The fire in Ola’s e-scooter was one of the recent such incidents, which created an uproar on social media and an investigation was conducted by the Indian government.
Electric scooters may catch more fires in the future, but such incidents are rare, the chief executive of India’s Ola Electric said at a private company event, raising safety concerns after one of its scooters caught fire in March. had gone.
The fire in Ola’s e-scooter was one of the recent such incidents, which created an uproar on social media and an investigation was conducted by the Indian government.
The company, backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group, has recalled more than 1,400 e-scooters and hired outside experts to investigate the cause.
When asked about the fire that broke out at a private event on Sunday, Chief Executive Officer Bhavish Agarwal replied, “Will such incidents happen in future, they can happen.”
“But our commitment is that we will make sure we analyze every issue and if there are any improvements to be made we will fix them,” he said, according to a recording of the incident reviewed by Reuters.
He described the fire as “very rare and isolated” in a recording from the incident, at which the company previewed a new operating system for its e-scooters.
Fire safety in the automotive industry was a widespread issue beyond electric vehicles (EVs), Agarwal said, adding that petrol-fueled vehicles were more in need of quality control regulations than the EV industry.
Arun Kumar, chief financial officer of the Ola Group, told Reuters that more gasoline-based scooters than electric models have caught fire, and the issue pertains to the two-wheeler industry.
Initial findings of a government investigation into the e-scooter fire revealed a problem with Ola’s battery cells and battery management system, Reuters reported last week, though the firm said its battery management system was not at fault.
Incidents of fire in Indian start-ups Okinawa and PureEV e-scooters are also being investigated.
“Sometimes, there will be some minor defect in the cell, maybe something else, which will cause some internal short circuit,” said Agarwal, who said Ola had just one incident among its 50,000 e-scooters on the road.
Ola imports its cells from LG Energy Solutions of South Korea. Kumar said all companies should source parts responsibly, and not from “unqualified Chinese suppliers”, for example.
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