electric vehicles: As fire spreads, EV makers rush to douse flames

Viral videos of electric scooters catching fire that are doing the rounds on social media have sent manufacturers into a damage control mode, from allaying consumer concerns over the safety of their vehicles to coming up with more safeguards against such incidents.

Concerns over the safety and reliability of these vehicles may even derail the electric vehicle transition that is fast gaining pace in India, according to industry experts. As a strategy to soothe consumer fears, the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles is advocating the adoption of a thermal alarm system on EVs. Developed by a Canadian startup, the device would warn riders of over-heating of the battery so that they could take evasive measures, said Sohinder Gill, director-general of the industry body. However, this could be a small fix that would not address the root cause of the issue.

Multiple EV industry executives that ET spoke with underscored the need to find the cause and address it. They also advocated intensive consumer awareness campaigns.”If there are specific issues that led to mishaps, then it is incumbent on the industry to educate customers that a brand is independent of the industry. EVs are fundamentally safe,” said Ravneet Phokela, chief business officer at Ather Energy, which makes electric scooters.

Fire a Recurrent Problem

Consumer awareness campaigns may be expensive and arduous. But a more complex challenge for the EV industry would be to find the cause of these fires and put safeguards in place.

Electric scooters catching fire has been a recurrent problem for some time now – there had been at least a dozen incidents in the last one year, as per media reports. Scooters made by Okinawa and Pure EV have caught fire more than once in the past year, reports show. The video of an electric bike and scooter showroom on fire is also doing the rounds on social media.

However, it is the recent fire incident with an Ola Electric scooter in Pune that has brought the issue to the centre stage.

Consumers have started increasingly questioning dealers about the safety of EVs since these incidents came to light, said Gill, who is also the chief executive of Hero Electric. “There is no dip in sales yet. But there is lot of questioning on what happened and why it happened.”

Ola Electric and Okinawa said they were still investigating the cause behind the fire. ET couldn’t immediately reach Pure EV for a comment.

Another EV manufacturer said consumers were now questioning that if scooters made by a well-funded company like Ola Electric could run into such troubles, what was the guarantee that smaller manufacturers like his company would be able to offer on product safety. The manufacturer requested not to be identified.

Interestingly, cheap imported EVs sold by fly-by-night traders may be at a lower risk of spontaneously catching fire as they use bulky but safer lead-acid batteries, unlike the high-tech lithium-ion batteries used by more expensive EVs. The lithium-ion batteries are more prone to thermal runaway, or chemical reactions that may result in an uncontrollable increase in temperature.

According to experts, the most likely reasons for these fires would be poor construction of the battery packs or battery management system, poor quality of cells or due to the temperature sensors failing to cut off the battery when under continuous heavy use, leading to high temperature. The fires could be due to different causes, they said.

Half a dozen industry executives that ET spoke with said the current rush in the EV industry to get a product to the market as soon as possible could result in some manufacturers being unable to sufficiently test these vehicles in real-world conditions. This reduces the ability of such manufacturers to find design flaws at an early stage, they said.