Naveen Munjal’s comment came in the backdrop of incidents of
electric scooters catching fire and manufacturers coming under the scanner for safety and testing standards in India.
“Technology is replicable, experience is not … there is no room for shortcuts for the testing process when it comes to batteries,” he told ET. “We have been dealing with batteries for six-seven years now. We are now in the third generation of batteries and are now working on the next generation of batteries which we should be launching soon.”
There were three reported instances of electric scooters catching fire in four days last month,
creating concerns among existing and prospective customers. While an incident involving the S1 Pro from Ola Electric caught a lot of attention, the other two scooters were of Okinawa and Pure EV.
Companies are trying different ways to address the issue, including Hero Electric, said Munjal. “Whenever we have these customer camps, it also gives us an opportunity to check the vehicles to ensure everything is working properly,” he said. “We are also installing an additional safety sensor in the battery and in case there is an increase in the temperature of the battery, it will send out an alarm.”
Munjal said his company was calling 4,50,000 customers to its dealerships across the country and explaining to them how the battery functions and precautions to be taken while charging them. “Indian conditions are difficult for batteries and they are subject to extreme conditions on the roads. We need to take adequate precautions and measures to ensure the batteries can cope with the rigours of our roads and the conditions they are subject to,” he said.
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Munjal said certain standards of the Automotive Research Association‘s (ARAI) testing standards could be made tighter, but keeping in mind that they did not stifle innovation. The ARAI is the government body that tests and certifies vehicles.
“Thermal management has to be there in the battery and there have to be adequate cut-offs to ensure the battery does not overheat,” he said. “While there is a need for stronger standards, we may not need standardisation at this point as that would curtail innovation and this market is evolving at a very rapid rate.”
EV market on fire
Despite the negative news around electric scooters catching fire, March was a record-setting month for the EV industry. Hero Electric itself set a record of its own by selling more than 13,000 units in the last month of the fiscal year. It was followed by Ola Electric, which sold over 9,000 vehicles. Experts are predicting that Ola might even beat Hero Electric in April. Munjal said maintaining the lead was “very important” for the company.
“The base of the EV market is going to be formed by the commuter segment which would be mainly in the city-speed category,” said Munjal. “There would be a high-speed and a low-speed market, however, those are going to be much smaller in number.”
“We know where the market is. We know how the market is evolving. We are developing and expanding our product portfolio in line with our projections of how the market is shaping up,” he said.
Munjal believes that the high-speed scooters, sold by the likes of Ather and Ola Electric, were highly dependent on the central government’s subsidy programme — Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric of Hybrid Vehicles (FAME)-II.
“The market is certainly going to evolve. The top end of the market is highly subsidised. We have built a business that is subsidy-agnostic,” said Munjal. “If the FAME-II subsidy continues, the market will continue to inch towards higher speeds and if the subsidies begin to taper down, then we have our base covered with the city-speed vehicles. Either way, we will continue to expand the market multi-fold year on year.”
Hero Electric has six platforms with 14 models, which cater to both direct customers and business-to-business customers, he said.
The company has a current manufacturing capacity of 100,000 units in Ludhiana and is in the process of increasing that to 250,000. A second facility in Madhya Pradesh will also have a similar production capacity, which would give Hero Electric a production capacity of half a million units by the end of the year.
