- Stellantis is recalling hundreds of thousands of Jeeps due to a potential fire risk.
- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the risk is related to the high-voltage battery pack.
- A component within the lithium-ion cells could be defective.
Stellantis is recalling more than 300,000 plug-in hybrids in the U.S. and Canada due to a fire risk posed by the high-voltage battery pack, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Tuesday.
The vehicles at risk include the model years 2020-2025 Jeep Wrangler 4xe and 2022-2026 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe, which can reportedly catch fire when parked or while driving, the NHTSA report said. The Wrangler 4xe accounts for 228,221 potentially affected units, whereas some 91,844 Grand Cherokee 4xes could also have the same problem.
NHTSA advised owners to park the vehicles outdoors and away from structures until the recall is completed and the vehicles are fully serviced. It also urged owners to refrain from plugging them in, as the risk of fire may be higher with a charged battery than with a depleted one.
Electric vehicle batteries have come a long way in terms of safety, with EV fires statistically lower than those in combustion-engine vehicles. But in rare cases when these fires do occur, they can be dangerous and hard to extinguish due to a phenomenon known as thermal runaway, in which lithium-ion cells burn uncontrollably without oxygen.
The issue with the Jeep battery packs appears to be emanating from separator damage, NHTSA said. In a lithium-ion cell, separators keep the battery’s two main electrodes, the anode and cathode, separate, while still allowing electrons to shuttle between them during charge and discharge cycles.
A ruptured separator means the anode and cathode can physically touch, which can lead to large amounts of current flowing between them, causing short circuits, extreme heat and thermal runaway, according to a study published in ScienceDirect. The NHTSA report said Stellantis was aware of one related injury and as many as 19 known fires.
There’s no remedy yet, NHTSA said, but the fire risk is related to a previous recall notice the agency issued in September. At the time, NHTSA said the automaker was fixing the issue with a software update on the pack, or a complete battery pack replacement if required. But this older remedy is ineffective for detecting battery pack defects, NHTSA said.
Both vehicles get the same 17.3-kilowatt-hour high-voltage battery pack. On the Wrangler 4xe, the battery delivers about 21 miles of all-electric range, whereas the Grand Cherokee 4xe goes slightly further with 26 miles of range. The automaker does not disclose the battery pack supplier, but according to The Korea Herald, Samsung SDI supplies the packs for Jeep’s PHEVs in the U.S.
Stellantis sales increased 6% year over year in the third quarter as the Trump administration pulled back from the Biden-era pro-EV policies. And the Jeep Wrangler 4xe was also the best-selling PHEV in the U.S. during that period. As the company bounces back from its prolonged sales slump and declining profits, the fire risk is another misstep that could dampen that momentum.
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