Pure EV electric scooter’s battery catches fire while charging: 80 year-old man dead, 4 others severely hurt

Another Pure EV scooter has now caught fire. This is the third electric scooter from Pure EV that has caught fire. The incident happened in  Telangana’s Nizamabad district on Wednesday. An 80-year old man died in the accident and four other members of the family got severe burn injuries.

Pure EV comes with a detachable battery that comes out of the scooter to charge. The police said that the battery was being charged when it caught fire. The deceased was identified as B Ramaswamy. His son B Prakash is a tailor and he has been using a Pure EV electric scooter for the past year.

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The sub-inspector Said Nath of Three Town police station said that the Prakash took the battery out from the scooter and put it on charging at 12:30 AM. Ramaswamy, Prakash’s mother Kamalamma and son, Kalyan were sleeping in the living room. The battery exploded around 4 AM. Prakash and his wife Krishnaveni also suffered minor injuries while fighting the flames.

Pure EV has said they will be fully cooperating with the local authorities and they deeply regret the incident and offer condolences to the family and the victim. Meanwhile, the dealership is working on finding the sale and service history of the scooter. What is interesting is that the dealership does not have any record of the sale. The dealership is currently working on finding out if Prakash bought the scooter second-hand from someone.

Pure EV said, “From our customer database we do not have any record of sale done or service availed by the quoted user in the media. Our dealer is exploring whether the vehicle was purchased through second-hand sale from any of our first buyers. We take the safety of our customers and vehicles very seriously with constant dissemination about availing scheduled free services and through information campaigns for best practices related to vehicle safety.”

A Venkateswarlu, the assistant commissioner of police, Nizamabad, said that a case has been registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 304A (causing death due to negligence) against Hyderabad-based startup Pure EV that had manufactured the scooter and the dealer.

Government steps in

Several mishaps involving Electric Two Wheelers have come to light in last two months. It is most unfortunate that some people have lost their lives and several have been injured in these incidents.

— Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) April 21, 2022

With the increasing cases of electric vehicle fires, the government has decided to step in. Earlier, they launched an investigation against the scooters. Now, Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport & Highways tweeted that government will list out strict rules for the quality of the electric vehicles. A heavy penalty will be imposed if the manufacturer is not following the rules. Moreover, they would have to recall the vehicles that are faulty.

Okinawa has already recalled 3,215 units of its Praise Pro electric scooters. Pure EV has also decided to recall their scooters. Around 2,000 electric scooters by the name of ETrance Plus and EPluto 7G will be recalled by the Hyderabad-based EV manufacturer.

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