Due to the risk of fire, this battery company compensated 1.9 billion US dollars!

　　Recently, GM announced on its official website that it has reached an agreement with LG Chemical’s parent company LG on the cost of the BoltEV recall. LG Electronics has agreed to pay GM up to US$1.9 billion in compensation for the recall and repair of the Chevrolet Bolt. electric car. The reason is that the battery provided by this South Korean supplier is faulty, and there is a risk of fire.

　　This is the third time GM has recalled this model, covering all Bolt EV and EUV models produced since 2017. The faulty battery has caused at least 13 cars to catch fire.

　　Repairing the vehicle, including the complete replacement of the battery, is expected to cost US$2 billion. This is higher than the previous estimate of $1.8 billion. The settlement ended with a "major victory" for GM. Shilpan Amin, Vice President of Global Purchasing and Supply Chain of GM, stated: "LG is a highly respected supplier to General Motors. We are very pleased to reach this settlement agreement. Our engineering and manufacturing teams will continue to work together. To speed up the production of new battery modules, we expect to start repairing customer vehicles this month."

　　The incident of BoltEV spontaneous combustion was aroused, but the real reason for the spontaneous combustion of the vehicle has not been found. This time LG is willing to bear the cost, which is actually equivalent to admitting that there is a problem with its own battery.

　　In November 2020, General Motors announced that it would recall 69,000 Bolt electric vehicles produced between 2017 and 2019 worldwide. At that time, the company used software upgrades to prevent the fire from happening again. However, the software upgrade did not completely solve the problem. In July 2021, GM decided to recall 69,000 Bolt electric vehicles that had recalled the upgraded software in November last year, at a cost of approximately US$800 million. And this expanded recall will bring about $1 billion in new expenses for GM. The company clearly stated in the recall announcement that the battery provided by LG Chem for the model may have two production defects including battery anode tearing and diaphragm wrinkling, which increases the risk of fire. General Motors said it is considering making a claim against LG Chem.

　　In fact, this is not the first time LG has paid for the auto-ignition of auto companies. LG Chem has been involved in a number of electric vehicle battery issues during the year. Hyundai Motor has previously initiated a global electric vehicle recall. In February of this year, South Korean local brand Hyundai Motor announced the global recall of 82,000 Kona EV and IONIQ electric vehicles, which is expected to cost 1 trillion KRW (approximately US$851 million).

　　Hyundai Motor discovered after investigation that the cause of the vehicle fire was defects in some of the high-voltage battery system components, which could cause a short circuit. In the end, LG bears 70% of the cost of the recall. In addition, Volkswagen ID.3 electric vehicles equipped with LG batteries also caught fire in the Netherlands this year. Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT have also caught fires. These models are all equipped with LG batteries.

　　Lithium-ion battery (LIB) has become the main energy storage solution in modern social life. Among them, lithium iron phosphate batteries are a perfect substitute for lead-acid batteries, and are the first choice for grid-connected peak shaving, off-grid energy storage, photovoltaic energy storage, UPS, data center and other industries.