Car News-Global and Domestic

[NewcastleFalcon]

Not a great year reported by Electrek for LG Energy Solutions. GM are having to change their stance on Chevy Bolt and battery fires...

https://electrek.co/2021/07/23/gm-annou ... nswers-to/

GM has announced a new recall N212343880 after a dozen reported fires in a little more than a year, and at least two fires this month that had their “final” software fix in place. Here’s what you need to know, and the major questions with some updated answers from GM.

REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Its a small country, it has incentives in place to encourage a transition to electric vehicles, all of its cars are imported, it has no car industry, it has grown exceedingly and prudently wealthy from production of fossil fuels, its market for electric vehicles is probably 5 years in advance of the UK's.

So what is happening right now in Norway.

This

https://electrek.co/2021/08/16/norway-g ... es-vanish/

As previously discussed, the pie chart for the overall fleet of vehicles on Norwegian roads will still have a couple of large slices for petrol and diesel in the mix for several years, before the new sales domination of EV's kicks in, chomping chunks off the diminishing slices of diesel and petrol cars in the overall national fleet over a period of years.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Within the pages of this thread the "battery fire" saga involving LG Energy Solutions Hyundai and GM has been tracked.

Before blame was allocated and settlement agreed, Hyundai adopted a policy of recall and replace, after initially trying a "software solution". It was in the national interest that the 2 South Korean Companies should settle the matter quickly. Earlier this year Hyundai had to recall 82,000 Kona EV, Ioniq, and Elec City buses to replace their LG batteries. The South Korean government determined that LG was responsible for the battery fires, due to badly folded battery tabs. LG denied this finding, instead blaming Hyundai’s charging profiles. Interestingly LG was said to have to pay 70% of the bill in that case.

GM who also used those batteries in there Chevrolet Bolt, prevaricated, further pursued the software solution, However, after two fires in early July GM admitted that their software fix did not work, and proceeded to initiate a second recall. This one told owners to not park indoors, and not charge unattended.

Electrek reports today that GM are now to replace battery modules.

Exclusive: GM to replace all battery modules in some Chevy Bolts to mitigate fire risk

As one sarcastic comment observed

"One can always count on GM to do the right thing...after all other options have been exhausted."

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

One to Watch, Fire brigade in action in the Netherlands.

Story so far reported here
https://insideevs.com/news/527874/volks ... -charging/

REgards Neil

[myglaren]

At first reading I thought it said that a three year old child had died in the fire.
Fortunately not.
Just the three year old iD3.
The Leaf behind didn't do too well either.

[bobins]

On Guy Martian's fastest accelerating road legal electric ¼ mile car when there's an 'R' in the month that isn't a Tesla attempt that was on TV recently he - or should that be one of the fire service's - demonstrated a new method of extinguishing BEV fires..... they put a damn great fireproof blanket over it and stood back. I think in Germany they're trialling plonking the flaming cars in bleedin' great containers of water and standing back.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Wouldn't have posted it if anyone had been hurt. First fire in a VW ID3 which will get reported widely on the back of the Hyundai/GM recent experience. Doesn't look like it was at a "rapid" charger and there was a Leaf behind which got a bit of collateral damage which may have been plugged into the same post. Certainly generates quite an inferno.

Hardware/Software/manufacturing defect/ charger defect all to be established and blame allocated.

Failsafe systems proved not to be failsafe. It should never have happened. Something went seriously wrong and could have been more catastrophic than just the car going up in flames.

Cant help feeling the quest for complication, ever faster charging using ever greater powered chargers, ever larger battery packs maxing out on energy density, and the complications of battery management software all flag up potential danger areas for the management of lithium Ion batteries. One of the safer chemistries from a fire-risk viewpoint is the LiFePO4 battery.

Not sure which batteries are used in the ID3, this article would seem to suggest the battery systems are are produced "in house" at the Volkswagen Group Components plant in Brunswick, but the cells may be supplied by other manufacturers.

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/01/02/th ... s-battery/

Regards Neil

[bobins]

Part of the same scene from the Guy Martian programme showed him deliberately trying to short out and set fire to 'old' and newer types of car battery packs. The cables that were supplying the initial 'short' physically jumped when he closed the contactor. Quite a visual demonstration of how much power is involved

[NewcastleFalcon]

Put 2 and 2 together and make 5 if you like.
From the Volkswagen Horse's Mouth

How Volkswagen makes the ID.3 carbon neutral

https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/st ... utral.html#

The battery cells for ID.3 are supplied by the Korean company LG Chem, which manufactures the cells in Europe and invested in a production facility in Poland. A long time ago, Volkswagen agreed with LG Chem that only certified green electricity would be used to manufacture the battery cells. CO2 emissions from this sector are thus reduced to almost zero.

Only the start of this story...

REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Ah...GM have woken up

GM expands battery recall to ALL 2017-2022 Chevy Bolt EVs including EUV, blames supplier LG

GM Press release

General Motors is voluntarily expanding the current Chevrolet Bolt EV recall to cover the remaining 2019 and all 2020-2022 model year vehicles, including the Bolt EUV. In rare circumstances, the batteries supplied to GM for these vehicles may have two manufacturing defects – a torn anode tab and folded separator – present in the same battery cell, which increases the risk of fire. Out of an abundance of caution, GM will replace defective battery modules in Chevrolet Bolt EVs and EUVs with new modules, with an expected additional cost of approximately $1 billion.

After further investigation into the manufacturing processes at LG and disassembling battery packs, GM discovered manufacturing defects in certain battery cells produced at LG manufacturing facilities beyond the Ochang, Korea, plant. GM and LG are working to rectify the cause of these defects. In the meantime, GM is pursuing commitments from LG for reimbursement of this field action.

REgards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

Well, the new E10 formula has reached my local garage, it doesn't affect me as I run both my cars on V-Power 99 octane anyway!!

Own work

[NewcastleFalcon]

Tesla Model 3 and a Special Morris Minor

What do they have in common?

Tesla Model 3 Has Passed 1 Million Sales

REgards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

Presumably that is the 1,000,000th Tesla 3 alongside the Morris 1,000 000. IIRC they made 30 of the Morris 1,000,000s and displayed them at the dealerships around the country to celebrate. We had one on show in Eustace Watkins in Watford which I could see part of from our bathroom window!

[NewcastleFalcon]

Don't think Tesla came up with a millionth special Model 3, that red one is just culled as an example from my Electric Vehicles spotting.

This paragraph is from one of the lilac Minors which was up for sale at a Historics Auction

https://www.historics.co.uk/buying/auct ... 1-000-000/

To commemorate manufacturing a million cars (the first time a UK British manufacture had ever built such an amount), BMC produced 349 'millionth' cars. Of these, 31 were sold to North America and Europe and the remaining 318 were distributed equally through the UK BMC dealer network resulting in one car per dealer. All of the 'millionth' cars were two-door examples and finished in Lilac with white leather trim.

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

A fair number more than I thought! Maybe the one we had was number 30 or something which is what I was thinking of! One of them was at Knebworth when I showed my MX3 in 2019, not been held since!!