Bajaj Auto MD Rajiv Bajaj blames dilution of regulatory norms for EV fires

"The regulatory authorities in India have deliberately diluted the norms, leading to a flurry of low speed vehicles," Bajaj was quoted as saying by ET last week.

"..under the guise of low-speed vehicles, you bring junk from anywhere and put it on the roads," he said slamming the weak regulatory norms.

"Where have we gone wrong? It is in the environment we have created that the concerned people will have to reflect on," he said.

"As long as the consumer is smarter than these people, they will make the right choices (of proven brands and proven products," he stressed.

"Why are people who have no business to be in EV business trying to be in the EV business, which must be fixed. It is partly because of the incentives," he added.

Rajiv Bajaj was responding to media queries on the sidelines of an event in Akurdi in the suburbs of Pune, where Bajaj Auto's EV unit Chetak Technologies inaugurated its first factory.

Bajaj further said that some of the EV companies have just a half assembly facility but no R&D and engineering or purchase function.

"They are importing stuff, which has not been validated for the marketplace, and are putting it and that is perhaps you are seeing fires, mishaps and accidents," he noted.

He said even vehicles with internal combustion engines from reputed manufacturers have also caught fire but they have systems and processes to identify and troubleshoot the problems.

Bajaj said the underlying process in manufacturing is the main issue which is behind the fires.

"If you look at the world of internal combustion engines, you have ten large manufacturers at most, but in the EV space, there is a so-called new EV maker every day; you call them start-ups, I call them upstarts," he said.

In the past few months, there have been several instances of electric scooters from Ola Electric, Okinawa and Pure EV, among others, catching fire.

Post the incidents, the government asked the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to investigate these cases. The DRDO's report is yet to be made public.