India's Lithium-Ion Boom Has A Fire Problem. Here’s How To Fix It

India’s electric mobility numbers are impressive. More than 2.8 million EVs were already on Indian roads by 2023, and the pace has only accelerated since — 1.97 million units were sold in FY2025, and these numbers reached 2.45 million in FY2026.

Annual lithium-ion cell demand is now projected by the government to jump from 40 GWh in 2025 to roughly 210 GWh by 2030, a five-fold increase in five years. New Delhi has committed ₹18,100 crore (about $2.1 billion) to build 50 GWh of domestic cell-manufacturing capacity, with industry pledging a further 178 GWh on top of that. Yet as of October 2025, only 1.4 GWh or 2.8 target, had been commissioned. That gap matters: manufacturing ambition is scaling far faster than the operational discipline needed to handle what gets built and nowhere is that mismatch more dangerous than in fire safety.

Under-Reporting Of Incidents

Government data placed before Parliament recorded 26 electric-vehicle fire incidents over the past three years, out of nearly 24,000 EV-related accidents. Away from the highway, the exposure is more concentrated. Recycling and e-waste facilities in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh have all suffered serious lithium-battery fires since 2021, one of which claimed two lives. Insurance premiums for some treatment facilities have risen by up to six times in response. This is not a hypothetical risk; it is compounding faster than the systems built to manage it.

The instinct in India has been to treat this as a manufacturing-quality problem, solvable through better cells and stricter vehicle standards. That is necessary, but not sufficient. Lithium-ion risk is a supply-chain problem.

Batteries move through mining, manufacturing, transport, storage, collection, dismantling and recycling. And throughout risk doesn't stay put along this chain, it shifts. A recycler that keeps low on-site storage to reduce its own exposure simply pushes that risk upstream, onto a collection point that may be far less prepared to handle it. An unprepared collection centre, without basic chemistry segregation, is often just one punctured cell away from thermal runaway. The downstream end of this chain is mostly small, informal operators - less than 3% of end-of-life lithium batteries are estimated to pass through formally registered channels. So the risk piles up exactly where there's the least money and expertise to handle it.

Evolving Regulations

Regulators have started to respond. The Battery Waste Management Rules (2022, amended 2025) created a chemistry-neutral EPR framework.  CPCB’s 2026 guidelines set storage limits, chemistry segregation, transport packaging and accident reporting. BIS now mandate IS 16046 for portable cells and IS 17893 (IEC 62619 equivalent) for stationary storage. These are meaningful steps, but paper rules do not extinguish fires, especially where enforcement and first-responder training lag deployment.

What Needs To Change

First, adopt the testing rigour that global standards bodies have converged on. NFPA 855 in the US requires large-scale fire testing of entire storage configurations, not individual cells, backed by hazard-mitigation analysis; UL 9540A tests module-to-module fire spread. Facilities handling batteries at scale in India whether storing, dismantling or recycling should demonstrate equivalent, independently verified propagation testing before licensing rather than rely on a generic fire-safety NOC.

Second, make detection predictive. Off-gas sensors identify electrolyte vapour before thermal runaway, buying up to 30 minutes to isolate a cell. This is standard in EU and US installations under EU Battery Regulation and NFPA frameworks, but rare in Indian collection and storage, where response relies on manual inspection and smoke alarms.

Third, formalise the informal sector, not just legislate for it. The 90-day storage cap and chemistry-segregation rules need an audit trail. Digital traceability, including QR-coded batches, mandatory weighing records and integration with the EPR portal; should reach unregistered collection points through incentives, not penalties alone; punitive-only approaches simply push volumes further into informality.

Fourth, invest in safety culture as deliberately as safety hardware. Facilities avoiding serious incidents share one trait: leadership treats fire risk as a business priority, not a checkbox. They move storage outdoors, cut standing inventory and train in-house emergency teams while climbing the hierarchy of controls toward elimination and engineering fixes, not procedures and posters.

Fifth, design for end-of-life risk, not just performance. Easier, safer dismantling, which is already an EU principle, would reduce the “difficult to extract, complex to recycle” problem which Indian recyclers cite as a leading cause of incidents.

India does not need new science to address this challenge. The tools already exist: stronger testing standards, early-warning detection, end-to-end traceability and safer battery design. What is needed now is to make these practices part of the infrastructure being built alongside India’s battery and EV ambitions. The 2.8% commissioning rate shows that scaling the ecosystem will require more than ambitious targets, it will require stronger execution. As manufacturing scales, fire safety cannot remain a downstream consideration. It must be built into the battery ecosystem from the point of manufacture to the point of disposal.

Disclaimer: Ankit Kapasi is Lead - Sustainability Services, India, dss+. The views expressed are personal.