Image: Samyukta Lakshmi / Bloomberg via Getty Images
There couldn’t be a more horrifying metaphor for the fortunes of the electric scooter market in India. At least six scooters with their batteries caught fire spectacularly – all within a matter of days – with the exact cause still undetermined.
One of the first to catch fire belong to to Ola Electric, Homemade electronic car parts Ola.
In one case, the entire truck filled with scooters of Jitendra Electric Vehicle caught fire. In another case, a 49-year-old man and his 13-year-old daughter tragically died in the state of Tamil Nadu, India after their newly purchased scooter exploded and continued suffocating father and son.
Then, a few days ago, the entire agent of Okinawa Scooters burned down causing 3,200 scooters to be recalled.
The scooter crash is a disaster for all electric scooter players in India, but no one can claim it to be as bad as Ola Electric.
Recently, Ola disclosure Their $330 million factory in Tamil Nadu and its CEO Bhavish Aggarwal have made it clear that his company will produce 2 million electric motorcycles by the end of the year and – that can only is an illusory flight of fancy – and 10 million of them by 2022.
Hubris can lead to the most unflattering cuts. First, Ola ran into some serious problems delivery delay of the S1 and S1 Pro electric motorcycles looked stodgy late last year, pushing back when the company’s pre-order customers could finally own their new bikes.
After that, there was outrage when many people received their 2 wheeler without a problem Software features such as ramp hold and navigation aid. Ola says it will take up to six months to fit all of their scooters accordingly.
And now there are these fires, which neither Aggarwal nor India can stand.
Stalled when going to electricity
The fact is, India has been desperately trying to reduce huge The oil import bill is worth $100 billion and has done a commendable job in the extraction sun for its lattice energy in different states.
But it needs to go much, further and quickly, and an electric vehicle revolution is exactly the cog in the wheel of sustainable energy that India needs to roll out. After all, the country became a victim of devastation such as frequent floods, intense heat waves, rainfall and devastating storms – most of which are the result of the climate crisis.
This is the home of 11 of the 15 most people in the world polluted Cities where children are some of the biggest victims of respiratory diseases.
However, the problem is that Indian consumers have not really fallen into the electric dream en masse. The lack of charging infrastructure and the range anxiety that comes with it and the unappealing prices for e-scooters have historically deterred the middle class from buying EVs – only 152,000 units were sold in 2019 compared to the 257 million that passed through the streets of Chinese cities.
To keep up with all the hard work that e-mobility companies like Ola, Hero Electric and Ather have done, the industry will have to quickly scramble to assure Indians that they won’t be ripped off. burned down every time they sat on one of their products.
Save the dream
This won’t be easy – there are many potential reasons behind what happened, and some of them may be related.
First of all, Indian companies need Localization manufactures lithium-ion batteries. Many experts point out how most of the cells used in EV batteries are made for colder climates. In fact, many Indian e-scooter brands are simply assembling the kits shipped to them from China.
If your battery isn’t optimally designed for your climate, experts say, you could run into thermal stability issues. A cell that cannot cool down properly expands and suffers from a condition called thermal runway may lead to fire.
Others say it’s a bit more complicated than just looking at the ambient temperature and cooling mechanism on a scooter, which is admittedly a hell of a lot in India. If that were the case, the lithium ion batteries in smartphones would pop out as if it were a permanent and horrifying memory of Diwali – however, they didn’t.
That’s because a valuable lithium cell is its salt as well regulation by a good Battery Management Software (BMS) and if so, it can easily survive and operate in temperatures up to 120 degrees Celsius, experts say. The quality of the cells, the charging and discharging characteristics, and how they are packaged side-by-side also have a major impact on how the battery performs.
Obviously, for all the scooter fires and the panic that surrounds them, lithium batteries are still very safe and the following ones AIS 156 An optional best practice standard established by the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI), where a battery that is subjected to direct and indirect flame for more than two minutes is technically fine.
Furthermore, as industry observers will remind you, any fledgling business will face growing difficulties – who remembers the outrage surrounding seat belts, airbags and brake? Likewise, all of these will eventually sort out.
However, the fire could not have come at a worse time than it could have been.
Acute shortages of chips needed for electric vehicle components and a lethargic supply chain caused by the pandemic and limited by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have sent fuel prices skyrocketing. India’s electric vehicle makers are trying to attract price-conscious first-time Indian buyers, who will now have to cut their jobs, if they haven’t already done so.
