South Korea based Samsung is among the major players in battery tech in the world. The company works with many automotive companies too, providing battery tech to leading carmakers. Now, the company is in the limelight for providing battery tech that has resulted in a recall of 1.8 lakh cars across many brands.
Cars Using Samsung Battery Tech Recalled
Over the past year, many cars have been recalled across multiple brands including Ford, Stellantis and Volkswagen. The root cause of these recalls in these cars is now traced back to the high voltage battery tech from Samsung, which provided these components. The company has now come forward and announced a potential fire hazard in up to 1,80,196 cars.
According to NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) in America, there is a pronounced damage to separators present in these battery packs. Ford’s investigations revealed that the high voltage cell’s separator layer might have been faulty as a result of the cell manufacturing process at Samsung.
The Ford cars affected by this recall are Escape manufactured between 2020-2024 and Lincoln Corsair manufactured between 2021-2024. Where Volkswagen cars are concerned, both VW and Samsung have yet to reveal specific details regarding the issue. Affected cars under VW umbrella include 2022 Audi A7 and 2022-2023 Audi Q5.
Stellantis cars seem to be the most affected here. According to Samsung, 1,50,096 units of Jeep Wrangler 4Xe manufactured between 2020-2024 and Jeep Grand Cherokee 4Xe manufactured between 2022-2024 are affected by this recall. Both these vehicles were powered by a plug-in Hybrid powertrain.
What next?
Samsung has revealed that there is no immediate fix for this problem yet. However, Ford vehicles affected by this recall will get a ‘Stop Safely Now’ message popping cluster, giving users a heads-up when the system detects an issue. The same can’t be said about cars falling under Volkswagen and Stellantis umbrellas which are subjected to this recall.
The first step in the process is likely to be a software patch for affected cars under Volkswagen and Stellantis umbrellas where users have to be alerted when there is an issue (potential fire hazard) detected by the system with these high voltage battery packs that Samsun has provided.
