Inside the Kia EV9: Full Battery Pack Teardown

In this video, Tom dives into a detailed analysis of the Kia EV9's battery pack.

Munro Live is a YouTube channel that features Sandy Munro and other engineers from Munro & Associates. Munro is an engineering consulting firm and a world leader in reverse engineering, costing, and teardown benchmarking.

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[jasonhatfield]

This video makes me feel even better about my purchase of an EV9. We love the car. It's our family car and we hope to get 10 years of use out of it. Seeing how well designed the battery pack is in conjunction with the factory warranty, gives me confidence.

[jamesbruce]

Observation from someone in the Utility business for 35 years. We remove jewelry (watch necklace, rings) and wear 100% cotton long sleeves while working with electricity. A flash can melt your non-cotton shirt to your skin causing much pain and long recovery. Cotton will not do that.

[MrVegasoul]

I saw your another presentation for eGMP module design. The giga pascal end plate protects the cell from the crash situation. GF30 and GF10 plastic and the pad between the cell retards the heat transfer in fire situation.

The BUS bar connecting the module has incorporated fuse function to isolated the internal short circuit event in one module or two modules.

The insulation sheet is incorporated to protect the cavin from a fire case.

[bababoy]

What I see is easy to replace damaged modules instead of replacing the entire cars battery. Bravo KIA

[maxisp]

Clear, good, and succinct presentation and video.

[Ficon]

I love how clean and modular the design is and it's easily recyclable unlike some packs where everything is filled solid with foam that has to be chiseled out.

[boborambow]

Does the Ioniq 5 N use the same kind of battery design? As far as I know, it’s the only stock EV that can do multiple laps of the Nurburgring without overheating. So I would guess having higher voltage and lower amps means they can use thicker thermal pads and not have to worry as much about faster heat transfer. Or we are just thinking wrong about the thermal pads. Maybe their size gives them so much of a buffer that they can start to soak the heat while being cooled from the bottom. Kind of like a water cooler in a pc. The water can soak up a ton of heat before you even need to run a fan through the radiator.

This is super cool though. So clean and so easy to tear down. What an awesome simple design. Hyundai Kia are killing it!

[MarsPLAYStudio]

This battery looks so clean from the inside. Like an Apple device when being teardowned.

[pablomax]

Really like the video. This bloke seems to know his business.

[celeron]

The reason for the thickness of the thermal interface material could be to allow it to maintain contact with the cells as the cells move around and change shape during charge cycles and during their overall lifetime. A thin layer would be unable to do that.

[CharlesPare]

Tom's explanations have gotten really good over time. Vulgarisation is just right, not too much details and enough technical for the audience. He is almost at Carl's level!!!

[calholli]

The thickness of that thermal paste almost looks like they are using it for shock absorption also.. It lets each module float on a bit of cushion. Rather than filling it with foam/glue like Tesla does.

[masterediy]

To exaggerate a little bit, I wonder if there are manufacturers that implement this level and sell it.

[ouch]

Kudos to HKG for sticking with a serviceable battery, even taking into consideration some parts that may need to be replaced and allowing them to be replaced without removing the battery. All those things play a huge role in the likelyhood of being able to keep these on the road for years or even decades, since being able to replace individual components is far more cost effective for a vehicle owner than having to replace entire massive, expensive assemblies. It's also a lot better when it comes to recycling at EOL. Although I know Sandy tends to disagree because he's only concerned about reducing the cost to the manufacturer, *serviceability matters* ! Especially for something that has a huge environmental impact to manufacture, like a car. We need to focus on keeping vehicles on the road longer, not just churning out new ones faster and more easily, especially since that reduction in cost is rarely ever passed to the consumer.

That said, I wish they would come up with a better solution for heating/cooling the battery. Building the heat exchanger into the bottom of the battery case is great for manufacturing, but the thin composite cover they put over it is not very effective, especially in cold temperatures. I saw this issue in my Ioniq5 and now the EV9 that replaced it. The battery gets very cold, very quickly in cold weather, leading to either slow charging or a lot of energy spent on battery heating/preconditioning during road trips. It also reduces the heat energy available for the heat pump system to scavenge from the battery, reducing efficiency.

[meroller]

Di-section of the HVJB would be very interesting too, not just the module. So the peripherals from the front and rear of the battery.

What a great analysis and breakdown. Thanks guys.

[buaan]

Would listen to the Munro professionals talk all day about this kind of thing.

[lowfunk]

such a great explain, thanks for your service really expensive speach and good job kia with hyundai

[NightKnight]

Thermal interface material if designed or chosen appropriately can be thick and effective. Look at GPU memory modules thermal pads… they can be quite thick, yet effective. I bet the thickness was chosen based on “reasons”. Thickness doesn’t mean much in this application. It’s not a CPU or a direct die GPU.

[youpapai]

Just from repairability perspective, why do I like this better than Tesla pack