Aditi Shah

NEW DELHI (Reuters] – India’s electric scooters are catching on fire, as two government sources have revealed to Reuters. The problem is in the battery modules and cells.

Three companies were investigated in connection with fires. Ola Electric was a top-selling Japanese e-scooter and is now backed by SoftBank Group.

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

India started an investigation into safety concerns in March after several ebike fires. This included one that resulted from the death of a mother and her daughter.

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 the three businesses to perform further checks,” said the individual, noting that they expect the final investigation report in approximately two weeks.

Ola sources its cells from South Korea’s LG Energy Solution (LGES) and says that it has partnered with the government to address the problem. Ola also appointed an outside expert agency as well as conducting its own investigation.

A spokesperson from the company stated in a statement that “according to the preliminary assessment by these experts, there wasn’t any fault with the Ola battery managing system at all”  

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 batteries, 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.

The government has begun to investigate the possibility of testing the battery cells in e-scooters, according to the second source.

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

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