Lyft pulls electric bikes in NYC, SF, D.C., over braking problems

April 15 (UPI) -- Ride-share company Lyft said it's pulled all electric bicycles from New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco because of problems with the front brakes.

Lyft just added the electric bikes to the markets recently and is working on a new bicycle it hopes to introduce soon.

"We recently received a small number of reports from riders who experienced stronger than expected braking force on the front wheel," Lyft said in a blog post Sunday. "Out of an abundance of caution, we are proactively removing the pedal-assist bikes from service for the time being."

The electric bikes will be replaced with regular pedal bikes until the problem is fixed, Lyft said. Last year, Lyft acquired Motivate, the largest U.S. bike-share company, which owns the Citi Bikes in New York City and the Capital Bikeshare in Washington D.C.

Lyft owns about 39 percent of the U.S. ride-share market and beat rival Uber to an initial public stock offering this month.