Low Conductivity Coolant Change Procedure

Yes separate pumps similar to the Kona, but I think Ionic 5 has 3 pumps. The pumps have a 9-16V operating range , the electrical system pump has a 14 l/min capacity and 2 battery pumps are rated at 25 l/min. Electrical system pump is directed by commands from MCU while battery loop pump is governed by BMS.

4WD Ionic 5 without heat pump



Ionic 5 with Heat Pump



Kona EV with heat pump

 

I'm ready for business 14 liters of expensive coolant... check, and I just received my Autel bidirectional scan tool and verified that it will activate both coolant pumps in a active test menu. Will probably just use my battery charger as external power supply augmentation. This would not be ideal for programing purpose but will be fine to prevent the coolant pumps from draining the 12V battery over 30-60 minutes of pumps running with ignition mode on (they won't engage in run mode). Just waiting for some warmer weather.

On a side note this scan tool is way more powerful than I imagined. Outside of just DTC read, it's got all sorts of active tests, live monitoring for the visible 22 modules in the Kona, I'd say it's probably most of the dealer level scan data, control. Even found a couple of unexpected DTCs, a historical EVSE failure code and found a dying TMPS sensor on my rear passenger wheel. I already had a spare TPMS sensor handy and was able to break the tire bead and replace without dismounting tire completely and worrying about rebalancing. Saved me money on its first day! Well Ok it saved a dealer visit but I doubt it will save me enough money in my lifetime, lol. It will come in handy with the rest of the fleet... eventually

 

Pfft cost, I don't know... I don't look at the price, lol It's an Autel Maxicom MK906BT



Neither of these apply to me, lol.

 

Yes, when I scanned through the test items I believe there is a test mode to turn on the battery heater. I suspect its just momentary so probably of limited use, but will report back when I get a chance to try again.

Interesting side note, I see Toyota is going to use low conductive coolant in its new EVs.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/toyota-gears-first-ev-safer-074002611.html

"Toyota said its batteries, developed with Panasonic Corp, contain a special coolant that does not conduct electricity easily. Battery packs are also structured to keep the cells and coolant separated in case of a leak."

 

I have already taken sample readings with my TDS meter. The old coolant at 60,000 km with at least a partial coolant replacement at 17,000 km when I got my motor replaced had a 42 ppm reading and the brand new coolant in the container read 26 ppm. So again the higher the reading the more electrically conductivity the fluid is.
Unfortunately I don't know what Hyundai considers as an acceptable range for low conductivity, but clearly as the fluid ages in the system it looses its desired properties of low conductivity presumably by ion leaching from metal and polymer components in the coolant loop( as per previously linked article).

 

So back to your question. The answer is yes, and the scan tool can activate the battery heater apparently for an indefinite period of time, but it seems one of the conditions of it initiating the battery heater relay is having the car plugged into an EVSE. I plugged it into my level 2 EVSE, the level 1 might work to. It would seem you can have it activate in run mode and then disconnect the EVSE and the heater appeared to sill function until I gave it the command to stop through the scan tool. I am not sure if you can concurrently activate the coolant pumps while battery heater is on, didn't try. Kinda cool but I am not sure this is an effective forced battery pre condition method, maybe under certain conditions.






As a side note it has some interesting BMS module tests of the traction battery, I suspect this is exactly what the dealer service technician has access to.
My battery passed all the tests, cool.

 

Yes that's the same model. Just be aware if someone is considering getting a similar unit make sure you get it from a North American vendor and the unit is eligible for North American registration. The Amazon link you provided was to a Chinese vendor. Most of the direct China vendor sold units cannot be registered at Autel USA(autel.com) and are not eligible for North American warranty, support and software updates from the US support site.

The other important thing to keep in mind is that many of these units come with first year of warranty and software updates after that it can cost $500-700 for a yearly subscription and warranty extension on the tool. The tool will still function after first year sub expires just obviously won't be able to connect to their servers and update software unless you pay the sub. As expensive as this is, it is still way cheaper than OEM Hyundai GDS subscription + hardware VCI interface. The advantage to the GDS software and appropriate approved 3rd party J2534 VCI interface is that can you also reflash ECU firmware(ECU programing vs just ECU coding with my Autel tool). Autel makes a much more expensive pro version with J2534 pass through interface but it only supports Mercedes and BMW ECU programming. I believe outside of the $1700US yearly subscription Hyundai charges for just the GDS software its also hits you an additional $75 per firmware download.

In case your interested these are Hyundai's 3rd party VCI recommendations that are compatible with their subscriptions GDS software. https://www.hyundaitechinfo.com/
These VCIs are usually around $1000+ cost of whatever laptop you are going to use to host the software.

 

I would not be surprised that there would be a way to reverse engineer the manufacturer's specific protocol commands sent via canbus. There was a forum and facebook member on here a couple of years ago that was able to sniff the specific commands that went to the VESS module and subsequently was able to change the sound emitted from VESS to a speed variable steam locomotive sound. Alas this capability is not in my tool chest. Honestly if I was retired or had more discretionary time I would probably learn the appropriate skills. It sounds like fun.

 

OK, you got me vaguely interested in this idea, sigh. After a little digging I suppose a guy could make or order a suitable OBD splitter cables , connect the bidirectional scan tool to one end, a canbus analyzer tool to another (something like from here https://www.csselectronics.com/pages/can-bus-sniffer-reverse-engineering?gclid=Cj0KCQiA64GRBhCZARIsAHOLriISUgN8eA6Qc5X-Q0_ZboDOC8YSO7l0XTI5l4GUCtX4LkcWTMF8psgaAjKEEALw_wcB) and the other end to the car(only because the scan tool needs to see the car to work). In theory one could capture the exact commands sent directly from the scan tool to engage the battery heater relay and coolant pumps without the need of going through a tedious data sniffing process from the car itself. Also In theory once you have the appropriate off and on commands a savvy enough person could develop an app and utilize a cheap bluetooth OBD connector in order to manually precondition the traction battery prior to fast charging.

I am not going to do this, maybe this will give someone else some idea. Nonetheless this thread has totally derailed

Eurokeital if your really interested in this maybe start a new forum post and see where it takes you.