GOING UP IN FLAMES
In my 25 years as an automotive jour nalist, there have been a couple of products that have been described as revolutionary. The first was one that set out to offer two-wheeler buyers and owners a safer and more comfortable mode of transport—sparking fears that the existing infrastructure would not be able to cope with the coming deluge of this proletarian four wheeler. It didn’t happen. Despite starting with a production capacity of 250,000 cars per year, production delays and perception problems meant sales did not touch even half that number—monthly sales peaked at about 10,000 cars. Then multiple reports of this car catching fire were the final nail in the coffin of this first mobility revolution as prospective buyers became reluctant to abandon their bikes and scooters for this attractively priced car. Though vehicle fires are not very rare worldwide, with data in the US suggesting a few years ago that over 10 per cent of all reported fires in that country happened in vehicles, fires in electric vehicles are a totally different kettle of fish. Not only do they burn more fiercely, with temperatures going up much higher, they are also extremely difficult to put out and have a tendency to re-ignite even when they seem to have been put out completely. I have heard instances of the fire having been put out completely, the burntout vehicle transported to a yard for inspection and then catching fire again after many hours. Even the best of electric vehicles are not spared from this phenomenon, but EV fires are extremely rare. Although there is not enough data to comment specifically about them, and battery technology is also rapidly changing, the incidence of EV fires is very low. There have been some hypedup instances of Tesla cars and GM’s Bolt EV catching fire, but these are very few and far between. In fact, a study over an eight-year period shows that there were less than 10 Tesla cars catch
ing fire every year on an average. But as the population of EVs grows in India, even if the instances of them catching fire are rare, they have the potential of causing a lot of damage and even loss of lives. And that’s where the worry about the ongoing revolution sets in. The second revolution I have been hearing about comes from an electric mobility company that leads the pack of a relatively large number of electric scooter and motorcycle manufacturers. The plans and the manufacturing capacity for these EVs is mind-boggling, with the largest of the players already putting in place a production facility that can be scaled up to produce 10 million EVs a year. It is only because of delays due to glitches and teething troubles that, as with the first revolutionary product, we are not yet seeing the streets flooded or choked with them.
History, it seems, has a habit of repeating itself as there are reports of some of these potentially gamechanging scooters catching fire. Investigations are being carried out and I believe even production has been suspended in some cases. Whatever the findings, my worry is that if these incidents continue to happen through the summer of 2022, another revolution may well grind to a halt. As we have seen in the past, assurances from manufacturers seldom seem to assuage public concerns even though companies make visible changes to the products. I, for one, was in the vanguard of customers for the first revolutionary product I described and as I await delivery of the second (I paid in full just last month), I realise there is a lot more at stake in this new, ‘green’ mobility revolution than there ever was in the first.