E-Scooter fires rare but possible, says Ola Electric chief

After several incidents of electric vehicle batteries catching fire, the chief executive of Ola Electric Bhavish Aggarwal said such incidents are very "rare and isolated" but can happen in the future. One of Ola's scooters caught fire in March and safety concerns have been raised by customers and the government.

The Indian government has launched an investigation after several accidents related to EVs took place in recent months. Ola recently recalled over 1,400 e-scooters while external experts investigate the cause.

E-scooters from Indian start-ups Okinawa and PureEV were also involved in fire-related accidents. He noted only one Ola scooter caught fire and there are 50,000 such scooters on the road. "Sometimes, there will be some minor defects in the cell or some other part of the vehicle".

Aggarwal was speaking at a private event on Sunday when the question about accidents was asked. He answered, "will there be (similar) occurrences in the future? There might be". Ola was previewing a new operating system for its e-scooters at the event. He added that the company will make sure to analyse every issue and fix them, reported Reuters.

The Ola official further said fire safety in the automotive industry is a broader issue beyond electric vehicles (EVs) and pointed out that petrol-fuelled vehicles had a greater need for quality control regulations than the EV industry. A government report last week said the fires are due to an issue with Ola's battery cells and battery management system but the company refuted this finding.

Ola Group's chief financial officer Arun Kumar noted more gasoline-based scooters have caught fire compared with electric models. "This is an issue of the two-wheeler industry as a whole".

The EV manufacturer is backed by Japan's SoftBank Group and imports its cells from South Korea's LG Energy Solution.