gregfi said:
GM has been in the news for issuing a recall on the Chevy Bolt due to battery fires traced to manufacturing issues at an LG Chem facility in Korea.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-motors/2020/11/13/gm-recalls-68000-chevy-bolt-evs-potential-battery-fires/6279998002/
A similar issue affected the Hyandai Kona EV. I believe the FFE uses LG Chem batteries. Does anyone have know if the same issue is likely to affect the 2017 and 2018 MY FFEs?
Not likely to affect the '17 and '18 models, or really any model year Focus Electric. I admit the data is scarce on Focus fires. Ford has only made 10,000 of them, all model years, in the U.S., and I'm not sure what the German factory produced total, but it's probably around 5,000 or so.
Normal IC engine cars catch fire at about the chance of 0.0001 (1 in 10,000) per year, so, if about 5 Focus EV's have caught fire, that's about the same chance you take with a gasoline car anyway. I haven't heard of any car fires in Focus EVs. No recalls for sure.
The Chevy Bolt fire recall notably does not affect 2020-2021 models. Only the earlier 2017-2019 models which they say has unique electrochemistry have the fire problem. Its actually not much of a fire problem, affecting about 1 in 10,000 Bolts, which is about what you'd get in gasoline cars anyway. Still, its a little strange so they recalled those Bolts. Right now, the recall doesn't fix them. It only limits charging to 90% to reduce the risk of fire from overcharging some cells and getting the thermal runaway. It ticks Bolt owners off since their long-range EV is not just a tad shorter range.
