Ola recalls 1441 e-scooters to find reason for catching fire

Hyderabad: Ola Electric announced the recalling of 1,441 e-scooters as a pre-emptive measure in the wake of rising number of incidents of electric vehicles catching fire across India. Ola said that it will conduct a "detailed health check" of the concerned batch to find the reason for catching fire.

The company said that its internal investigation into the March 26 incident when an Ola S1 Pro e-scooter caught fire in Pune has revealed that the "thermal incident was an isolated one".

"As a pre-emptive measure, we will be conducting a detailed diagnostics and health check of the scooters in that specific batch and, therefore, is issuing a voluntary recall of 1,441 vehicles," Ola Electric said in a statement. On Saturday, Ola Founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said that the company hails the government's step to penalise EV makers for faulty e-scooters and if it finds there is a problem in any of its batches, it will recall those e-scooters immediately.

"We are concerned about the recent EV fire incidents and fully support the government's concerns. If we find any fault with our scooters, recalling that batch will be our top priority," Aggarwal had told reporters at Ola FutureFactory. In a fresh statement, the company said that these scooters will be inspected by its engineers and will go through a "thorough diagnostics across all battery systems, thermal systems as well as safety systems".

Recently, an 80-year-old man in Telangana died and three of his family members suffered injuries after a detachable battery of his electric scooter burst into flames. The man, Ramaswamy, was charging the battery inside his house when the incident occurred on April 19.

After the tragic incident, EV manufacturer PURE EV said that it would recall 2,000 concerned vehicles. Earlier, e-scooter manufacturer Okinawa Autotech had also said that it would voluntarily recall 3,215 scooters to check for any issues with the batteries.

IANS Input