What does total GM recall mean for Konas?

Maybe they’re going to kill the electric car, again. EV1 style…


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As I understand GM sticked with LG for their battery supplier. Hyundai switched, as far as I know.

 

No confirmation. If I could only remember where I heard/read about that.

 

Well you'd need to check which DTC it has thrown to answer that!

John.

 

Are you saying the battery fires on early Kona Electrics are related to the Bolt battery fires? I had not heard that. I'm no expert on EV batteries but I assume there's a number of potential defects that could cause fires.

While it's absolutely possible the issues with the two cars are identical or closely related, I had not heard any suggestion of that, at least not yet.

 

They have the exact same problem (folded anode) and were both manufactured by LG in the same timeframe ... Coincidence?

 

I had not heard that. So the Bolts being manufactured today continue to have issue?

 

They just recalled ALL Bolts and EUVs ever built. So they definitely still have some issue.

 

To me it would be mind boggling if GM was recently producing Bolts with any chance of the folded anode issue. They have to be fully aware of what Hyundai has been facing.

I was thinking the reason the recall included recent builds might be more for public relations (remember their history with the ignition switches?), or some top executive(s) decided they were not confident the engineers really have their arms fully around the cause of the fires (given apparently the last recall did not fully resolve the problem).

 

Well, they apparently said that all cars battery cells need to be tested and replaced if necessary. Why would they even think about doing that if there was no reason? This is apparently a $1.8 bin cost to GM.

 

I would say to avoid confusion among owners and potential buyers of new and used Bolts. For an example of the alternative approach, see the Kona forum, i.e. here. This way GM doesn't need to to sort out vehicles and deal with being flooded with "what about me" calls and having to set up a program to figure out who is what and then get people to actually buy their explanation. It costs relatively little to ask owners to come in, run some tests as needed, and send people on their way with a piece of paper that says their car is cured and resale values is intact. Everyone gets to feel serviced and GM gets to have a complete once and for all solution which doesn't need to worry about "recall creep". I think they probably learned their lesson from their earlier approach. IMHO, of course.

 

The recall info on one site indicates that these are Bolts that have two concurrent faults, a torn anode and folded separator. We of course believe we only have the first defect and I haven't seen a definition of the second. It's not clear how Chevy dealers will diagnose either of those.

My recent realisation is that the construction of a pouch cell is a bit random for something that relies on geometric precision for safety. I don't recall if I had posted this photo before (which I have annotated with the 3 yellow arrows at the left) but you can see how some edges of the anode gets very close to the separator. This is what I think is the "folded anode", an edge left when cutting folded copper sheet part way around a bend, simply an artifact of a production shortcut. The photo happens to be of an older Bolt LG cell.