VW expands US recall for ID.4

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced this on Tuesday. The expanded recall affects 43,881 vehicles from the 2023–2025 model years, in which the traction battery can overheat, posing a fire risk, according to the authority. Dealers will update the battery software and, if necessary, replace the battery free of charge. Volkswagen expects that one per cent of the nearly 44,000 vehicles will exhibit the defect. The affected vehicles were manufactured between 2 September 2022 and 10 April 2025.

In addition, Volkswagen is recalling 670 ID.4 vehicles from the 2023–2024 model years. Although the NHTSA lists this as a separate recall, it is directly linked to the larger recall. Volkswagen assumes that all 670 vehicles, produced between 3 November 2022 and 22 September 2024, are affected by the issue. In December, the number of affected vehicles was initially reported as 311, but this has since risen to 670.

The root cause is misaligned electrodes in certain battery modules. The battery cell supplier, SK Battery America, has acknowledged a ‘quality deviation’ during a specific production period, meaning the electrodes were not correctly aligned. The 670 ID.4 vehicles in the second recall definitively contain battery cells from this production period.

Between mid-December 2025 and mid-January 2026, SK Battery America identified a second hardware issue in its production process, which could also lead to misaligned electrodes. While no fires have occurred in this case, the software for detecting self-discharge issued warnings in at least three known instances because the battery became too hot—though it did not catch fire.

However, the first issue has already caused several vehicle fires. Initially, VW and SK Innovation could only identify the high-voltage battery as the general cause, without pinpointing the exact defect. Only after extensive discussions and a tear-down analysis did SK Innovation discover the issue with misaligned electrodes. The problem was subsequently confirmed in CT scans of other damaged batteries. Following this, specific modules containing the incorrectly manufactured cells were identified, leading to the recall.

Important: Only ID.4 vehicles produced by Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are affected by these issues. These vehicles use battery cells from a US plant operated by SK Battery America in the state of Georgia. The European ID.4 models, produced in Zwickau and Emden, use different battery cells, which were not manufactured in Georgia.

reuters.com, nhtsa.gov (PDF for Recall I), nhtsa.gov (PDF for Recall II)