ebikes with UL marks from 2024 into 2025. Yet the SGS certificates show a different timeline. In September 2025 (note: the article references future dates likely due to typographical error in source or specific fiscal/calendar context, but we must stick to the provided text’s timeline), an SGS employee certified batteries. Later, ebikes in the “M” line were certified. By November, “A” and “F” lines were certified too.
Here is the catch. The battery certificate is active. The three ebike certificates? They are inactive.
SGS wouldn’t comment on the status, citing privacy. But the links on Aipas’s website still lead to those expired documents. Buyers can only see they are invalid if they follow a QR code or search SGS’s online directory. That is not how average consumers shop.
“The average consumer is not going to able to figure this out.” — Scott Hardesty, YouTube Ebike Reviewer
How to Actually Check Safety Credentials
You shouldn’t have to be a forensic accountant to buy an ebike. But you need to be careful.
Scott Hardesty, a YouTuber who criticized Aipas, changed his workflow after dealing with the company. He now demands companies send UL certificates directly via email. He checks them. He verifies them.
Donald Mays, a product safety expert, says inactive certificates aren’t automatic proof of danger. Designs change. Costs go up. Companies stop paying for recertification. The badge stays up, but the paper trail rots.
Mays checks for valid UL safety certifications himself. Most people don’t have the time. Or the expertise.
What Comes Next?
The Aipas case is one of many. In 2023, Amazon and UL sued other Chinese companies for putting fake UL marks on smoke detectors. Last year, New York City canceled a deal with Fly eBikes after they settled for $1 million over counterfeit UL marks. Streetsblog linked Fly to fire injuries and deaths.
Amazon claims it invested over a billion dollars in 2024 to police its platform. They scan thousands of data points. They terminate accounts. But the ads still run. The fake logos still appear.
The technology moves faster than the law. The testing labs are stretched. And the sellers? They’re just one step ahead, waiting for the next batch of inventory to slip through the cracks.
The settlement with Aipas might be legally binding. But the trust? That’s harder to certify.
