By Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s government and ruling party have agreed to speed up a certification program for electric vehicle batteries, the party said on Sunday, as authorities seek to ease public safety concerns after a series of fires involving electric vehicles.

The government will launch a battery certification program in October, earlier than planned, to lend a hand ensure the safety of EV batteries, Han Zeea, a People Power Party spokesman, told reporters. The government has also agreed to require automakers operating in the country to identify the batteries used in their electric vehicles.

The agreement on tougher safety rules for electric vehicles follows the government’s call for voluntary disclosure by carmakers following the August 1 electric vehicle fire that damaged hundreds of vehicles and sparked public panic.

The fire, which most likely started spontaneously in a Mercedes-Benz (OTC:) EV with Farasis Energy batteries, took eight hours to extinguish. Around 140 cars were destroyed or damaged, and some residents of the apartments above had to move to shelters.

In recent days, some car manufacturers have begun voluntarily disclosing the names of the manufacturers of the batteries they operate.

South Korean battery makers had no reason to object to disclosing their power sources, industry sources previously told Reuters, although the public should not assume batteries were always the cause of electric vehicle fires.

Experts say requiring carmakers to identify batteries would give consumers more choice, but some wonder whether it would improve safety given the lack of clear data on which battery brands are more likely to cause fires.

As part of the strengthened safety measures, the government will review regulations on fire-fighting equipment to install wet-pipe sprinkler systems in underground parking lots with electric vehicle charging stations and expand the number of chargers to prevent overcharging, said Han, the party spokesman.

Electric vehicles don’t seem to catch fire as often as recent headlines might suggest. Some data has shown that electric vehicles are less likely to catch fire than conventional cars.

However, automotive experts say that fires in electric cars behave differently than those in combustion engine cars – they often last longer and are harder to put out because they tend to reignite.