- Kia EV9 high-voltage battery pack teardown by Munro & Associates reveals engineers likely thought about repairability when designing it.
- There are two access plates underneath for serviceable items.
- If a battery module needs to be replaced, the whole pack is very easy to take out of the vehicle and disassemble.
The 99.8-kilowatt-hour high-voltage battery pack that powers the Kia EV9 got high praise from engineering consulting and reverse engineering firm Munro & Associates. The electric SUV’s power source was taken apart and analyzed in the name of science, and the results are pretty impressive and could help ease the minds of current and future owners concerning repairability.
The pack is very easy to take out of the vehicle, with just a couple of electrical connectors, two ports for the liquid cooling plate and several bolts that need to be taken out. Then, the whole pack can be removed without special tools or sticky adhesives to worry about.
Kia engineers put in two access plates for items that are likely considered to be serviceable items–a big fuse and the battery management supervisor unit. These can be replaced without removing the complete pack. But if that’s needed, mechanics and owners alike don’t need to worry about complicated removal and replacement procedures.
After dropping the pack from the vehicle, the 38 individual modules are very easy to get to, remove and replace if needed. Inside each module, there are four groups of three cells–the cells are connected in parallel, while the cell groups are connected in series. That said, it’s unclear if the modules themselves can be repaired or if they would need to be replaced. The pack has a minimum working voltage of 462V and a maximum of 643V, according to the teardown.
24 Photos
The battery tray itself was praised in the video embedded at the top of this page for the high-quality welds and the “wonderful design” of the cooling system. Kia went for a dead-simple approach of a single, large aluminum cold plate that sits at the bottom of the tray and cools the battery modules. There’s just one inlet and one outlet for the glycol-based coolant, which makes plumbing very easy and potentially problem-free. A composite shield that sits below the cold plate acts as both a protective layer and a thermal insulator.
The 17-minute-long video is pretty easy to follow. It’s also worth noting that the EV9’s battery pack is quite similar to other E-GMP-based EVs in Kia’s and Hyundai’s portfolios, such as the EV6 and Ioniq 5, so owners of these cars can also sleep easy knowing that it won’t be a pain to repair the battery pack.
