Indian Govt To Fine Escooter OEMs Involved In Fire Incidents

After sending show cause notices to the electric scooter manufacturers for multiple fire incidents, the central government is now reportedly planning to impose monetary penalties for using unsafe batteries in those vehicles that led to such safety incidents.

While the government doesn’t plan to take any severe action given electric vehicles (EV) is a nascent industry, it believes that a penalty would “act as a deterrent for companies compromising on quality”, as per a Mint report.

The development comes on the back of union minister Nitin Gadkari’s statement last month that his ministry issued a show-cause notice to the CEOs and MDs of escooter companies involved in the fire incidents to explain the reasons as to why the relevant Sections of the Motor Vehicles Act should not be invoked against them.

He had then said that further steps would be taken after receiving their responses.

Meanwhile, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) had also issued notices to four to five EV manufacturers asking reasons behind fires in their vehicles and why no actions would be taken against them.

The notices had followed multiple fire incidents reported in the escooters manufactured by Okinawa Autotech, Ola Electric, Pure EV, Jitendra EV, and Boom Motors, some of which were also deadly in nature, and investigations finding issues with battery quality and more.

As per the publication’s latest report on the issue, an official has said that the escooter manufacturers have replied to the notices the government had sent and the latter is taking action. 

“The action cannot be very severe. We have to punish them, but it’s a nascent industry. We have to punish them for failure to comply, at the same time we should not kill them,” the official was quoted as saying.

Moreover, the official emphasised that electric two-wheelers are the future of India.

“Batteries should be connected in series. These people (EV makers) are connecting them parallelly also. Parallel connection will lead to serious problems. Battery management system is useless most of the time. Venting mechanism is absent in almost all and connections are also parallel in most of the batteries,” the person added.

A Look At The Govt’s Past Measures

The government had formed two committees after the safety incidents shot up during the summer season in India. 

The Centre for Fire, Explosive and Environment Safety (CFEES), which is the fire science and engineering arm of Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) had first found that defects in batteries, including the designs of the battery packs and modules of the escooters involved in such incidents.

Later, another experts panel found that their battery management systems (BMS) were seriously deficient and identified a lack of proper ‘venting mechanism’ for overheated cells.

As per the official’s statement, the Centre has also asked the escooter companies to stop selling vehicles with faulty batteries and discard such batteries. In fact, while the cases were on the rise, the Union Transport Ministry had indeed asked the two-wheeler EV manufacturers to halt new model launches till the investigations into the fire incidents were on.

The government had also ordered the escooter manufacturers to voluntarily recall their defective vehicles. As per the latest government data, 6,656 EVs have so far been recalled by three manufacturers following that.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has released performance standards for EV batteries in the country to ensure further safety.

The sales of electric two-wheelers in India are expected to jump to 78% of the total two-wheeler sales by 2030, helped by government policies, technology, infrastructure, and consumer acceptance, a recent Redseer report said.