Those of LG have taken months to find the fault that caused the fires in the batteries equipped on board the Chevrolet Bolt EV. The supplier, who has assumed the economic compensation to the American brand, has the big problem of finding all the affected units.
LG technicians have already found the real key, rather the big missesthat some of the batteries equipped in the Chevrolet Bolt EV presented and that they were the cause of their fire. Late last summer, the manufacturer released an update asking owners to limit battery charging to 90 percent of capacity, which it was not the solution and the units almost increased more damaged.
LG took over the warranty for the problem caused by a multi-million dollar compensation to Chevrolet, but it has not been until a few months ago that the supplier has managed to discover the true cause. As they have pointed out, these are two manufacturing failures of the batteries, one is battery anode breakage due to snagging with another component, and the second is that one of the cell dividers is bent.
A manufacturing fault, cause of the electric Chevrolet Bolt fire
The combination of the two faults causes the fire, although the manufacturer points out that with only one of them the failure does not occur. The key issue is that both occur in the same cell.
fault detected and the solution of replacing the anode and reinforcing the separations between the cellsnow there is a third added problem, and that is to find all the affected units, something that the battery supplier cannot do on its own and has resorted to NTHSA american.
The body of the National Traffic Safety Administration of the United States has made its tools and databases available to track the vehicles that are equipped with these faulty batteriesof which it is unknown if they have the two manufacturing faults or one of them because, really, there are units that have not caught fire.
NHTSA sources point out that there are 138,324 affected units. But one more added factor must be taken into account, and that is that LG Energy Solution has also sold defective batteries to other companies, so this figure can increase considerably. According to Reuters, once specific units are detected, the owners will be officially notified to carry out the pertinent actions when appropriate. The company supplying the batteries has also developed a diagnostic software that Chevrolet will implement in its models to detect failures according to battery performance monitoringalso increasing the load parameters.
Source: Reuters