The video of a scooter built by PureEV on fire in Chennai has further raised concerns about the safety of electric vehicles as this comes days after two similar incidents were reported in Pune and Vellore.
A red Pure EV, parked on the side of a busy road in Chennai, went up in flames, sparking concerns among social media users who watched the 27-second clip tweeted by Sumant Banerji of The Economic Times.
In other separate incidents recently, an Ola electric scooter caught fire in Pune and an Okinawa Autotech two-wheeler caught fire in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore.
“This is not good for the leap and shift we're working towards. It'll only make sticking to conventional means with even more grip,” Twitter Vijay Singh user said.
“EV - does V stand for vehicle or Volatile?,” Dr Prasanth Nair asked.
Several others suspected that overheating of the battery could have led to the incident. “Looks like EV bikes are not well tested for Indian summer. Repeated Incident like these will shake the confidence of consumer in EV bikes,” Tushar Gokhale tweeted.
Meanwhile, the government has ordered a probe into the two other incidents of electric two-wheelers catching fire, CNBC-TV18 reported, quoting government sources.
The centre on March 28 decided to depute a team of independent experts to investigate two incidents of electric two-wheelers catching fire, CNBC-TV18 reported, quoting government sources.
The experts will travel to Vellore and Pune to probe whether structural or external factors have caused the fire in the Ola electric scooter and the Okinawa electric bike.
Notably, both two-wheelers had been tested and received type approvals before they were launched. The investigators will try to find out if there is a manufacturing defect that affected their operation.
Watch: Ola scooter goes up in flames in Pune, worried Twitter users seek answers
According to a Reuters report, lithium-ion batteries (used in the Ola scooters), whether used in electric vehicles or electronic devices, can catch fire if they have been improperly manufactured or damaged, or if the software that operates the battery is not designed correctly.
Softbank Group-backed Ola Electric said last week that it has also launched an investigation to find out what is causing the electric scooters to catch fire.One of India's most popular startups, Ola began selling its electric scooters last year. It produces 1,000 scooters a day, leaving it far off a planned initial target of building two million a year.
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