Right now, the Volkswagen Group is recalling around 100,000 electric cars worldwide across Volkswagen, Cupra and Audi, all for battery cells that, in rare cases, can overheat and catch fire. And if that sounds familiar, it should: from the Hyundai Kona Electric and Chevrolet Bolt EV to the Jaguar I-Pace, Porsche Taycan and Mercedes-Benz EQB, cell-level manufacturing defects have been behind some of the most expensive recalls the EV world has seen.

So in today’s video, Nikki asks a simple question: why are we still seeing battery recalls? From clean rooms and bunny suits to the tiny flaws that can take years to come to light, and how few companies make the cells (and the machines that make them), she explains why making a battery is so hard, why one bad batch can show up in several brands at once, and why things are slowly getting better.

👉 Watch on YouTube — or if you’d prefer (we would), PeerTube.

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

00:00 – Introduction
02:27 – Not a specialist…
03:07 – The recalls right now – and some history
04:53 – How most recall campaigns went
06:21 – A reminder: some safety statistics
06:53 – Volkswagen’s recall – what we know (and don’t)
07:40 – Why we’re still seeing recalls
08:29 – Making a battery is hard
13:24 – Small supply chains, big problems when things go wrong
15:00 – The machines that make EV batteries
16:21 – Errors can take a long time to notice
17:46 – New rules and battery passports could help
18:19 – Engines are easy in comparison
19:44 – The rest of the auto industry has its own supply issues
21:03 – Disassembly is a one-way process
21:30 – X-ray imaging is starting to help
22:10 – Things are improving
24:41 – Thanks, and goodbye!

📺 Our earlier videos on EV batteries and recalls:

Just Why Are Electric Car Batteries So Hard To Produce (And Diagnose)? – YouTube
What’s Causing All These Electric Car Battery Failures? – YouTube
TEN 600 | iX3 In High Demand, EVs Go Further, The Little Trains That Could! (Fraunhofer’s automated X-ray checks for EV batteries) – YouTube
TEN 604 | Mach-E Trail, VW’s Battery Recall, PHEVs Still Lying! – YouTube

🔗 Links:

🧾 The receipts: our sources

Volkswagen Group’s October 2026 recalls

Who makes the cells, and the machines

Traceability and the engine comparison

Inspection, and recalls getting smarter

Sponsors And How To Support Us!

🎙️ Credits:

Host, Script: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
Camera, Editor, Color: Vi Horton
Art & Animation: Erin Carlie
Producer: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
Music: “Got It” (Instrumental Version) by VESHZA, via Artlist.io – Listen on Artlist

Battery packs have always been the metaphorical Achilles heel of the EV world. From the short lifespan of the humble lead-acid batteries found in the EVs of the 70s and 80s – and in many a converted ICE vehicle until well into the 2010s – to the patent wrangling over large-format nickel-metal hydride cells in the early 00s that, many argue, kept an otherwise powerful car. EVs have always been held back – and defined – by their battery packs.

Since then, we’ve seen some truly incredible advances in battery technology. Semi-solid-state cells are already on the road in China, and the first all-solid-state cells are now coming off early production lines there. Chemistries that were once written off – like those using sodium – are now going into production cars, promising impressive durability and lifespan. And thanks to the work of firms like CATL, BYD and others, we’re now seeing EV battery packs that can charge from 10 to 97 percent full in around nine minutes at compatible super-fast charging stations.

But despite those advances, the EV world is still being held by the specter of battery fires – a statistical rarity compared to the internal combustion engine fires, yet something critics often cite as one reason we shouldn’t switch to electric. These fires, often dramatic in nature, inevitably lead to investigations, which often trace them back to manufacturing defects at the cell level. Sometimes, they’re one-offs. Sometimes, they’re symptomatic of something worse. But nearly always, they lead to recall campaigns that are costly, hurt the reputation of EVs, and sometimes even see certain makes and models banned from parking garages – all made worse by misinformation from the mainstream media.

So today, as the Volkswagen Group is in the process of recalling around 100,000 electric vehicles across its various brands worldwide, we’re going to ask a very simple question: why are we all still seeing massive battery recall campaigns related to how the very cells themselves are made?

Let’s dig in.

Ahead of our getting quite in-depth with battery production, I want to acknowledge something I hope is obvious: I am not an electrochemist. I don’t work in the battery industry, and I’m explaining this all with a layperson’s understanding. Yes, I am pretty good at research, and yes, I’ve had nearly 20 years covering this industry in some form or another. But I’m not the most well-versed out there on the ins and outs of large-scale battery production so… if you are said person, and I get something wrong – please reach out, and perhaps you’d like to join me on a video at some point in the future to set anything straight I get wrong here!

Alright. We have a fair amount of ground to cover, but let’s start with the fact that right now, the Volkswagen Group – specifically Volkswagen, Cupra and Audi – is in the middle of a sizable campaign involving the lithium-ion battery packs used in its MEB-platform EVs. At first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the recalls – involving around 100,000 vehicles across the world – were all the same recall. But the nuance is a little more complicated: in October, there were actually three separate groups of recalls. One covers Volkswagen and Cupra models in Europe and beyond, one covers the ID.4 here in the U.S., and one covers the Audi Q4 e-tron. All three appear to cover what appears to basically be the same problem: cells that, in rare cases, can overheat, and in the worst cases, catch fire.

And if that sounds familiar – it is. Back in 2020, Hyundai’s Kona EV – and Chevrolet’s Bolt EV – went through eerily similar recall campaigns after problems with their battery packs. In that case, both packs used cells made by same company: LG Chem – now LG Energy Solution. Since then, multiple other automakers have issued similar recall campaigns – recalls involving both electric-only and plug-in hybrid models. Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans – which despite their name are actually plug-in hybrids – were involved in a recall. Jaguar’s I-Pace SUV also suffered multiple recalls, as did various model years of the Porsche Taycan and the Mercedes-Benz EQB. All for potential battery defects that could lead to… fiery consequences.

From case to case, the recall remedy varied. Usually, after detection – sometimes after high-profile fire and sometimes after internal testing – the automaker in question announced a software recall campaign that involved reprogramming the BMS of affected cars to better and guard against this kind of situation that might lead to a sudden short circuit. This included more intense monitoring of cell voltages (allowing any imbalances to be identified and flagged before catastrophic failure took place) or watching for sudden temperature changes. And in some cases, even restrictions on how full a battery could be charged until a formal remedy was found.

But in many of the best-known cases, these software tweaks failed to properly manage the situation, and ultimately served as an early warning sign ahead of a free battery replacement. Sometimes it was for a fleet-wide recall for certain populations of vehicle made between certain dates. Sometimes it was only initiated if the car itself reported an issue. And sometimes, getting a replacement battery was less likely than seeing Mitch McConnell announce his intent to run for President in 2028.

Many of these recalls followed high-profile fires, which led to a lot of breathless coverage in the mainstream media, and certain political types asking lots of concerned questions – despite the fact that, statistically speaking, EVs are far less likely to catch fire than internal combustion engine vehicles. In Sweden, for example, gas and diesel cars are around 20 times more likely to catch fire than an EV in 2022. And in NHTSA’s recall database, fire-risk recalls that have nothing to do with battery packs – from fuel leaks to faulty wiring – far outnumber battery pack recalls. Yet still, one gets more attention than the other.

But let’s get back to Volkswagen. In the case of Volkswagen’s recalled EVs, who made the cell isn’t quite as clear-cut as it might appear. SK On made the cells in the recalled U.S. ID.4s and Audi Q4s – but Volkswagen hasn’t said who made the cells in its European recall. Yet all three recall campaigns seemingly have similar faults: cell manufacturing issues that could lead to overheating and potential fires. And as we – or rather, the auto industry – has been making modern, highway-capable EVs for more than a decade now. why are we still seeing these battery recalls? Isn’t it really down to the <<insert random talking head reason>> of EVs, not being good? or is it something else?

Well, that’s what I’m here to discuss today. Because while the basic understanding of how a battery works – the electrochemical reactions that occur as ions shuttle back and forth between anode and cathode through an electrolyte and a separator – is something you might have learned in high school, maybe from putting metal spikes into some vegetable or another, the actual manufacturing process of building a battery cell is far more complicated than grabbing a potato, whacking two pieces of metal, in and powering GLaDOS from it. I know not everyone liked Portal, but seriously it’s up there in my top 10 video games of all time, along with the first Assassin’s Creed game, Baldur’s Gate 3, and of course, Microsoft Space Simulator. Because that let you fly the space shuttle.

See, while people are very eager to pile on EV batteries as being the problem in this particular timeline, it’s often not the battery, but how it’s made.

First up, EV battery manufacturing has a lot in common with making microchips in a fab facility. And I know that not only because I’ve visited an EV battery factory, but because my daughter happens to work in a semiconductor fab.

That means a full clean room environment, with similar strict contamination rules to those you’d find in facilities that make microprocessors. The buildings themselves have to be erected in very specific ways, with the external structure built using generally conventional building techniques, but then followed up by increasingly expensive – and time-consuming – processes to ensure no contaminants enter the area where the actual manufacturing takes place.

Everyone entering the facility – at least the part of the facility where cells are produced – has to go through decontamination when they arrive, wear bunny suits to stop skin and dust and other… bodily things… from entering the manufacturing space… and follow strict protocols and rules for every process they could conceivably need to do on-site.

One error. One fault in the procedural steps, and the manufacturing facility can be left with a ruined product, an expensive repair bill, or in the very worst case, a stopped production line. And no, I don’t mean that kind of bunny suit. Or even that kind of bunny suit. You all have very dirty minds. I mean the boring type of bunny suit. Although the Intel’s dancing bunny suit people from the 90s were kind of hip and groovy, that’s someone who was 100% in camp PowerPC.

Why so much rigor over making cells? Well, the cells themselves are operating at the atomic level. When you make an anode, or a cathode for a modern lithium-ion battery, you’re making something that has to accept lithium ions. The anodes and cathodes have to be built in just the right way, with no contaminants, so that lithium ions can slot into the tiny, atom-sized gaps in their structure. A contaminant, a slight change to the surface, or to the chemical makeup, can stop those lithium ions from slotting in… which ruins the cell.

And to give you an idea of just how incredibly high precision this all is, researchers in Germany from Fraunhofer and RWTH Aachen University studied how new cell plants ramp Between 15% and 30% of a new plant’s production is typically scrapped in the first few years – before it even leaves the factory – because it doesn’t meet quality control standards. And each percentage point of scrap costs around €30,000, per day.

But it’s not just the actual electrodes that require the kind of precision. I’m talking about. The way in which a cell is layered, in its constituent parts set down on top of one another, also has to be very carefully constructed, with the anode, separator, and cathode lined up exactly right. In three dimensions, that means ensuring the X, Y, and Z axes are all properly aligned, and that nothing gets folded, shifted or misplaced. The anode even has to overhang the cathode by just the right amount – too little, or too much. and you have a problem. And remember, some of those layers are thinner than cling film – or if you’re in the US and prefer, Saran Wrap.

And that kind of skill, that kind of expertise, takes years to perfect, and is rewarded the larger a company is and the more cells it makes. The larger a firm, the more experience it has, and the more likely it is to be able to start cell production for an automaker’s newest model. By using specialist third parties, automakers are also insulating themselves significantly from the risk and potential headaches that occur when an error takes place. That’s why, these days, more than one half of the world’s EV battery cells come from just two firms. In 2025, CATL made nearly 40% of the world’s battery cells, and BYD made just over 16%. Between them, that’s more than 55% of all EV battery cells fitted worldwide. These two firms are known for their expertise and their ability to adapt.

And the top ten battery manufacturers last year? They made almost nine in every ten EV battery cells fitted worldwide – with six of those firms being in China. But there’s also another issue: all of this specialist equipment and expertise means that, for any one model, automakers have traditionally relied on just one trusted partner to make its battery cells. This allows trade secrets to be more closely guarded. It allows for a more lucrative deal to be made because (exclusivity is worth a lot), and it also ensures a simplified supply chain. But in that process, automakers miss out on the one thing they have in other parts of their supply chain: redundancy and diversity. If one cell maker suffers a fault, that recall can cascade into every automaker it supplies. And with no fallback suppliers, things get bad, fast. Luckily, that’s changing. More automakers today are choosing multiple battery partners, or working specialists to bring some things in-house. But despite EVs growing in popularity, they still make up a small share of the cars on the road. And

I’ve already explained how the manufacturing process can be costly, lengthy, and full of potential failure points. But now let’s look at the machines that make the cells themselves.

Because, frankly, there are only a few hundred – and I really do mean a few hundred – companies around the world that have the expertise, accuracy, and capability to build the machines that make those cells. And of those, only a handful can equip a whole factory to produce large-format, automotive-grade cells.

The biggest is a Chinese company called Wuxi Lead Intelligent, which is by its own figures about 15.5% of the global market in 2024 for battery manufacturing machines. And when it comes to who makes most of these high-precision machines, among the 25 biggest suppliers, Chinese companies took 68% of sales in 2024, and South Korean companies 29%.

The actual production process for building machines is also truly mind-blowing. Every machine needs to be designed, refined, and tuned for the specific chemistries used. And while the mechanisms of making a cell remain pretty similar across most lithium-ion cell chemistries of the same type, the exact makeup of cells will vary from automaker to automaker, from client to client, and lab to lab.

That process, which starts off gradually ramps up as battery specialists and automakers agree on their specific chemistry for a specific vehicle, takes a lot of time to dial in. And when a manufacturing machine is ordered, it’s made and shipped to site – then receives final assembly on location in clean-room environments, with weeks or even months of test production ahead of it before everything is signed off.

A small error in a particular machine can take weeks, months, or even years to discover. So too can any defects caused by a slight misalignment issue. Worse still, just as we humans can go years with an undiagnosed medical condition, only to have it pop out suddenly when least expected, so too can a battery pack containing one or two questionably made cells spend years operating just fine and peachy before showing a problem. And then. Well, the problem is much harder to diagnose. Much harder to pinpoint. And it compounds the problem even further. I mean, I’m a good example of that. I was only diagnosed with long QT after my late sister had a double cardiac arrest while undergoing cancer-related surgery and her long QT reared its ugly head. And even then, my long QT, a previously unknown variant of the condition, took a further six years to properly diagnose. Now, it is a potentially fatal condition that requires me to take medication every day to lessen my chances of becoming suddenly unalive, yet I also went for nearly 38 years of my life without being officially diagnosed or even knowing I had it. The same is true for those misaligned faulty cells.

It’s for this reason automakers are very stringent about battery testing, and battery tracking. And Europe, for one, has strict new rules coming into force in the coming months that will track not only where a battery was made, but by whom, and what it’s made of. And that will help improve traceability of faults like the ones we’re seeing right now. Now,

I’ve given you a very brief – and I do mean very brief – explanation of why it’s so difficult to make battery cells, but let’s put that into perspective against other things.

Like internal combustion engines.

Because the auto industry has been building cars, en masse, for more than a hundred years, it’s built up a very robust, predictable supply chain that allows both expert manufacturing partners and part specialists to exist. Automakers for the most part manufacture their internal combustion engines in-house, but the level of accuracy needed to build a suck, squeeze, bang, blowbox or an engine block – is far less than the accuracy needed to produce the plastic-film separator in a battery cell.

And you can buy the equipment to make internal combustion engines from thousands of different firms, make those engine blocks in a myriad of different techniques and ways and materials, and you can fit those engine blocks with an even larger selection of pistons, valves, and electronic components.

And while engines operate best when their tolerances are within a few thousandths of an inch, and when the engine manufacturing process is free from metal swarf and contaminants, the difference between making an engine and a battery is a little like the difference between making a propeller plane and a space rocket. And if Elon Musk has taught us anything, other than he is a particularly terrible human being with a lust for power and it’s that building rockets is hard. And rockets often experience rapid, unscheduled disassembly.

But don’t just think this is an EV issue, because just as EV battery recalls often trace back to one manufacturer, or one badly-aligned production machine (or worse, a set of badly-aligned machines set up incorrectly in the first place), we have seen plenty of single-source, single-fault in the internal combustion engine world. I only have to mention Takata airbags or Denso fuel pumps to anyone who’s owned an internal combustion engine vehicle in the last two decades or so to highlight that sometimes, a single point of failure can affect vehicles from lots of different automakers.

And when it’s EVs, that single point of failure – or at least that common failure area – tends to be one of the large format cell specialists. They may churn out literal gigawatt hours of perfect cells a year, but it takes a few megawatt hours of faults to throw a metaphorical short in the production process… which can lead to an actual short.

Before I finish, I also want to call out something I hope is obvious. If an engine has a crack in its block caused by a manufacturing fault – a casting poured at the wrong pressure, or a bore cut with a bit that wasn’t sharp enough – it’s more likely to be spotted in the QC process. A battery fault? Is much harder. Not only because you’re working at the microscopic level, but because, like Johnny 5, you can’t physically disassemble a battery and have it still be a battery. No disassemble. “Piece of cake!” Disassembly is a one-way process.

Luckily, science is coming to the rescue. X-ray imaging has come on in leaps and bounds in the last decade. Just a few weeks back on our news roundup TEN, we covered a new system from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute that uses X-rays to look inside the battery pack of an EV that’s been accident – without opening it up – to spot cells that have shifted, deformed or swollen. Similar techniques are also used in the manufacturing process, but again, they take time to perfect and improve. And That is a long process.

And as Volkswagen’s recall campaign shows, though it may not feel like it – things are improving. In 2020 and 2021, when Hyundai and GM were dealing with battery recalls, the breadth of the affected fleet was pretty massive and sweeping. The type of challenges being faced hadn’t been dealt with before on this level, and both firms were left scrambling to find a software solution (one that ultimately didn’t work) and a hardware replacement program that took months – and in GM’s case, years – to complete and cost them – and mostly their supplier, LG – literally billions of dollars.

This time around, Volkswagen spotted the defects through real-world data, and worked out which cars to recall using its battery-tracing records and the cars’ own charging data. And at the time of filming, Volkswagen estimates just 0.1% of the 22,524 cars recalled in the U.S. – fewer than 25 cars – may actually be affected. Better battery cell tracing, better accountability at the factory, and good quality records have all helped Volkswagen streamline the recall process. But it’s not just Volkswagen. When Hyundai recalled cars earlier this year for a battery cell defect at its supplier, SK On, it was able to recall just six cars in the U.S., because it could check camera inspection records taken at the time the cells were made, and identify exactly what vehicles had faulty cells.

That’s not to say faults aren’t still happening… because they are. Hyundai and Kia’s handling of their ICCU charging unit failures has, to put it bluntly, been horrific. But with better accountability, better software, and better telematics, while recalls may still happen, how we respond to and deal with them is improving.

As for improving the error rate on the production line? That comes with time and experience, and CATL says its own defect rate has plummeted in recent years as its processes have become ever stricter, its technological prowess has improved, and its use of AI to spot faults on the line has honed in on problem cells and equipment, reducing wastage, reducing overheads, and helping to make cells cheaper and more reliable. And at the end of the day, if an automaker can produce a cell for less – or its partner cell provider can – it can pass those savings on to you, the end user.

So yeah, making cells is hard. Recalls still do happen. But the future is bright – and not because a cell happened to short out on the side of the road during rush hour. And

on that note, we’re done. I hope this video was informative, and let me know in the down below if I’ve missed anything important As I said at the start, I am a layperson when it comes to manufacturing batteries. And if you’d like us to keep making videos like this one – we’d love your support from just $1.50 a month on Patreon.

We are 100% independent, and that fact means videos like this are far easier to make. When we have sponsors, it’s less so. Although, I am going to shout out to Little Collie Shepherd, the content moderation platform that helps get rid of bots, harassment, and threats without forcing you to read the comments first, leaving your space on the Internet safer for everyone. Little Collie Shepherd is written by my wife, so by signing up with it – link in the down below – you’ll be helping us too.

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Thanks for watching, thanks for being the positive change you need to see in the world, and until next time, Keep Evolving!

Why Are We Still Seeing Electric Car Battery Recalls? – Transport Evolved

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

📺 Our earlier videos on EV batteries and recalls:

🔗 Links:

🧾 The receipts: our sources

Sponsors And How To Support Us!

🎙️ Credits:

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Why Are We Still Seeing Electric Car Battery Recalls? – Transport Evolved

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

📺 Our earlier videos on EV batteries and recalls:

🔗 Links:

🧾 The receipts: our sources

Sponsors And How To Support Us!

🎙️ Credits:

Tags:

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