South Korea wants carmakers to disclose battery suppliers
While the cause may still be unknown, the consequences are not. The fire destroyed and damaged 140 vehicles, and the residential building had to be evacuated. And the EQE was not charging at the time of the incident.
As the battery is apparently under suspicion, other manufacturers were asked this week to disclose the suppliers of their batteries – on a voluntary basis. Hyundai, Kia and BMW have already complied. “Such battery information has not been available to the public so far and the measure is to reduce EV owners’ fire anxiety,” Reuters quotes a statement from the office of government policy coordination. Although it is often publicly known which battery suppliers the car manufacturers have purchase agreements with, it is not usually known which cells are installed in which vehicles.
In the case of the Mercedes EQE in South Korea, the cells are from Farasis Energy. Alongside market leader CATL, the much smaller manufacturer from China is one of the suppliers for the Mercedes EVA2 platform on which the EQE is based. However, it is not yet clear whether the battery is the cause of the fire – and if so, whether it was a component supplied by Farasis or one from the battery pack, which is manufactured by Mercedes itself.
Mercedes-Benz South Korea has already promised two measures: Firstly, South Korean electric car customers will be offered a free inspection to check the vehicle for potential fire risks. Secondly, the company is donating 4.5 billion won (the equivalent of around three million euros) to help the residents of the affected residential building.
Mercedes-Benz currently uses cells from a total of three manufacturers – not counting the now-discontinued EQC with cells from LG. In the EQA and EQB, the batteries come from CATL or SK On from South Korea. As mentioned, the four models on the EVA2 platform use CATL and Farasis – all versions of the EQE saloon, the EQE 500 4MATIV SUV and the EQS 350 use Farasis cells, while the other EQS variants (saloon and SUV) and the EQE 350 4MATIC SUV have CATL cells in the underbody.
At BMW, CATL cells are also used in the iX1, iX3 and iX xDrive40 – the iX2 is not listed there, but is also likely to use CATL cells as it is built in Regensburg together with the iX1. The i4, i5, i7 series and the iX with the large battery (i.e. xDrive50 and M60) use battery cells from Samsung SDI.
Of the German manufacturers, Volkswagen Group Korea has now also named its battery suppliers. Cells from Korean manufacturers LGES or Samsung SDI are installed in all 14 Group models sold in South Korea. Stellantis Korea sells the e-208 and e-2008 with CATL cells as well as the Jeep Wrangler 4xe and Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrids, which contain batteries from Samsung SDI.
Hyundai and Kia mainly use battery cells from SK On and Samsung SDI from South Korea, but some models also use batteries from CATL.
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