Aditi Sharma

NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – Faulty batteries and module failures have been identified by two sources from the government as being the main reason electric scooters caught fire in India over the past few weeks.

Three companies were investigated in connection with fires. Ola Electric was backed by SoftBank Group Japan and the top-selling escooter maker for April.

According to one source, Ola had both the problem of battery cells and the management system.

India began an investigation in March to investigate safety concerns following a series of ebike fires. One resulted in the deaths of a father and daughter, whose e-bike was “up in flames”.

India hopes that ebikes and scooters will account for at least 80% of two-wheeler sales by 2030. This is up from 2% currently. However, safety concerns could undermine consumer confidence and derail the growth of this sector which is crucial to India’s goal of carbon emission reduction.

The government took samples from all three companies for further inspection,” said the source. They also stated that they expect the final investigation report in two weeks.

Ola (which sources its cells in South Korea from LG Energy Solution, LGES) says it’s working with the government and has also hired an external agency to assist it.

A spokesperson from the company stated in a statement that “As per their preliminary assessment, these experts found no fault with the Ola battery-management system and it was most likely an isolated thermal event.”  

The Indian government has yet to release or share its report with us. The report is not available for comment as the source of the March Ola scooter crash in March has yet to be identified,” LGES Seoul told Reuters.

Prashant Kumar (executive at LGES India) told Reuters on April 18 that Ola and the company were “collaborating” over an unfortunate incident. He also said they are trying to find the root cause.

Also, the government investigation looked at fire incidents in scooters manufactured by Indian companies Okinawa (and PureEV). Okinawa experienced an issue with both the batteries and the modules. PureEV had problems with the casing of the battery cells, according to the source.

PureEV and Okinawa didn’t respond to an email request for comment, but they previously stated that they were investigating fires and had issued recalls of certain scooters.

According to the second source: The government has begun to investigate the possibility of testing the battery cells in e-scooters prior to allowing them to go into service.

India is currently testing the batteries but not those primarily imported from South Korea and China.

The person stated that India will need to create the expertise and infrastructure necessary to test cells.