EV fires: Govt units up panel to recommend certification, testing SOPs for batteries

Amid growing cases of fires in electrical automobiles (EVs) being reported from components of the nation, the federal government has stepped in with a plan to formulate procedures on battery certification and high quality management. The transfer is a bid to discourage such incidents from reoccurring, which might delay potential EV consumers. The Centre has fashioned a panel of specialists that has representations from the Visakhapatnam-based Naval Science & Technological Laboratory; the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras; the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru; and an knowledgeable of superior chemistry.

“The committee will suggest ways to ensure the right quality of the product. They have to come up with a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for testing and validation of key components and formulate a certification standard for the battery used in EVs,” mentioned a high authorities official. The committee has to submit its report by the center of this month, added the official.

The electrical two-wheeler section has seen many incidents of automobiles catching hearth within the current previous. Electric two-wheeler makers resembling Ola Electric, Okinawa Autotech and PureEV had recalled their scooters within the wake of separate hearth incidents. The causes for hearth might embrace manufacturing defects, exterior harm, or faults within the deployment within the battery administration system, which might end in these batteries turning into a hearth threat. In some instances, defective charging might even have been a motive behind the fireplace.

A Tata Nexon EV caught hearth in Maharashtra final month, which is being seen as the primary main occasion of a passenger car catching hearth in India. Nexon is the nation’s largest-selling EV. There are 30,000 Nexon EVs on the highway, which have cumulatively coated over 100 million km throughout the nation in almost 4 years, Tata Motors had mentioned in an announcement.

Another committee with representations from the Centre for Fire Explosive and Environment Safety and the Indian Institute of Science and Naval Science & Technological Laboratory was requested to probe the circumstances that led to the incident and recommend remedial measures. While the explanations for the fireplace are nonetheless underneath investigation, the official mentioned they’ve approached car producers, primarily based on preliminary investigation, and have sought responses.

With a bigger intention to cut back its crude import invoice, the federal government’s focus is on pushing passenger car homeowners to shift to EVs from inner combustion engine automobiles. The authorities has achieved partial success; excessive gasoline costs have additionally helped the transition, with firms resembling Tata Motors, MG and Hyundai launching reasonably priced EVs. The nation’s largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki, has not launched an EV available in the market thus far, although it’s working collectively with Toyota to develop a battery EV in India. The firm has additionally introduced to cease making pure petrol automobiles inside the subsequent 10 years and may match them with hybrid powertrains.

The largest motive behind client hesitation in shopping for EVs in India is the shortage of charging infrastructure, even in large cities, triggering vary anxiousness. The highways just about don’t have any EV charging infrastructure at current, although there’s a plan to arrange no less than one EV charging station for each 69,000 petrol pumps throughout the nation. The authorities can be concentrating on to go all-electric by way of new automotive gross sales within the nation by 2030, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had introduced.