- A European electric vehicle repair shop said Teslas powered by LG battery packs made in China have higher failure rates than those made in Europe or the U.S.
- The LG cells face accelerated degradation compared to those made by Panasonic.
- Repairs can cost thousands of dollars and swapping the cells is even more expensive.
Tesla sells its electric vehicles the world over, but does not equip them all with the same high-voltage battery packs. They come from different suppliers, and if one European repair shop is to be believed, Tesla batteries even experience varying levels of degradation at the cell level.
While Tesla manufactures its own 4680 cells for the Model Y and Cybertruck in the U.S., it also relies on suppliers such as LG Energy Solution, Panasonic and CATL for its vehicles sold in North America and overseas. A new report from Croatia said that the LGES packs made in China may not be up to the mark compared to those made in Europe or the U.S.
Zagreb-based repair and R&D shop EV Clinic said in a recent post on X that LGES’ nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries (NCM811) installed in the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 made in China have “extremely high failure” rates and degrade faster than the nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) batteries made by Panasonic in the U.S.
The firm added that in more than 90% of the Tesla battery repair cases it receives, cell-level fixes are simply impossible on the LGES packs. The issues stem from high internal resistance in the cells—if the resistance exceeds acceptable levels, the cells can heat up more, deliver less power, reduce range and become unstable. A low-resistance cell is generally healthy and efficient.
It is common to find LGES’ cells made at the Nanjing factory in China to have resistance levels over 100 milliohms—the unit used to measure electrical resistance—according to EV Clinic.
“At this stage, we can confidently say: the cells are, to put it mildly, catastrophic,” the shop claimed. Even if the faulty cells are replaced with matching donor cells, the pack will likely experience a cascading failure, resulting in high warranty and labor costs, according to the report.
InsideEVs reached out to LGES for a comment, but did not hear back at the time of writing. Tesla does not respond to media requests in the U.S.
LG Energy Solution cylindrical battery cells.
EV Clinic added that Panasonic cells, by comparison, have far lower internal resistance, indicating better overall health and degradation. It claimed that nickel-based batteries made by LGES and Samsung SDI in Europe and by Panasonic in the U.S. still have an edge over those made in China, which instead dominates lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) technology that’s also now becoming more common in the West for its cost advantages.
Panasonic cells have an estimated lifespan of 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers), EV Clinic said, whereas the LGES China-made batteries reach the end of life by 155,000 miles (250,000 km). It did not specify which model-year Teslas were affected by this problem, and it’s unclear whether the defects are limited to a specific batch of vehicles made in China or a broader issue affecting multiple model years.
Panasonic’s 2170 cylindrical cells made in Kansas.
Photo by: Panasonic Energy
I’d also approach these results with caution, given how advanced modern EV batteries have become. Even though car buyers are worried about how EV batteries will age, studies show that only a small fraction of EVs sold in 2022 or later need battery replacements. Broadly speaking, high-voltage EV batteries are now better than ever, and more improvements are on the way.
Still, Tesla has long been the gold standard for EVs, so if what the repair shop is claiming is true, that’s not a good look for the company—especially at a time when it’s planning to give its CEO a trillion-dollar pay package and move 20 million vehicles over the next decade.
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