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Hyundai KONA electric car caught fire frequently in South Korea, and the market questioned its safety. Hyundai Motor has decided to recall its KONA electric vehicles from September 2017 to March 2020, including a total of 25600 KONA pure electric models sold in South Korea's home market, South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said.

Hyundai may have to recall more than 51000 electric vehicles overseas, including 37366 in North America, 11137 in Europe, about 3000 in China and elsewhere, and 25600 in South Korea, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. Hyundai is expected to recall more than 70, 000 KONA electric vehicles.

In the early morning of Oct. 4, a KONA in Daegu, South Korea, was charging in the parking lot of a residential building when it caught fire and the vehicle was severely damaged, CCTV reported. The incident comes a week after the same vehicle caught fire while charging on the South Korean island of Jeju. According to statistics, there have been 13 fire accidents in overseas markets since KONA was listed in April 2018, and the successive fire incidents have pushed the safety problem of KONA electric vehicles to the forefront.

South Korea's Ministry of Land and Transport believes that the fire of Hyundai KONA electric car may be caused by "short circuit inside the battery caused by battery defects", while South Korean battery manufacturer LG Chemical holds a different opinion, saying that it is not clear that the cause of the fire is battery failure, and the specific cause needs further investigation.

The domestic model of Hyundai KONA, the Ankono of Beijing Hyundai, was officially launched in November last year. Unlike the overseas version, its power system has been replaced with Ningde era ternary lithium battery instead of LG chemical power battery pack. At present, in the case of different power battery suppliers, whether the "battery defect" caused the electric car fire remains to be investigated, and we will continue to pay attention to the latest news from the manufacturer.

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