KONA EV $500) Hyundai Company is considering a plan to compensate customers ..

It looks like the article was updated since the screengrab was taken. An automatic translation - no longer mentions 70-80%, or compensation plans, but instead has this:

They mention that there have not been fires in cars that have batteries made by a different company (pointing the finger at LG-chem??). For example, they say that there have been no reported fires in the Niro.

 

I'd happily forgo a "compensation" in favor of getting a STRAIGHT ANSWER as to WTF is
going on with this. They want to suddenly make me own a 150 mile range EV I bought
in good faith with different expectations? They can piss off.

Cell voltage is less than 4.1 at full charge. Why is this even a problem? It makes no sense.

_H*

 

I'm thinking the BMS change they allude to is already the one in circulation, which did change the DC profile but overall did not have a significant adverse change to speed. It wasn't really fast to begin with. The curious thing is many of these Korean fires seem to be correlated to AC charging scenarios. Its not clear if anything has been modified in that charge profile. Like yourself I wish Hyundai just came clean and stopped being so secretive about everything.

 

Since LG Chem is a major OEM supplier and no one else(i.e Chevy Bolt) seems to be having an unusual frequency of fires I am going to speculate its probably a BMS issue.

 

I had thought that Kia Niro used cells from SK innovation, and not LG. They made the point that Kia has not had any fires, suggesting the problem was with LG cells.

 

If anything, the BMS update made charging faster ? If they limited my charge to 80%, I think they're going to have a lot of lemon law returns on their hands...

 

If that would be the case, I would want them to buy back my car and I'd get a Tesla Model 3 LR... I need the full range..

 

I'm confused here, is the article saying that the fires are happening o my to cars that haven't done the BMS Update or that they plan to limit charging to 80% and is that on level 2 EVSEs or including quick chargers too?

I would not accept a limit of 80% and I would push back hard on that one. Good thing they can't do over the air updates.

 

Ok, reading the article, they aren't saying they want to limit charging to 70% to 80%, but rather that the fires are occuring in vehicles without the BMS Update and that is 20% to 30% of all Hyundai EVs in Korea.

Since my Kona already has the update, I should be good. Please tell me if I am reading it wrong.

 

It is well known that lithium-ion batteries are susceptible to failure and sometimes can ignite due to it. It will be interesting to see if a defect in manufacturing will be identified in the batteries.

 

BMS could also be related - we just don't know. The hard part is that when there is a fire, it pretty much destroys the car, making it a lot harder to figure out what the underlying problem really is.

 

Automotive News reported in today's morning briefing that the problem is related to assembly of the battery cells. That suggests the problem relates to HL Green Power's role and not to LG's cells. They said that a recall would take place in Korea, without mentioning anywhere else in the world.
.

 

Interesting. The article doesn't mention anything about this being limited to Korea however.

Is this recall just a way to try and get the previous BMS update out to more cars? Or is this yet another set of software changes?

I wonder if this means that I might I might actually get my car back.

 

Automotive News did say that the recall would apply to vehicles made between Sept. 2017 and March of this year. So maybe the BMS service campaign rolled out earlier this year is enough, and we can expect the service campaign to be upgraded to a recall.

 

No doubt the importers of our Konas will be negotiating terms with Hyundai SK as to how to respond to owners in the countries they operate in. I suppose I better get that BMS update done and stop parking next to my LPG cylinders.

Another article for the record.

 

Eh that BMS update gets you faster fast charging too, it’s a pretty good deal.

 

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34317051/hyundai-kona-electric-recalled-korea/