Explained: Why few EV makers recall their electric scooters in India?

New Delhi: Taking into cognizance of the recent report of a fire in Electric vehicles in India, Ola Electric voluntarily asked its customers to return their vehicles for security check-ups. The order came on Sunday.  Recently, Nitin Gadkari, Union Road Transport Minister, also asked the EV manufacturers to recall all defective batches of vehicles immediately.

Recent EV fire incidents

Across the country, the fire in the electric vehicles has so far been reported in three Pure EVs, one Ola, one Boom, two Okinawa, and 20 Jitendra EV scooters.

On Saturday, the blast in an e-scooters manufactured by Boom Motors claimed a life of a 40-year-old man. During the time of the blast, the EV was getting charged at home. In the incident in Andhra Pradesh’s Vijaywada a couple and their two daughters also received severe burn injuries.

Earlier on Wednesday, an explosion in the EV made by Pure EV claimed the life of an 80-year-old man and also caused injuries to two others.

Why few EV makers recall their electric scooters

After a scooter caught fire while parked on the roadside in a busy area in Puna, Ola Electric decided to recall a batch of 1,441 scooters. The incident happened on March 26.

Other than Ola, Okinawa Autotech, PureEV also recalled over 3,000 units and around 2,000 units, respectively.

Investigation for the same is still going on. ”Our internal investigation into the March 26 vehicle fire incident in Pune is ongoing and preliminary assessment reveals that the thermal incident was likely an isolated one. As a pre-emptive measure, we are going to conduct a detailed diagnostics and health check of the scooters in that specific batch and therefore are issuing a voluntary recall of 1441 vehicles,” it said.

The Centre will reportedly soon announce ‘quality-centric’ guidelines for electric vehicle manufacturers. The Union Transport Minister said we are planning to impose heavy penalties in case of negligence.