EV fire incident: NHEV issues guidelines, suggests using black box to address battery fires

The National Highways for Electric Vehicles (NHEV) has developed safety guidelines about battery swapping and charging infrastructure as EV battery fires persist unabatedly in the nation. Installing a black-box-like feature to monitor battery systems and pinpoint the problems that cause battery failure is another solution made. The organization has published 12 guidelines, one of which is to use an identification device to identify battery failure concerns and battery fire hazards.

"Four recommendations regarding regulatory aspects were also made. These are identification of battery failure issues, volatile thermal behavior, and associated risks with an identification device to understand the root cause of failure, real-time verifiable exchange value for battery swapping, net metering of charging stations from Discoms, and financing (by bank and NBFCs) of only those batteries that meet government standardization," the NHEV said in a statement.

The NHEV meeting was attended by a Niti Aayog Member and Honorary Chair NHEV Knowledge Group, V.K. Saraswat, and key stakeholders from the EV industry.

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"NHEV Working Group decided to place these 12 recommendations before the policy think tank and government along with four new short-term pilots announced," said Abhijeet Sinha, National Project Director, NHEV.

In another meeting, the charge point operator`s (CPO) society also announced that 4,000-5,000 EV chargers will be installed at 2,000 locations in the central Delhi district. The recommendations come as the government has ordered a probe into Tata Motors` Nexon EV fire incident in Mumbai.

The company termed it an "isolated thermal incident". The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which was earlier tasked with investigating electric two-wheeler fire incidents by the Union Road Transport and Highways Ministry, is leading the probe into the Nexon EV fire. The DRDO probe had earlier found serious defects in the EV two-wheeler batteries.

These defects occurred because the electric two-wheeler manufacturers like Okinawa Autotech, Pure EV, Jitendra Electric Vehicles, Ola Electric, and Boom Motors may have used "lower-grade materials to cut costs".

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has issued new performance standards for lithium-ion batteries to safeguard the consumers amid the rising EV fire episodes in the country.

The BIS, which comes under the Union Consumer Affairs Ministry, published the "performance standards for electronic vehicle batteries" in a bid to keep strict control over the manufacturing of EV batteries.

The new BIS standard called "IS 17855: 2022" has been designed for lithium-ion traction battery packs and systems of electrically-propelled road vehicles. The standard for these battery packs and systems is harmonized with `ISO 12405-4: 2018`.

With inputs from IANS