Government launches investigation after Ola S1 Pro & Okinawa electric scooter fires

You must know by now that an Ola S1 Pro electric scooter caught fire. The incident happened in Lohegaon, Pune and the video went viral on the internet. Ola themselves have launched a probe to find the reason for the fire. However, now, the government has launched an investigation so that the root cause of the fire could be known.

The investigation has been ordered by The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH). Road Transport and Highways Secretary Giridhar Aramane told Business Today TV, “Government has ordered probe in the Ola Electric scooter fire incident. Independent experts in science and technology space will probe the incident and submit the report.”

The reports also say that the government is very serious about the safety of vehicles. They want to know what caused the fire. Independent experts in the science and technology space will probe the incident and then they will file the report to the Ministry.

Ola Electric already responded. They said, 

We are aware of an incident in Pune that happened with one of our scooters and are investigating to understand the root cause and will share more updates in the next few days. We’re in constant touch with the customer who is absolutely safe. Vehicle safety is of paramount importance at Ola and we are committed to the highest quality standards in our products. We take this incident seriously and will take appropriate action and share more in the coming days.

Bhavish Aggarwal also responded on Twitter by writing ” Safety is top priority. We’re investigating this and will fix it.”

Not the only EV fire

Ola Electric is not the only manufacturer that has faced such an incident. Recently, an Okinawa scooter caught fire in October while an HCD India scooter caught fire and caused the tragic death of a 60-year old man. Last year, two electric scooters from Pure EV caught fire.

Even big manufacturers like Hyundai have faced issues of EV fires. There were 13 incidents of their Kona Electric shooting up in flames. They recalled  82,000 Kona Electrics to fix the issue.  Last year, General Motors recalled as many as 73,000 Bolt EVs.

Ola S1 Pro issues

Ola S1 Pro has also faced other issues. There have been issues where the electric scooter is going more than 100 kmph in reverse mode despite being in forward mode. Some people have fixed this issue by rebooting the scooter but not everyone has been this lucky. For some people the scooter was delivered with scratches, cracks and even dents.

Then there is the issue of wrong riding range. The scooter is not showing the real riding range because of which some people have been left stranded. Some people are facing issues with inconsistent riding range. Where some people say that they have covered more than 135 km, some are complaining that they could not even cross 100 km. However, this does depend on a number of factors such as how gentle the rider is with the throttle, whether he is using brake regeneration or not, the slope of the road, weather, the weight of the rider etc.

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