Several incidents of the Ola e-scooters catching fire has made headlines over the months. One such incident was in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh where the Ola S1 Pro caught fire.
A video on the internet is catching people attention where the Ola S1 Pro was parked at the side of the road with the seat flipped open and then the fire started coming out from the storage area under the seat and few seconds later, the S1 Pro was on fire. Seeing the S1 Pro on fire, people used water pipe to extinguish the fire. The video shows that extreme damage was done to the rear side of the scooter where the motor is located. This sudden fire is mostly likely to be short-circuit in the motor that lead to massive fire breakout.
After the fire was extinguished, one thing was clear that the floorboard and the battery under the floorboard were not damaged at all. Ola Electric is yet to issue an official response on the incident but it’s most likely an electrical fault or short-circuit. We will have more information on this incident once the investigation is completed to find out how the scooter caught fire.
Like this incident, other companies have faced the same e-scooter catching fire incidents as well. Three Okinawa electric scooter were fire since October 2020. To understand the why the electric scooter are on fire, it recalled 3,215 units to investigate and find out if the reason for fire breakout is any loose ends or the batteries are getting damaged in any way. Ola is yet to do any of these things as it is reportedly working on to find main reason for the issue.
Ola sold 21,308 units in March 2023 which is 3,661 units than it sold in February 2023 with 20.74% increased growth. However, Ola claims that they have sold more than 27,000 units but hasn’t provided any figures.