Recall of electric cars at VW?

Author: Mario Schmidtgen
Date: 03.08.2018

Cadmium was found in chargers

Due to cadmium in chargers, it could come to recalls of electric and hybrid cars of the brands Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche in the coming weeks. VW announced on Tuesday that they have used the heavy metal for coating in the high-voltage chargers.

Now it must be clarified if this type of coating is even permitted by EU law or if a callback is required. According to the magazine “Wirtschaftswoche” about 124,000 cars would be affected. VW gave no exact numbers but limited to all vehicles that were built between 2013 and 2018.

Material analyzes of the relays installed in the chargers showed that in addition to the permissible silver, 0.008 grams of toxic cadmium are also contained in the chargers. However, the use of cadmium could not be inferred from the material data of the VW supplier.

“The batch production and delivery of the corresponding vehicles were stopped immediately, the affected relay was replaced by that of another supplier and the production was resumed” said the carmaker. Nevertheless it is reassuring that the heavy metal inside the charger is well installed and cannot escape to the outside.