Thoughts on EV fires over the past month
By Apoorv Shaligram
Over the past month, multiple incidents of electric scooters catching fire have been reported and have caused concerns about the upcoming Indian EV sector. I intended to write about these, but had to put my thoughts on this in order before I attempted to analyze this topic. After giving some thought to the different aspects of the incidents, here is my attempt at decoding what is going wrong.
First the facts:
- So far, all the fire incidents reported are from electric 2-wheelers and not from 4-wheelers or buses (fingers crossed on that not changing)
- The incidents have occurred with vehicles from different companies, in different geographical locations, and with batteries employing different chemistries
To be honest, when I heard the first 2–3 incidents, my first thought was that it was just 2–3 bad battery cells that made their way into the packs (very plausible case) and it was mere chance that it was happening one after the other. But multiple cases made me think about whether there was a more systemic problem. One thing that was clear to me after thinking about this problem for a while was that bad battery designs or poor build/quality of cells were not the cause of these incidents. Had it been so, we would be seeing much more frequent cases of fire. To me, it seems more of a QC concern, perhaps something not taken into consideration in the design stage. It could be that weather patterns for different target geographies that were not considered, pack assembly process not being the most robust or simply limited testing not exposing chinks in the armor. Could it be done better? Yes. But, it is not fundamentally bad pack design to begin with.
One thing we have seen over the past one year is the booming demand and subsequent sales of EVs, especially 2-wheelers. What we have also seen is a scramble for securing battery cell supply chains given the global demand boom. Thus, it is possible that OEMs would look for alternatives in order to safeguard their production schedules. While most cells across makes offer similar output for a given specification band, QC can be a big variable. What needs to be understood here is that cell selection is a big factor in the whole battery pack design development, and variances in cell can translate to bigger variances in pack output. Thus, when we look at multiple cell supply chains, each one needs to be vetted as well as the first choice. Vetting a cell make and model requires exhaustive testing to ensure performance and safety under a wide range of conditions and as such is not a process that can be hastened. That in my opinion is concern #1.
The other concern is the rapid scale up in EV and battery assembly that has happened over the past year. Manufacturing is an activity that requires capacity. Capacity build-up requires time. There are QC challenges that come up when manufacturing scale is increased, which also need time to sort out. It is not a process that can be hurried up, and certainly not as fast as it has happened in the last year or so. If not done right, manufacturing scale-up can be chaotic and can lead to QC nightmares. Both EV/battery assembly as well as the supporting vendor ecosystem is quite new to India and will take some time to establish QC norms. The rapid scale up of battery assembly facilities and component manufacturing/vendor development could be a reason why variance in quality would crop up. That is my concern #2.
Then there are also other concerns such as OEMs being incentivized by the FAME subsidy rise to deliver larger capacity battery packs without changing the vehicle designs. Trying to stuff larger capacity in same volume pressurizes pack designers to compromise on safety aspects of pack engineering. All this said, one of the reasons why we are seeing a sharp increase in battery fires, is the increase in sheer numbers of vehicles sold before QC could have been stabilized. While the incidents have been really unfortunate, it is perhaps a good eye-opener to avoid further damage, provided we identify the problems right and learn from this. What can we do to improve the scenario? First off, the QC for battery pack assembly (and the localized component manufacturing) needs to be perfected. Second, we need secure local supply chains for cells, ones that are made with Indian conditions in mind. Again, the QC challenges of manufacturing that we saw above, come in for cell manufacturing, perhaps even more so. India has not seen LIB cell manufacturing yet, and is looking for a massive scale up with the PLI plans. The conventional LIB cell manufacturing process is extremely QC sensitive and even the smallest of slip-ups cause safety concerns. Not trying to sound as an alarmist, but cell manufacturing in India needs to happen as a well thought out exercise after fully understanding the process involved and its limits, lest we see an even bigger problem when locally manufactured cells enter the market.
If the LIB cell design and manufacturing process itself can be reworked for Indian requirements, keeping in mind the impact of the process on the QC, it could be a fundamental solution to the menace of battery fires!
