Okinawa recalled 3,215 units of its electric two-wheelers (e2Ws) on April 16 this year, while PureEV recalled 2,000 e2Ws on April 21, and Ola Electric recalled 1,441 e2W units on April 23 this year. The information was given by Krishan Pal Gurjar, Minister of State for Heavy Industries, Government of India while replying to a question about EV fires in the Lok Sabha.
He also noted that the Government of India had constituted an expert committee to probe into the EV fire incidents in the country during the last few months. This expert committee constitutes independent members from DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and Naval Science & Technological Laboratory (NSTL), Visakhapatnam.
A total of 6,656 were recalled by the three OEMs mentioned above so far. Gurjar further explained that the standards for testing EV components are specified under Rule 126 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rule, 1989.
The Minister has answered this question at a time when traditional OEMs are picking pace in terms of e2W sales in India. On the other hand, start-up OEMs have witnessed a sharp decline in their sales figures recently. For instance, Hero Electric became the largest e2W selling OEM in India by retailing 8,786 units in July 2022, representing a 35.09% MoM against 6,504 units sold in June 2022.
Sales of start-up OEMs Ather and Ola declined as per the data sourced from the Vahan portal. The former registered 1,281 electric scooters in July 2022 against 3,829 electric scooters in June 2022, leading to a 66.54% decline in MoM. On the other hand, Ola Electric was able to register 3,853 electric scooters in July 2022 against 5,886 units in June 2022, thus leading to a 34.54 decline in numbers.