EV fires: Govt recommends additional safety requirements for battery standards

Representative Image

Amid reports of several fire incidents and other safety-related issues seen with electric two-wheelers in the country, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway on September 1 issued additional safety requirements related to battery cells, Battery Management System (BMS), on board chargers, battery pack design and thermal propagation due to internal cell short circuit.

The draft notification came in after the Ministry constituted an expert committee to recommend additional safety requirements in the existing battery safety standards in view of recent EV fires.

The notification to mandate amended standards for the respective categories of electric vehicles with effect from October 1, 2022 is in progress, the Ministry said in a statement.

"Ministry also has issued draft notification GSR 659 (E) on August 25, 2022, to amend Sub-rule 4 of Rule 124 of Central Motor Vehicles Rule (CMVR) 1989, for mandating Conformity of Production (COP) for traction batteries used in electric power train vehicles," the statement added. The proposed regulation will be applicable with effect from October 1, 2022 and the government has asked for comments and suggestions from all stakeholders within a period of thirty days.

Earlier this year, in April, EV makers such as Ola Electric, Pure EV and Okinawa had issued recalls for their electric vehicles following fire incidents in different parts of the country. Okinawa issued a recall of 3,215 units of their EVs, followed by Pure EV which recalled around 2,000 units of their EVs. Similarly, Ola Electric issued a recall of 1,441 units.

Meanwhile, during the Parliament session last month, the government informed that a total of 13,92,265 Electric Vehicles (EVs) are being used on the roads of India as on August 3, 2022. The total number of three-wheeler stands at 7,93,370. Total number of two-wheeler stands at 5,44,643. The number of four-wheeler and above stands at 54,252 as on 3rd August 2022, it said.