Ola Electric voluntarily recalls 1,441 e-scooters to perform health checks

New Delhi: Ola Electric on Sunday said that it is voluntarily recalling 1,441 e-scooters as a pre-emptive measure to conduct a detailed health check of the concerned batch.

The company said that its internal investigation into the March 26 incident when an Ola S1 Pro e-scooter caught fire in Pune has revealed that the "thermal incident was an isolated one".

"As a pre-emptive measure, we will be conducting a detailed diagnostics and health check of the scooters in that specific batch and, therefore, is issuing a voluntary recall of 1,441 vehicles," Ola Electric said in a statement.

On Saturday, Ola Founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said that the company hails the government's step to penalise EV makers for faulty e-scooters and if it finds there is a problem in any of its batches, it will recall those e-scooters immediately.

"We are concerned about the recent EV fire incidents and fully support the government's concerns. If we find any fault with our scooters, recalling that batch will be our top priority," Aggarwal had told reporters at Ola FutureFactory.

In a fresh statement, the company said that these scooters will be inspected "by our engineers and will go through a thorough diagnostics across all battery systems, thermal systems as well as safety systems".

Ola Electric said that its battery pack already complies with and is tested for "AIS 156", which is the latest proposed standard for India, in addition to being compliant with European standard "ECE 136".

At its world-class manufacturing facility in the Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu, the company has well-qualified engineers as well as latest battery technology to do further heath checks and ensure no faulty e-scooter stays on the road.

After the recent fires, some EV makers have already recalled the faulty batches of their electric two-wheelers, as the government raised a red flag, threatening the OEMs to penalise them if such cases keep repeating and hurt India's global manufacturing image.