In probably the first such case involving an electric car in India, a Tata Nexon EV caught fire in Mumbai, the video of which went viral on social media.
The Mumbai fire department used water to douse the fire, but, this has left the Twitterati in shock. The users expressed astonishment over such an act by the fire department as most probably the fire had caught the Lithium battery in the car.
A user, @adiscover wrote, "Trying to extinguish burning lithium with water? We will see lots more of these fires in the future with the explosion (pun intended) in EVs."
The same user went on to share a YouTube video where a Lithium powered AAA battery is cut open and the Lithium metal is exposed to water after which it was seen that the sparks came out of the metal causing a mini-explosion.
Similarly, another user @oogwaythe wise1 tweeted, "Use of water is making it worse, you should use dry powder method, I don’t understand why the firefighters aren’t trained for this, this is basic training."
The electric car fire incident was reported from Vasai West (near Panchvati hotel) in Mumbai late on Wednesday.
According to the video, after driving about 5 km towards his house, the owner of the vehicle heard some weird sounds from the car and saw flashes of warnings on the dashboard which alerted him to stop the vehicle and get out of the car, media reports said.
Later, firefighters were seen spraying water on the burning Nexon EV.
TATA Motors issued a statement in this regard which said, "A detailed investigation is currently being conducted to ascertain the facts of the recent isolated thermal incident that is doing the rounds on social media. We will share a detailed response after our complete investigation."
"We remain committed to the safety of our vehicles and their users. This is the first incident after more than 30,000 EVs have cumulatively covered over 100 million km across the country in nearly 4 years," TATA Motors said.
Recently, several reports of electric two-wheelers catching fire owing to battery explosions in the country have come to the glare. Such incidents have forced the government to launch a probe into the incidents involving EV makers such as Ola Electric, Pure EV, Jitendra EV Tech, Ather Energy and Okinawa.
After the Nexon EV caught fire, Ola’s CEO Bhavish Aggarwal made a quick remark. Aggarwal said that electric vehicle fires will happen. He quoted a video of the burning Tata Nexon EV and shared it on a social media platform.
Social media users lashed out at Aggarwal and blamed him after an Ola S1 Pro scooter caught fire. Also, many customers complained about quality-related issues with the new scooter.