Another week, another massive auto recall, this time affecting over 180,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles from top automakers like Mercedes, Ford, Volkswagen, Audi and Stellantis. Once again, battery safety concerns are at the heart of the issue, underscoring the persistent and systemic flaws in today’s lithium-ion battery design. These recalls aren’t anomalies; they’re part of a growing pattern of safety failures that have plagued the battery industry for years. Recent high-profile incidents — including the Moss Landing energy storage disaster, warehouse fires in Australia and airplane fires in South Korea — reveal an uncomfortable truth: the current approach to battery design isn’t working.
The Issue With Current Battery Design
Lithium-ion batteries have followed a core design and battery manufacturing process commercialized by Sony more than 30 years ago. While we’ve seen incredible advancements in cost, energy density and EV range since then, the underlying battery manufacturing process remains largely unchanged. This is because automakers and battery manufacturers have relied on one-dimensional process control improvements over the years. In other words, the industry has only put a band-aid on a much larger issue.
These band-aids alone cannot prevent catastrophic safety issues. And sometimes, design improvements have the opposite effect. Advancements for greater energy density and performance are often at the expense of safety. When battery packs operate at higher voltages with thinner safety margins, even the smallest defect can lead to overheating, fires or explosions.
To truly address battery safety, the industry must stop trying to optimize a flawed system and instead focus on a fundamental shift in design thinking. We need batteries that are built for safety from the start, making them less likely to be subjected to recalls down the road.
A New Approach
The future of battery safety depends on proactive design innovation and collaboration between manufacturers, regulators and technology leaders. At 24M, we believe that smarter, simpler battery architecture is the key to preventing failures before they occur. Our Impervio separator technology offers a major step toward this goal, blocking dendrite formation and shutting down the battery before a fire can start. By embedding safety directly into battery design, we can create more resilient, reliable and fundamentally safer energy storage solutions.
Here at 24M, we are committed to leading this change. But true transformation requires collaboration across the industry. Automakers, battery manufacturers, legislators and technology innovators must work together to drive real, structural changes in battery design. If we act now, we can prevent future recalls, restore consumer confidence and create a safer, more reliable EV ecosystem. The time for small fixes is over.
Learn more about how our battery technology suite addresses current issues in lithium-ion battery design:
