Mitsubishi will continue its production and shipment stoppage of its Outlander plug-in hybrid variant since the automaker still hasn’t found a cause for an overheating lithium-ion battery in one of the vehicles.
There have been two other cases of Outlander batteries showing signs of short circuiting. The batteries are supplied by Lithium Energy Japan which is owned by Japan’s GS Yuasa’s Corp., Mitsubishi Corp., and Mitsubishi Motors. GS Yuasa is the battery maker that supplies the batteries for the recently troubled Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets.
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The Japanese automaker hasn’t confirmed whether or not it has an idea of what the problem is, though it is exploring the possibility that the batteries may have undergone extra shock when placed onto a testing machine. Production will not resume until the problem is resolved.
As for the i-MiEV, Mitsubishi is continuing to produce and ship the EV with batteries from Toshiba Corp. only. Lithium Energy Japan also supplies batteries for the i-MiEV, but for the mean time, the automaker is not using those in the i-MiEV.
[Source: Automotive News]
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