India’s Electric Scooters Face Trial By Fire Amid Surging Demand

Nikhil Bahel, 25, is reconsidering his decision to purchase an electric scooter after a series of incidents involving battery-powered vehicles catching fire in the last two weeks.“I would now rather wait and watch before opting to go ahead with an electric scooter,” the Noida resident, who works in a publishing house, said over the phone. Bahel, who was planning to buy an Ola scooter, had opted to switch to the cleaner transport alternative amid rising fuel costs, but is now concerned about his safety.The SoftBank-backed company has faced challenges around delayed deliveries and software issues regarding its electric vehicles. Now a widely circulated video of its electric scooter bursting into flames has triggered safety fears.Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and chief executive officer at Ola, had then said the company was investigating the incident and would take action. BloombergQuint’s queries to Ola, sent on WhatsApp, remained unanswered.Last week, Nitin Gadkari, minister for road transport and highways, in Parliament said the government would take “appropriate action” against the manufacturers once investigations are complete.This comes when the nation aims to increase the share of cleaner mobility to lower reliance on crude and curb emissions. The government is offering billions of dollars worth of incentives to locally manufacture EVs.Sales of such vehicles in India have more than doubled so far this year and are expected to reach close to 10 lakh by the end of FY23 even as supply-chain constraints persist. But the fire incidents, at least four in the last one month alone at different OEMs, have sparked concerns in the nascent market, threatening more widespread adoption.According to a LocalCircles survey, about 21% of the consumers who are interested in buying an EV are staying on the sidelines due to safety, performance, and infrastructure concerns.BloombergQuint spoke with industry experts to understand why EV batteries catch fire and what needs to be done to prevent such events..Why Are EV Scooters Catching Fire?These are all very unfortunate incidents, and the reasons can be very many, Vivekananda Hallekere, co-founder of electric scooter maker Bounce, said in a phone interview. “One reason could be cell, quality of cells or how they are packed, how quickly the battery charges or how quickly it discharges. All of this has a factor to play and each manufacturer’s reason is different,” he said by way of a general explanation to the incidents witnessed by other OEMs. An Ather Energy spokesperson said most cells that are used in EV batteries are designed for countries with colder climates. Ather manufactures electric two-wheelers and so far no incident has been reported with their models.“When designing batteries for Indian conditions, the battery not only needs to be compatible with extreme road conditions but also with grid charging,” the Ather spokesperson said in an emailed statement. To manage the external conditions, a robust battery management system has to be built to ensure safe, reliable performance.Last week in Tamil Nadu, a 45-year-old man and his daughter died after an Okinawa Autotech scooter set ablaze after it was left for charging overnight.Okinawa told BloombergQuint that while the company is investigating the matter, it’s an “evident case of short circuit” due to negligence in charging the vehicle.Arun Vinayak, co-founder of Exponent Energy, a battery technology startup, said 99% of battery fires are due to short circuits leading to uncontrolled current. Due to which, he said, the cell’s temperature is up by a few hundred degree Celsius, leading to thermal runaway.Short circuit, according to Vinayak, happens because of poor cell quality; poor design of the battery; the way cells are connected and packed; and poor battery management system--that is, management of cells via sensing and software intelligence.Short circuit, according to him, is “33% a mechanical problem, 33% an electronic problem and 33% a software problem”.Vinayak, whose company makes battery management systems and fast charging interfaces for electric vehicles, clarified that hot summers and bad thermal management affect performance and life but don’t cause fires. India has specific issues as far as environment is concerned, temperature, dust, vibrations, overloading and so many things, and OEMs can’t just buy the best of the batteries and hope it will be okay for Indian customers and requirements, Sohinder Gill, chief executive officer at Hero Electric Ltd., said. .“We must do lots of thinking, innovations, development in India instead of directly using imported batteries. We must find our own solutions.” A lot of OEMs, Gill said, are not doing that. “They think simply buying batteries should be okay for Indian market.”.Test, Test, TestA whole lot of testing needs to be done, said Vinayak. “We pushed our pack to the limit to see when overcharging would lead to a battery fire.”Gill agreed. Unless companies have tested thousands of batteries before introducing the product or battery into the market, it’s like taking a guess that anything can happen, he said.Hero Electric has done “enough testing to know how our batteries behave”, Gill claimed, adding that benchmarking of thousands of batteries under simulated conditions of at least a year or two can give benchmarking data. “We have dataset to detect any fault in a battery that comes to service, even if it’s three-months-old.”Shreshth Mishra, co-founder of electric scooter startup Simple Energy, said safety standards shouldn’t be compromised at the cost of performance and cost of optimisation.“Even if there is a problem with one cell, it should not propagate to the complete battery pack. We have designed the mechanism in such a way if the single cell has some issue, it will not spread to the battery packs and we have multiple checks from the BMS (battery management system) to the battery pack and casing.”India has one standard for battery testing, AIS 048. To comply, vehicles undergo tests like short circuit, overcharging and vibration. The country has upgraded to AIS 156, one of the most stringent standards that includes fire resistance tests, but it is yet to be mandated.Ather Energy said it has stringent internal standards to ensure safety and reliability of its scooters and has thoroughly tested them for 1,00,000 kilometres.“We design our batteries to prevent the initiation and propagation of thermal runaway (fire) than what AIS 156 mandates. We also ensure very stringent manufacturing controls around safety parameters,” the company said. Its scooters go through a range of stringent tests with varying degrees of harshness that tests the efficiency of the scooter, including the battery.“These tests are done to mainly validate that none of these events lead to any kind of safety hazard to the rider.”While testing is one way to ensure batteries are safe, it’s also crucial to bring in certain global best practices when it comes to certification of batteries. Agencies such as Automotive Research Association of India and International Centre for Automotive Technology check worthiness of vehicles and adherence to AIS 048 standard.“I’m not sure the kind of battery management system we have in India will keep the temperature of batteries intact, and the quality is as good as the ones seen globally. It’s something that needs to be looked at very closely,” Hemal Thakkar, director at Crisil Ltd., said over the phone. “We need to bring in certain global best practices from countries such as Norway and ensure that in the dynamic climate conditions like India the performance doesn’t deteriorate.”Gill, who is also the director general at Society of Manufacturing of Electric vehicles, said the lobby is in touch with startups and are seeking design changes of the batteries that are already in the field.What Customers Can DoGill, of decades-old brand Hero Electric, said that customers should look for trusted brands with some experience, and not just any newcomer with no prior experience or expertise. Yet, the EV two-wheeler market has spawned several new manufacturers, like Ola Electric and Bounce, whose aggression has helped expand the market. According to Vinayak of Exponent Energy, a customer can “demand buyback, better warranty terms, these will indirectly put pressure on the OEMs”.Bounce founder Hallekere said “customers can ask for AIS 156 standards while purchasing a scooter. And look for OEMs that offer more safety options than just adhering to the standards”. Customers should also ask for access to dashboard that can give battery temperature and parameters so that they know the real-time health of the battery as well.But Bahel is cautious. “I would see if such [fire] incidents increase during the summer as temperature goes up, and if the companies make some changes to their vehicles.”

India’s Electric Scooters Face Trial By Fire Amid Surging Demand

Sales of EVs in India have more than doubled so far this year and are expected to reach close to 10 lakh by the end of FY23.

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