What’s Causing All These Electric Car Battery Failures?
In spite of the fact that only a tiny proportion of electric vehicles on the road have either had, or will need, a high-voltage battery replacement, one of the most pervasive myths about EVs is that batteries will only last a few tens of thousands of miles, and need to be replaced every few years.
And despite the fact we’ve now got enough data to conclusively disprove this, we’re still battling this borg cube of disinformation. So today we’re going to talk about what the truth is about EV batteries, and whether it’s something you should worry about when buying an EV.
[intro] The first thing to think about here is, what constitutes a failed battery? What is it that means that a battery in an EV might need replacement? What often seems to spring to mind for many people when they think about batteries comes from their experience of the total attention vortex.
People know that their cell phone’s battery gets worse over time. The phone that lasted a day or even two when new gradually gets worse and worse until they’re ABCing [aside] always be charging[/aside] because they need to, not because it’s a habit. They see the same in their laptop computers.
And mentally, a lot of people seem to extrapolate that if the lithium batteries in their consumer electronics don’t last well, then surely the same must be the case for EVs. [aside]spoiler alert: It’s not the same for EVs[/aside].
Now the thing is, we have a ton of evidence that while EV batteries do lose a little capacity immediately after manufacturing, over their lifespan the amount of capacity lost is slow and small. [aside]And we should just clarify, capacity loss is different to the difference in range you see in winter vs summer.
That temporary drop can sometimes throw new EV drivers off who think there’s something dreadfully wrong with their car. In winter, because you’re using more energy for heating and also to push through the denser cold air and water, slush or snow on the roads, you’ll see less range.
That guestimated range will pop back up when the sun starts shining again.[/aside] Now part of the reason you know that it’s the case is the fact that automakers as a whole are happy to warranty their batteries for around 100 thousand miles or more.
Automaker’s don’t like replacing things on their own dime when they break, and so they’re only going to warranty things that they think will definitely outlast that period. [aside] Okay, that whole statement’s not exactly true. In so far as in warranty terms, I’m sure they’d like to warranty them for the first
Three minutes, or until the ink’s dry on your purchase contract, whichever is the sooner. But automakers are legally required in most places to warranty their battery packs for a specific period of time and/or distance. It’s baked into various pieces of legislation around the world.
But those warranty periods weren’t plucked from the ether – they exist because they are achievable and it means they have to, realistically, build them to last that long.[/aside] Why do you think that the typical gas car bumper to bumper warranty is only thirty-six to sixty thousand miles?
Because manufacturers are fairly certain that at some point shortly after that, bits are going to start to break. And they don’t want to be on the hook for replacing those bits. And if warranty information isn’t enough to convince you, which honestly, it shouldn’t
Be, when you look at data from Geotab and Recurrent, both of whom have been monitoring EV batteries for years, you get a picture of EV degradation that looks like this. A fairly slow and steady decline to a bit more than 80% capacity.
The Leaf is a bit of an outlier here, and we’ll talk about that in a bit. For now, let’s stick to cars that are more representative of modern EVs than the LEAF. So up here we have the Model 3 which, as you can see drops from an estimate of 250 miles
When new, to just shy of 225 miles at 100k miles. And there’s a similar pattern with the larger capacity packs. The same thing with the BMW i3, and even the venerable old Volt with a V has that same pattern of slow degradation.
Looking at some newer cars, and the Ioniq 5 and Mustang Mach E are showing the same kind of pattern. And while there’s some impact from high mileage, lots of rapid charging, and high temperatures, and even whether you use a level one or two charger [aside]level 2 is marginally
Better, slightly surprisingly[aside] essentially, EV batteries are pretty solid beasts, as long as they’re looked after. Okay, so why did I briefly single out the Leaf for separate treatment. Well unlike basically all EVs in production right now, the LEAF does not have active thermal management.
It cools its battery like your phone or laptop does – that is, it limits charge rates when it gets too hot, and in the case of the later Leafs, restricts rapid charging if you try and charge, what it considers too often, in one day.
It’s reliant on the battery chemistry to keep the battery from degrading, and it turns out that isn’t as effective as thermally managing the battery with y’know, an actual cooling system. Even still, overall through its likely working life it’s still sitting above 80 percent capacity.
Buuuuut, the reason the LEAF has kinda got a bad rep here is that the other thing that really doesn’t do batteries a ton of good, other than being super hot, or tons of tons of rapid charging is cycling from full to empty.
And if your battery in your first generation LEAF, which started with a range of 70 miles, is at eighty percent state of health, then you’ve only got fifty six miles to play with. And that means you’re more likely to be draining it to the dregs, which stresses the
Ailing battery more, which prompts more degradation. It’s a vicious cycle. [aside] There were other electric vehicles made with similar battery pack arrangements to the LEAF – like my Kia Soul EV and the Mitsubishi iMiEV which I also once owned – but there are far fewer examples in existence, so they get less attention.[/side]
Outside of early non-thermally managed battery packs though, things look pretty rosy. In fact, over all time, the average for EV battery replacement is 1.5%, which, given the newness of engineering lithium battery packs for EVs, and that it includes vehicles like the LEAF’s not-exactly-award-winning thermal management is pretty damn good. Unless.
Unless… [aside]Yeah, we have to talk about the elephant in the room[/aside] Yeah, unless you drive one of the several models of car that have had a battery recall. Most famously, the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV, the recall of which Chevrolet managed to make
A spectacular hash out of, angering many customers early in the process with both a lack of information and then leaving customers with cars that were markedly limited compared to the way they were sold – at least, until their battery was replaced when I have to admit, I was impressed
To see they chose to upgrade the battery. That said, as we reported a little while ago, Chevrolet have managed to drag their name back down again with their latest tweak to the battery recall campaign.And if you’re among the owners facing a promise the battery software will be just fine at spotting an
Issue instead of just giving you a brand-new battery, no questions asked, we feel your pain. Similarly, Hyundai’s Kona battery recall campaign was… a less than a stellar moment in the automaker’s history, and we received plenty of e-mails from frustrated owners who
Were initially told that the software fix that appeared to restrict both range and charging capabilities was the final answer; only to eventually be provided with replacement batteries in a warranty replacement process that can only be described as painfully slow.
Both of those vehicles were fitted with LG Chem battery packs, as was the Jaguar iPace which also had a battery recall – although in that vehicle’s case the company believes a software fix is sufficient. Which is interesting, because that’s where both Chevy and Hyundai started out. But we’ll be circling back to that.
And I’d like to single out LG Chem, but I can’t because our Soul EV is currently in a stasis booth at our local dealership because its SK innovation warranty replacement battery – which replaced its original battery – just did this… [ev warning light] Yeeeeeah.
So if EV batteries are generally as solid as a Vogon Constructor Fleet then why in the past few years did we see this spike in vehicles that have had, or are having, warranty or recall high voltage battery replacements? Is that something we should expect to continue?
And should you worry about buying a car with one? It’s basically down to a few things. While legacy automakers are starting to see the importance of having a strong battery supply chain, for a long time, the vast majority of automakers were completely dependent on basically two or three companies.
That’s why you kept hearing about Panasonic – known for its collaboration with Tesla, SK On – formerly SK innovation, and of course, the somewhat infamous LG Chem… which is now known by its rebranded name “LG Energy Solutions”, or LGES for short.
That means that if one battery manufacturer had a problem, those same cells and those pack designs could well be spread across multiple manufacturers, and multiple models. Which is why the Bolt and Kona recalls occurred at more or less the same time.
Both models used cells from different LG Energy production lines which had a couple of problems. There were issues with a separator which was folded and not performing its job properly, and a torn anode tab. When both those defects were in one cell that could cause a catastrophic failure of the battery.
Based on what we can tell – and information is quite sparse outside of individual companies because… non-disclosure and non-compete clauses… while the Bolt and Kona battery packs and the cells inside them were supposedly built on different production lines by different people to slightly different specifications and designs…
The underlying technology and process used to assemble packs were based on the same manufacturing processes that LG Energy Solutions designed for EV cell production. And a flaw or incorrect setup of one of those manufacturing processes led to a problem that propagated throughout multiple designs.
Now, literally no one will tell us exactly what defect caused the E400 battery in our Soul EV, which as I mentioned, was already a warranty replacement battery, to be recalled. The cited reason is precipitate causing an internal battery short, which suggests that crystallisation is causing an issue with separators again.
And given that it was likely manufactured in 2018 or early 2019, around the same time that SK Innovation was accused of, and eventually lost, its case defending itself against claims of theft of intellectual property from LG Energy, who’s batteries also had separator issues…
Look, I’m not going to say those things are related, [aside]because I don’t have any evidence that they are[/aside] but just that their proximity is suspicious. [side] Nikki also wants me to mention at this point that, as a consequence of said really-long
Legal battle between LG Energy Solutions and SK On, SK On was not allowed to make and sell batteries using certain… technology in the U.S. That is, until the President stepped in… seemingly on behalf of Ford and Volkswagen, and metaphorically bashed some heads together so that both companies could supply cells
To automakers to accelerate the EV transition… Nikki also wants me to note that, given some of the battery issues of the last few years, it hasn’t necessarily gone as well as people might have hoped… [/side] And let’s be fair, the challenge here is that – in very simple terms – the thinner
The separator, the higher the performance of the battery. Which drives battery manufacturers to run the gauntlet of how thin they can get away with and not have it fail in the harsh environment of a vehicle. But even without that or intellectual property that by whatever means has migrated from one
Company to another, there’s quite honestly the fact that between 2017 and now, roughly 80% of battery manufacturing for EVs globally was just six companies. Hell, last year, nearly 50% was just two companies, CATL and LG Energy Solutions.
Of course in the US, a massive chunk of that market is taken up by a third company – Panasonic’s partnership with Tesla, and Tesla also work with CATL. It’s important to bear in mind that the kind of volume of battery manufacturing that
We’re seeing now is vastly higher than even a few years ago. New factories are coming on stream and producing incredible numbers of EV batteries, which is great. And regardless of if you’re an individual training to become a world-leading concert pianist, an elite athlete training for the paralympics, or a company making a product,
The more time you spend doing the thing, the better you get at doing the thing. And at the same time as that’s happening the research into how we detect these kinds of manufacturing defects is getting more and more advanced. Automated optical defect detection systems using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy
And scanning electron microscopy amongst other systems can help detect pinhole or point defects, line defects, agglomeration, contamination and impurities, and micro compression or press marks, along with inhomogeneity. All these are things which may result in a complete assembled cell that passes QC initially but that would fail prematurely.
Because we, by which I mean the industry, collectively, have more experience with manufacturing large capacity battery packs, we can now detect problems in them with increasing success. And that means that we should see fewer and fewer of these events going forward.
And, as we discovered back in the spring when we visited WAE Technologies – now Fortescue WAE – in the UK, we learned, the data that has been gathered both from racing cars, and from cars on the road has allowed us to understand in much greater depth how EV batteries age
And what signs they provide that they’re failing. Fortescue WAE – and several other companies – have even developed battery models using AI that can spot problems in battery cells before they’re detectable by humans. In fact, unlike Chevrolet’s first stab at fixing the Bolt battery with a software fix,
The progress in battery monitoring has seen both Kia and Chevrolet move to software monitoring on the packs that it suspects may contain defective cells allowing them to instead monitor them in place. And I suspect similar advancements underlie Jaguar’s decision to do the same.
But before you run screaming, the thing that I think it’s important to bear in mind is that all these are warranty replacements. And for sure, there absolutely can be huge inconvenience in having a vehicle that’s either limited in some way, or as in the case of our Soul is spending Christmas alone, and
Nobody wants to be alone at christmas… Although I will say, Kia have given us a loan EV, but that story is for another video…next year. But when you have a near decade old car and it’s recalled for the major, most expensive
Part of the motive system to be entirely replaced, I find it hard to be terribly frustrated. Because hell yeah, our car gets new bits free of charge. But as M has demonstrated, once you’re out of warranty, you’re SOL from the vast majority of automakers who would much rather you buy a new car.
And what about the question of vehicles that have had a battery replacement? Well, they might well be the best bargains on the lot. A great example is the Bolt EV. The vast majority of 2017 through 2019 Bolt EVs have had battery replacements thanks to
The recall, so you’re potentially getting a car with a battery warranty, and a much lower mileage pack than the odometer would suggest. Which, is to quote Jazzman John Thompson? [nice] [End credits] https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/ https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lg-chem-sk-innovation-lawsuit-idUSKBN2AA2WR/ https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1781507/FULLTEXT01.pdf https://www.sneresearch.com/en/insight/release_view/67/page/0?s_cat=|&s_keyword=#ac_id [aside] always be charging[/aside] [aside]spoiler alert: It’s not the same
For EVs[/aside] [aside]And we should just clarify, capacity loss is different to the difference in range you see in winter vs summer. That difference can sometimes throw new EV drivers off who think there’s something wrong with their car. In winter, because you’re using more energy for heating and also to push through the dense
Air and water or snow on the roads, you’ll see less range. That guestimated range will pop back up when the sun starts shining again.[/aside] [aside] Okay, that whole statement’s not exactly true. In so far as in warranty terms, I’m sure they’d like to warranty them for the first
Three minutes, or until the ink’s dry on your purchase contract, whichever is the sooner. But automakers are legally required in most places to warranty their battery packs for a specific period of time and/or distance. It’s baked into various pieces of legislation around the world.
But those warranty periods weren’t plucked from the ether – they exist because they are achievable and it means they have to, realistically, build them to last that long.[/aside] [aside]level 2 is marginally better, slightly surprisingly[aside] [aside] There were other electric vehicles made with similar battery pack arrangements
To the LEAF – like my Kia Soul EV and the Mitsubishi iMiEV which I also once owned – but there are far fewer examples in existence, so they get less attention.[/side] [aside]Yeah, we have to talk about the elephant in the room[/aside] [aside]because I don’t have any evidence that they are[/aside]
[side] Nikki also wants me to mention at this point that, as a consequence of said really-long legal battle between LG Energy Solutions and SK On, SK On was not allowed to make and sell batteries using certain… technology in the U.S.
That is, until the President stepped in… seemingly on behalf of Ford and Volkswagen, and metaphorically bashed some heads together so that both companies could supply cells to automakers to accelerate the EV transition… Nikki also wants me to note that, given some of the battery issues of the last few years,
It hasn’t necessarily gone as well as people might have hoped… [/side]
There’s a persistent piece of disinformation that we know isn’t the case – the claim that EV batteries need to replaced frequently and after very short distances. Lots of research shows that isn’t the case, but the last few years have seen several high profile battery recalls from multiple manufacturers.
So what’s that about, will it keep happening, and should you worry about buying an EV now?
—-
00:00 – Open
00:50 – Introduction
02:26 – What evidence is there that EV batteries will last in use?
03:34 – Battery degredation
07:11 – Recalls and Warranty Replacement
09:50 – There are only a few battery maufacturers
13:06 – Running the gauntlet
14:09 – How do we fix this?
16:11 – Should you run screaming?
19:08 – Conclusion
19:40 – Thanks and Credits
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https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lg-chem-sk-innovation-lawsuit-idUSKBN2AA2WR/
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1781507/FULLTEXT01.pdf
https://www.sneresearch.com/en/insight/release_view/67/page/0?s_cat=|&s_keyword=#ac_id
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Script: Kate Walton-Elliott, Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
Presenter: Kate Walton-Elliott
Editor, Colorist: Kate Walton-Elliott
Art and Animation: Erin Carlie
Producer: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
© Transport Evolved LLC, 2024
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