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PluginIndia Electric Vehicles

Electric Scooter Fires : OLA Electric, PURE EV | Industry & Media Responsibility

30/3/2022

25 Comments

 
By Kamlesh
We have seen multiple instances of electric scooters catching fire in the past 6 months. PURE EV, Okinawa and OLA Electric are brands whose vehicle's have caught fire. The buck stops with these corporations. They need to release investigative reports by their team as well as documents from third party investigators. They should also release educative guides on how to take care of their EV's in hot Indian summers. At the same time the Indian mainstream media and the pollution vehicle media have to stop causing hysteria when it comes to EV fires while conveniently ignoring the hundred's of ICE fires happening each month. Let's have some perspective here.
Watch the video

Here are reports from the community and media on EV fires on the following vehicles.
  • OLA Electric S1 Pro
  • PURE EV ePluto 7G
  • Okinawa. Media article here

Ola S1 Pro Caught Fire in Maharashtra. The vehicle already has temperature management issues as reported by many YouTubers and auto experts. #OlaS1 #OLAFIRE #olas1pro #evfire #ev #bhash @OlaElectric @bhash @varundubey pic.twitter.com/KLFTCnoVAV

— Manjunatha M (@nileshj100) March 26, 2022

Another EV Fire Incident: Pure EV Electric Scooter Catches Fire in Chennai, Tamilnaduhttps://t.co/mqDQb3AggP@pureevindia #electricscooter #pureev #caught #fire #incident #electricvehicles #ev #news #india

— Electric Vehicle Info (@evehicleinfo) March 29, 2022

The buck stops at the OEM's
OLA Electric, PURE EV and Okinawa need to do the following ASAP
  • They need to release reports after detailed investigation from their respective RnD teams. What caused the fire? What do your vehicle logs say? Did you identify the root cause? What are the triggers for your battery pack to get into thermal runaway conditions? What would your recommendations be to your customers? These and other relevant questions need to be answered.
  • Communicate on how did they take care of the unfortunate customers, who were involved in these incidents.
  • Ultimately you need to reassure your customers. I speak to many EV owners and enthusiasts, they are really worried. The main reason of their worry os due to the absolute lack of public communication and education.
  • All these 3 OEM's are notorious for their lack of communication to the greater EV community. OLA Electric focusses on PR and not on educating their customers, PURE EV focusses on communication to their customers (which is good) but ignores public communication and education. Okinawa never responds to our mails. This wont help, they need to do more when it comes to education.

Ola Electric S1 Pro fire
We know multiple people at OLA electric working at engineering, marketing and management. They told me that the company is taking this incident seriously. Apparently they have been testing the S1 Pro for more than a year in hot weather conditions in Krishnagiri, TN and other places. There is also a technology built into the scooter called the 'OlaSense' that monitors the battery system and checks if any cell is misbehaving or is under stress. In such situations the technology alerts the BMS, which communicates to the system and automatically switches to eco mode to avoid further stress to the cells in the battery. We have seen OlaSense in action, when many owners have reported their scooter switching to eco mode all of a sudden with no explanation. That is a good thing. It is a protection mechanism in action. In this case, the team is baffled why OlaSense did not work. I also learnt that the OLA S1 pro collects and uploads logs to the server regularly. They said that engineers and management have visited the Pune location. The scooter is totally damaged, I'm not sure what they can get from it. What i believe is that, the engineers can examine the logs leading to the fire and try to understand from the code and understand which parameters went haywire in the events leading to the fire.
The community is waiting for OLA electric's report. We also advised the management of OLA electric to also get a third party agency to release a report too. Let's hope for the best.

I spoke to a learned professor at IIT-H who is working on battery cells. He did not want his name to be published for privacy reasons. I showed him the video of the OLA scooter fire and he said -
"From observing the fire, i can say that the lithium NMC cells used by OLA seems to be of good quality. In my research, i have tested multiple lithium cells - A grade, A+, B grade and more. I have seen how they burn or explode. In this case, there was decent amount of time available before you can see explosions. Also i see that the explosions that typically happen with NMC cells were happening in a controlled manner. That is a sign of good cell quality. No one has seen a 4 kWh battery fire so far. I have seen cells that explodes immediately. I have also seen cells shooting out from the battery pack like a tracer bullet. In this case there was lot of time and nothing of that sort happened. If the cells were a poor quality one, u can see cells exploding at a rapid pace and it can even reach the other side of the road. Thermal runaway could have happened maybe because of a short circuit but it needs more investigation. I'm not sure if the OLA's battery pack has phase change material. That too helps in delaying explosions."

The above comment from the learned professor was revealing. The cell quality does not seem to be the issue here. How did the BMS allow such thermal runaway to happen is the big question. The BMS team at Ola electric have some explaining to do. We do know, OLA electric use cells from Korea. Are these LG or Samsung cells? If anyone can shed a light, do write in comments below.
Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of OLA electric did release a statement.

Safety is top priority. We’re investigating this and will fix it. https://t.co/HsTFh4cbhw

— Bhavish Aggarwal (@bhash) March 26, 2022

PURE EV scooter fires
We do know the management at PURE EV and they do speak to us. The above incident is the third PURE EV scooter catching fire in the past 8 months. That does not bode well for the company. However they did tell me that they are investigating this incident with all seriousness and also released a press statement.

"We have taken cognizance of the incident reported with one of our customer vehicle in Tamil Nadu and preliminary information has been obtained from the concerned client and our dealer. The accident vehicle has been brought to our concerned dealer service station for further analysis. We are investigating the incident and will do a thorough assessment. We adhere to the highest safety standards through rigorous internal testing as well as special phase change materials being implemented in our battery packs to avoid rapid fire/blast kind of scenarios.
PURE batteries come with the state-of-the art thermal management system, which is a combination of the electronics coupled with multiple active/passive materials, to avoid the thermal-runaway events. We also have a special vent mechanism so that the smokes get released immediately whenever there is any kind of event inside the battery, otherwise, a pressure cooker kind of scenario can take place, leading to sudden blast/explosion. Although we are yet to receive the full information in the enclosed thermal run away investigation form, however the preliminary information revealed that the white smoke has come out for long time (which is due to the melting of the organic based phase change materials) for many minutes, followed by the controlled thermal run away event and finally leading to the uncontrolled fire. 
The objective of providing the thermal management materials was not only to improve the efficiency and life cycle/safety of our batteries, but also to suppress the immediate explosion kind of incident for a long time such that the user/people can suppress the fire with fire retardant materials or even with the simple sand or the users can take decision to remove the battery from the vehicle before the event of fire. We will conduct thorough root cause analysis as soon as we receive the accident vehicle."


We did not receive any public report from PURE EV on their earlier fires. Will they continue to just let this also disappear from public memory? That is a strategy many corporations do. Sweep things under the carpet and let time do its work. I did speak to Dr Nishanth from PURE EV and he did say the team is working on an investigative report. Let's wait and watch.

What are media saying?
​The mainstream media and the traditional pollution vehicle media are all over these incidents. Front page headlines with large fonts. Verbal shots are fired by the pollution vehicle media and petrol head sheeps can't seem to hide their glee whenever EV's catch fire. These people conveniently ignore hundreds of ICE vehicles catching fire each month. Where are the sensational headlines then?
Look at these irresponsible tweets from the pollution vehicle media. Our friends at Tesla Club of India asks a pertinent question to ​these ICE vehicle OEM shills.

We EV fans accept issue and push companies to take better measures, does media even ask same for ICE. Just shows you hypocrisy.

Do not use some issues to boost your fossil propaganda. pic.twitter.com/nhP7Fy1EMi

— Tesla Club India® (@TeslaClubIN) March 30, 2022
ICE vehicles are catching fire every month. Where are the questions on these?

Summer is barely here and ICE vehicles are catching fire here and there regularly even after decades of development.

Really raises question on manufacturing and testing of these.
Do media, industry and people even care about these? pic.twitter.com/qUcHGiPK3Q

— Nikhil Chaudhary (@NCBirbhan) March 29, 2022
All vehicle fires are bad
All fires are bad. EV or ICE. The buck falls with with OLA and PURE EV, Maruti and other OEM's as we have pointed.
But here is the difference. The EV community is reaching out to companies, trying to get data from EV owner and the company. We are also trying to get some battery care guidelines from companies. We will publish them for the benefit of the EV owner community.
On the other hand u see the entire petrol head auto 'journalists' and and mainstream media not bothered about education but are more interested in causing hysteria with EV fires while conveniently ignoring the 100's of ICE fires happening each month, we cant stand back. We need to remind them to do their jobs.

What can you do as an EV owner?
  • Take basic precautions
    • Wait for 2 hours and then put your EV for charging.
    • Always park in the shade
    • In peak summer use gentle acceleration, avoid speeding.
Ultimately it is simple, Li-Ion cells dont like stress, rapid charging, rapid discharge at high C rates cause stress to the cells.
Do everything you can to avoid stress. Your EV will be fine.

I have extended tips in my ownership blog.

Do watch our video, where we chat with a battery designer. He offers his tips on how to take care of your battery.

More Regulations Needed?
There are calls already for the government to step in and put in place additional regulations for batteries in EV's. The Indian central government has formed a team of experts to investigate these incidents. 
Will EV OEM's
​need to add complex battery cooling tech in their battery packs? Modern Electric cars like the Nexon EV have liquid cooling to maintain the temperature of the battery pack. Adding such complex systems will increase the cost of electric scooters. There are calls for banning the NMC chemistry cells for India and focus on LFP cells which have a higher temperature tolerance and don't catch fire easily. What do you think?

Let us remain level-headed 
And it’s really important to emphasize the fact that we can think or assume anything in our own minds, but until we know the details, it’s not right to make assumptions. The goal is to remain truthful while reporting accurately. People will go to the extremes to prove that EV's are bad. These are the kind of people that take conspiracies and run with them. If the batteries are proven to be the cause of these fires, OLA, PURE EV and others will find a way to not only solve this issue and prevent future fires from happening. Samsung had an issue with exploding Galaxy Note 7 batteries. They were able to solve this and improve their products. So, let us remain level-headed and fair in our coverage and be grateful that no one was harmed from these incidents.

I'm an owner of the OLA S1 Pro. Do read by ownership blog too!
25 Comments
RAHHUL J
31/3/2022 07:49:11 pm

Sir, in the ola fire incident, I feel the motor is the culprit for the accident, as you can see from a video showing the side view, the smoke starts from the motor and then it expands the panel above the motor and then after this smoke rises the temperature of the batteries, they start to cause the fire, because if the problem is with lithium batteries they could have spontaneously caught fire, but it is logical to think that it took time for the batteries to be heated by the flame before the fires. The smoke from the motor could be because of the enamel of the motor windings that is burnt because of overheating, which raises the question whether the owner had excessively used the hyper mode. And what also puts sense is that, ather has till now not been affected because of the fan cooling for their motor. What do you think of this? Can you speak with the company on this view of the incident? It will be really helpful.

Reply
Kamlesh
1/4/2022 12:48:39 pm

Hi Rahul,
That is an interesting theory. Did the fire start at motor, which caused heat build up which in turn caused the battery pack to get heated and cause the Thermal runaway?
We will never know unless they get back to us on the report.
Let me ask the OLA team. But doubt they would reply to my query.
Thanks for commenting. No one thought of this angle.

Reply
evStorm
31/3/2022 09:42:20 pm

Really? You are blaming the owner for using Hyper mode? If it’s so fragile then why even offer that mode? The motor is encased in a solid steel housing and doesn’t just spontaneously catch fire.

Poor quality batteries or poorly designed BMS circuits cause overloading or shorts and this leading to a thermal runaway scenario. Ola HAS NOT SPENT ANY TIME TESTING THIS VEHICLE. All it’s current owners are doing free road and load testing for Ola and the govt is subsiding this with the ₹60000 subsidy!

Reply
Kamlesh
1/4/2022 12:51:13 pm

I'm not blaming the owner. I'm just saying lets take precautions as the software is still not stable. It may take a year or so.
But i agree with you. OLA should have spent more money in RnD and taken time to test all the features before launching the S1 Pro.
But now the deed is done, us owners have to just take precautions.

Reply
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5/4/2022 11:39:20 am

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Reply
Srinivas
22/4/2022 12:20:56 pm

Couple of things which I really wanted to share. Dont mistake me that i am speaking against EV or your work. I do own electric vehicle. I just wanted to share my perspective/Feeback.

First thing - I would really suggest not to pin point or compare against ICE vehicles or media. Instead focus only on EV industries and help people with Honest reviews - pros or cons of EV brands.

Our JOB should be to criticize the EV manufactures and build healthy competition in the industry,

It is not about convincing the people to switch to EV. They are not dump. They will do it only when they get what they need. Honesty speaking, there is no proper information available to the public to choose the right vehicle, There is no detailed technical reviews available from qualified people - there is no trusted source to get the reviews including plugin. Everybody does you tube channel videos and publish it .

If you look at EV companies website they dont give any transparent information at all on the vehicle Again you will say that even ICE manufactures dont share it, That is where we need to be different and bring out the information to the people, that is how we need to help people to buy EV. We really need to push EV companies to do better and build the trust. We really need to push to start 3rd party institution to test the safety mechanism and certify,

Just to give an example, Many major EV companies buy batteries from China. Is it manufactured as per the standards, We need to really questions the companies on this front - I DONT see plug in doing that - You people not bashing out EV companies to create competition. Yoy guyz are taking a simple route to educate the public like dont park the vehicle in sun, dont charge the battery after driving. More you put ifs & buts or rules, people will ignore EV.. For them, they are paying money for their convenience, I think they need to bring in technology fast if they want to switch over to greener world. If battery is getting heated, what mechanism/technology we have to keep it cool...dont take short cut to capture the market...that will lead to disaster for your company as well to the industry.

Reply
Kamlesh
14/9/2022 11:57:23 am

There is an entire section discussing about EV OEM's as well
"The buck stops at the OEM's"
This was not about just ICE or Media - although that is also important.

Reply
Rahul Shravage
25/4/2022 09:00:27 am

Hi Kamlesh,

Please tell me one EV company or government directive which tells the EV users how to contain the fire or what precautions to take in case of fire. There are none.

Pure EV by questioning the ownership of the latest fire accident has dented their reputation more. How does it matter who is the owner. They can pull the Vehicle VIN and get the information of the battery. They should be able to check the records from service centers on when was the vehicle serviced and the last recorded battery health. Also a good strategy would be to check all the batteries in the batch.

I am a EV owner and feel sad at the incidents. Hopefully they don't make an impact on prospective EV buyers.

Reply
Mahesh
25/4/2022 10:45:45 am

I agree with you. EV startups are taking shortcut to capture the market rather than investing on technology. I don't see such serious issues with tata electric cars. So why with 2 wheelers. I saw the news somewhere that hero electric not manufacturing in India, rather import batteries. Ola is not practical about what they are doing. They just want to import technology and create brand name for successful. IPO. Now they are saying that they will launch autonomous car in 2 yrs. Do we need autonomous car for India road conditions. All we need is a good solid performance car. Tesla took years to build the technology, how you will do in 2 yrs. Only EV company who does pretty decent job is ather. But no talks about them.

Reply
Rahul Shravage
26/4/2022 08:34:59 am

Correct. Ather has done great in terms of safety, braking and battery health. Tesla is no comparison to India because Tesla has huge investment and they have built a network of charging stations. In general the issues with EV cars will be less because of the build quality one is needed to maintain. EV two wheelers have become easy target for people to make money with lack of any safety rules.

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