By: Sheetal Bahl, MD and Partner at growX Ventures.
Electric automobile (EV) gross sales have been on the rise over previous few years in India, because of a number of new start-ups foraying into the trade with new product launches and a sustained push from the federal government to create a conducive ecosystem for the expansion of electrical mobility. Even present auto majors have jumped into the fray and began launching autos throughout the two- and four-wheeler classes. Investments on this area – each from VCs (Venture Capitalist) and trade have elevated manifold within the final couple of years. The latest spate of battery fires, particularly in electrical two-wheelers, nevertheless, have solid a shadow on this promising progress and undone a number of the good achieved so far. If security is left unaddressed, prospects will lose religion in EVs and a much-needed trade may undergo interminable injury.
The underlying difficulty of those incidents just isn’t a thriller. Years of analysis in Lithium-ion batteries have made the basis reason for battery fires pretty evident: overusing the batteries with none security cut-off factors. Most of the instances of fires might be attributed to overcharging/ over-discharging the batteries and lack of thermal administration within the battery modules that result in thermal runaways and eventual explosions and fires.
Thermal runaway begins with a selected cell or group of cells releasing huge vitality out of their constructions. This could possibly be attributable to varied causes starting from incorrect cell choice, mechanical failures, exterior/inner brief circuits, overcharging or over-discharging and lack of thermal administration in batteries amongst others. The idea of thermal runaway just isn’t new, neither is the truth that Indian local weather is excessive and temperatures throughout summers cross 45deg Celsius in lots of Indian cities. This merely highlights the state of unsafe merchandise being rolled out into the market. Newer applied sciences reminiscent of this, particularly within the automotive trade require analysis and growth efforts adopted by diligent testing and validation in consultant situations and this takes time. The incidents coming into mild available in the market are outcomes of corporations reducing down on testing and growth time to rollout merchandise rapidly.
The excellent news is that options to those points exist already, and a number of other corporations have efficiently constructed battery know-how to unravel these points proper on the design stage. These producers have developed and deployed sensible battery packs with built-in thermal administration techniques which have been examined in consultant Indian situations and have been licensed with AIS-156, the present EV battery testing commonplace in India which is on par with these adopted globally.
It must also be famous that a number of worldwide automotive marques, together with home ones, are efficiently promoting their electrical four-wheelers within the nation with out the type of untoward incidents which might be being seen with the two-wheelers, demonstrating that with sufficient consideration to analysis and growth such incidents are totally avoidable.
The authorities of India has reacted swiftly and ordered an investigation into these incidents, and a number of other corporations have carried out large-scale remembers to unravel these points and stop extra injury to life and property. The authorities can also be engaged on formulating additional norms to make sure that sufficient consideration to high quality management is paid by battery producers.
For electrical mobility to proliferate throughout the size and breadth of the nation, the shoppers must really feel protected and safe in utilizing these autos. OEM producers should be certain that solely such high-quality batteries go into their merchandise that the security of most of the people just isn’t compromised and the momentum of the transition in direction of electrical mobility just isn’t hindered by such unlucky incidents.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this article are solely these of the unique writer. These views and opinions don’t signify these of The Indian Express Group or its staff.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”