South Korea wants carmakers to disclose their battery suppliers

A fire incident with an EV caused the South Korean Ministry of Transport to ask carmakers to disclose the names of their battery suppliers.

Earlier this month, a fire broke out in the underground car park of an apartment complex in Incheon, South Korea. The fire was apparently caused by a Mercedes EQE.

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. The EQE was not charging at the time of the incident.

Battery under suspicion

As the battery is apparently under suspicion, other manufacturers were asked this week to disclose their battery suppliers 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 types of batteries and in which vehicles.

Mainly China and South Korea

Farasis Energy supplies the cells for the Mercedes EQE in South Korea. Alongside market leader CATL, the much smaller Chinese manufacturer is one of the suppliers for the Mercedes EVA2 platform on which the EQE is based. At the moment, the majority of batteries and battery cells come from Chinese and South Korean suppliers.

However, it is not yet clear whether the battery caused 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. First, South Korean electric car customers will be offered a free inspection to check their vehicles for potential fire risks. Second, the company is donating 4.5 billion won (the equivalent of around three million euros) to help the residents of the affected residential building.

Partial overview

As said, some manufacturers have already supplied information about the provenance of their battery cells. The carmakers delivered info for their EVs sold in South Korea, but this information is, of course, almost entirely valuable for the same models sold elsewhere.

Mercedes-Benz currently uses cells from 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 4Matic 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 recent iX2 is not listed here 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.

Volkswagen Group Korea has also named its battery suppliers. Cells from Korean manufacturers LG ES 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.

Better management systems