ola electric: Bhavish Aggarwal, Indian chief of Ola Electric, says electric scooter fires are rare but can happen in the future

New Delhi: There may be more fires electric scooters in the future, but such incidents are very rare, the chief executive of India Electric Ola he said at a private company event after safety concerns were exacerbated by a fire in one of his scooters in March.

The fire on Ola’s electric scooter was among a series of similar recent incidents that sparked an uproar on social media and an investigation by the Indian government.

The company, backed by Japan’s SoftBank group, has recalled more than 1,400 e-scooters and appointed external experts to investigate the lawsuit.

“There will be events in the future, there may be”, CEO Bhavish Aggarwal he replied, when a question about the fires was asked during a private event on Sunday.

“But our commitment is that we will make sure we investigate every problem and if there are solutions to be done, we will solve it,” he said, according to a recording of the event reviewed by Reuters.

He described the fires as “very rare and isolated” in an event recording where the company premiered a new operating system for its electric scooters.

Fire safety in the automotive industry was a broader issue beyond electric vehicles (EVs), Aggarwal said, adding that gasoline vehicles had a greater need for quality control regulations than the electric vehicle industry.

More petrol scooters have caught fire than electric models and this problem affects the two-wheeler industry as a whole. Olà The group’s chief financial officer, Arun Kumar, told Reuters.

Initial results of the government investigation into electric scooter fires revealed a problem with Ola’s battery cells and the battery management system, Reuters reported last week, although the company said its battery management system was not at fault.

Fire accidents involving electric scooters of Indian start-ups Okinawa and PureEV are also being investigated.

“There will be, at times, some small flaws, maybe in the airframe, maybe something else, that will cause an internal short,” Aggarwal said, adding that Ola has only had one accident among his 50,000 electric scooters on the road.

Ola imports its cells from South Korea’s LG Energy Solution. Kumar said all companies should source components responsibly and not from “unskilled Chinese suppliers,” for example.

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