We Need to Get Better at Building Electric Car Batteries
Manufacturing batteries is hard
If we’ve learned anything from Tesla over the past decade, it’s that no matter how innovative and disruptive your product might be, manufacturing safe hardware is hard. Building anything in high volume is a challenge that’s significantly amplified by the complexity of vehicles. Traditional processes like welding, painting, and assembly are hard enough, but the difficulty level multiplies when you look at products like battery cells.
In recent months, three automakers have had to stop sales of electrified vehicles as a result of batteries experiencing thermal runaways, which is a fancy engineering term for catching fire. BMW and Ford have both told dealers to stop selling a number of plug-in hybrid vehicles following fire incidents while Hyundai is doing the same for the Kona electric. As a result of fires with the Ford Kuga plug-in hybrid, Ford has delayed the production launch of the North American equivalent, the Escape PHEV.
Approximately 170,000 vehicle fires happen annually in the United States out of a total vehicle population of 290 million. Out of that total vehicle fleet, approximately 4 million feature high-voltage battery systems including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery electric, and fuel cell electric models. Figures aren’t…
