Volkswagen will call over 100,000 plug-in hybrid cars worldwide due to the risk of fire in the engine area. The event will affect VW, Audi, Seat and Škoda cars. In the Czech Republic, it will affect approximately a thousand hybrid Superbs and Octavia.
Vehicles that combine a conventional internal combustion engine with an electric drive and charge via the socket are at risk of fire due to a defective fuse. In the worst case, it will not prevent overvoltage and a possible short circuit may lead to the car burning out.
In Germany, according to the Federal Office for Motor Vehicles (KBA), there has already been a case of a Volkswagen where this is exactly the situation.
Volkswagen will call 42,571 vehicles worldwide. These are the Golf, Passat, Arteon and Multivan T7 models from the 2019 to 2022 model years. In addition, Audi, Cupra, Seat and Škoda cars will come next. In total, about 118,000 vehicles should go to the service.
In the case of the Czech carmaker, these will be the Superb iV, Octavia iV and Octavia RS iV types. In numbers, this means 22,000 cars worldwide, of which a thousand are in the Czech Republic (of which 300 are owned by Škoda itself). How many vehicles of other concern brands in the Czech Republic are affected by the event, the Aktuálně.cz editorial staff is finding out.
Branded repair shops install a special insulation board for the high-voltage battery. This is to prevent the car from igniting. The cars will have to spend approximately one working day in the service. The preventive intervention in this respect should be similar to a classic service inspection. The owner will bring the car to the service in the morning and pick it up in the afternoon.
This is not the only convening event of a similar scope for the Volkswagen Group. Already yesterday, the Aktuálně.cz editorial team informed about the danger that a loose 2.0 TSI Evo engine cover may pose.
Volkswagen is also not the only manufacturer to address the fire risk of plug-in hybrids. Ford has faced similar problems in the past with the plug-in hybrid version of the Kuga and BMW SUVs on a wide range of models on offer.
In both cases, however, there were problems with their own high-voltage battery. During production, the welds were not completely cleaned, or impurities remained on it, which could subsequently end in a short circuit. Ford eventually changed the entire traction battery of about 20,000 Kuga vehicles. In the case of BMW, there were also about thousands of cars for which the battery was inspected and, if necessary, repaired.
Hyundai and General Motors also solved problems with short-circuiting high-voltage batteries in their electric cars.
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