The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration NHTSA has revealed the cause of the battery fires that stopped Ford F F 150 Lightning production.
In early February a battery defect resulted in a fire in an F-150 Lightning that was awaiting final inspection, and the fire spread to two other vehicles. Ford stopped production as SK On figured out a solution, with production restarting on March 13th.
Now recall documents released by NHTSA detail exactly what happened in those vehicles, leading to the recall of 18 Ford F-150 Lightnings.
In one of the NHTSA safety recall reports related to the F-150 battery issue, the report stated that a manufacturing defect in the battery cells may result in an internal short circuit when the high voltage battery is at a high state of charge, which could lead to a fire. The report noted that the defect was due to production process deviations at the supplier, where the cathode aluminum tabs may contact the anode electrode material causing an internal short circuit when the battery is at a high state of charge. The report stated that Ford was able to replicate the issue, and that the defective battery packs could be traced down to the exact vehicles that had them installed, leading to the recall of the 18 F-150 Lightnings. Remediation of the issue will require the installation of new battery packs that are free of charge.
Ford also reported that no F-150 Lightnings in the field had suffered from battery short circuits that could lead to fires.
A Ford spokeswoman told Yahoo Finance in a statement that the automaker announced that it would restart production in the weeks ahead, and that we will continue to apply our learnings and work with SK On s team to make sure we deliver high-quality battery packs down to the battery cells.
While it is a positive that Ford was able to diagnose and fix the battery issue, the big question for investors and analysts is whether Ford's production and reliability issues are going to plague its F-150 Lightning roll out, which is still in its nascent stage and figures to be a huge growth driver for its EV unit in the years to come.