Hyundai, Kia to apply BMS to all EVs for fire prevention

Hyundai Motor Group, the world’s third-largest automaker, plans to install its battery management system (BMS) in all its electric vehicles to revive sales of the clean vehicles by alleviating safety concerns boosted after a Mercedes-Benz electric sedan recently caught on fire.

Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Corp. on Thursday unveiled the plan to install the BMS technology, which detects battery abnormalities and immediately notifies vehicle owners and the South Korean conglomerate’s two carmakers, in all its upcoming EVs.

The two largest automakers in South Korea are set to provide the service to existing EVs sequentially after developing technology that can install the BMS through updates by the end of this year.

“Hyundai and Kia aim to restore consumer confidence by announcing a plan to prevent fire with BMS technology,” said a South Korean auto industry source, adding carmakers and battery cell manufacturers usually argue over the cause when EVs catch fire.

Hyundai Motor Co. producing the all-electric IONIQ series and Kia manufacturing the EV3, EV6 and EV9 said their BMS will prevent fires.

NO FIRES FROM OVERCHARGING, SHORT CIRCUITS

The BMS notifies EV owners of fire risk from battery abnormalities such as overcharging and micro short circuits – a failure mode where Li metal first precipitates on a negative electrode and then reaches a positive electrode – through text messaging and other forms of communication. The information on these issues is sent to Hyundai and Kia’s remote support centers at the same time.

The system monitors most data on battery charging and discharging such as voltage deviation, insulation resistance, temperature, current and voltage changes, as well as overvoltage and low voltage. Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia are set to add functions, which can detect instantaneous and micro short circuits days in advance, to the BMS.

“The current BMS can prevent fire caused by overcharging in advance,” said a Hyundai Motor Group official. “The new technology will be able to avoid battery fire caused by short circuits.”

Overcharging is regarded as a cause of EV fire, prompting some South Korean local authorities such as the Seoul Metropolitan Government to seek to ban charging EVs more than 90%, although the fire earlier this month may have been caused by a micro short circuit due to external shock, industry sources said.

Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia plan to upgrade the BMS functions with artificial intelligence and cloud technologies.

The carmakers are set to operate an onboard cloud integrated system, which collects all information on batteries through the BMS in their cloud and analyzes the data with AI for safety management.

ALL-OUT TO ALLEVIATE SAFETY CONCERNS

South Korean and foreign automakers rushed to take measures to ease worries about  EV and battery safety among customers after a Mercedes-Banz electric sedan equipped with cells reportedly produced by Chinese company Farasis Energy Inc. burst into flames in an apartment building garage in Incheon, west of Seoul earlier this month.

The blaze on Aug. 1 took more than eight hours to extinguish and damaged 87 other vehicles, boosting EV phobia and placing added pressure on automakers already struggling amid sustained weakness in the green vehicle industry.

Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia on Aug. 10 disclosed battery suppliers for their EVs while committing to providing safety inspection services in South Korea indefinitely.

Write to Jae-Fu Kim at hu@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.