Catching fire over e-scooters, Okinawa recalls 3,215 units

“The electric 2W maker is working closely with the dealer partners to ensure that the repair experience is as per the convenience of its customers, for which the vehicle owners will be contacted individually,” it added.

The moves comes weeks after an Okinawa electric scooter burst into flames, claiming the lives of a man and his 13-year-old daughter. At the time, the company had claimed the fire in its electric two-wheeler was an “evident case of short circuit due to negligence in charging the vehicle”. The company said it was waiting for the complete investigation to unfold.

Earlier this week, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had, during a media interview, urged manufacturers to voluntarily recall EV batches involved in fire incidents.

Okinawa — established in 2016 out of a manufacturing facility in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan — sold over 46,000 electric scooters in FY22, according to data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA). The company had a market share of 0.39 per cent. In March this year, the company sold over 8,000 e-scooters.

Over the past few weeks, more than a dozen electric scooters have caught fire, including those manufactured by Ola Electric, Pure EV and Jitendra EV, aside from Okinawa. The companies have launched respective investigations into the instances to ascertain the reasons behind the fires.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, meanwhile, too has ordered a probe into the incidents and roped in the Centre for Fire Explosive and Environment Safety (CFEES), a unit of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), to constitute an independent team and carry out an investigation into the incidents.

While conclusive reasons behind these incidents are yet to be made clear, industry experts said the rising temperatures in the country and manufacturing defects — both in hardware and software — could be possible causes behind the fires.