Recall 196 now shows on US Hyundai Recall website..

Thanks- I know from reading here it's anti normal charging to 100% but it was set at 100% when I bought it and like I said, for one and one half years I've charged it to 100% twice a week ever since. slow type charging. Maybe ignorance is bliss but it's been great.

 

I got the recall email today too. My car was manufacture on March 13th, 2019. I got it in December 2019 and have been charging it to 100% with Level 2 charger at home since then. Currently at 4500 miles.

I installed the Soul EV Spy Lite on my phone. I can get information about "Onboard Charger", "Tire Data", "Motor Control", however the "Battery cell map" is not updating - I see a screen of grey squares. The "Battery Management System" is just a blank page. Is this expected with the Lite version?

 

Yes, you need the paid version.

 

Overcharging is not the only cause of short circuit. Although the exact cause of the defect is , a short is caused when lithium bridges between two or more layers in a lithium ion battery. This can be caused by overheating, excessive charging or normal charging at extreme low temperatures. It can be caused by physical damage to the batteries or even a manufacturer's defect in getting the lithium plates too close. This could possibly cause even normal use or charging to cause a short. Best thing is to get the recall fix and park it outside away from your home until you do.
I expect there will be more to this recall when more information is known by Hyundai. I appreciate their caution. I am not happy with the defect. It will give a bad name to EV's for being able to burst into flames. New tech is coming that will greatly reduce the chance of this ever happening.

 

How do you know it's "perfect" until you've tested it? What assurance do you have that it's "perfect" unless you test it regularly?

Your logic is basically that if you're healthy you don't need to get tested; but that fails because you can't know if you're healthy until you get tested... so everyone needs to get tested regularly, even "healthy" people, to identify those who need treatment as early as possible.

Remember the first and only symptom of the problem, that doesn't need software to diagnose, is the car catching fire... and it's a bit late to address the problem a that point.

 

In that case it means that the SW actually was to blame. Something Hyundai is denying. And in your example you will be stuck with this new SW forever, if it’s needed to continue to check batteries. What happens when the BMS bricks the car after warranty expired...?

 

Or, it's a hardware problem with a software diagnostic/remediation. Or the problem is marginal hardware that the software turns into a serious problem. Or the problem is that everything is technically fine on paper but the safety margins in the design weren't sufficient, and the software upgrade is a band-aid. These are all possibilities.

What happens if the car bursts into flames in your garage after the warranty expires? Which would be the bigger problem; A car with a bricked battery, or a car that converted itself and whatever was nearby to ash and rubble? That's not a difficult choice for me, but I suppose you might feel differently...

 

Except they gave determined vehicles with more than a certain amount of mileage are safe, I would think most cars out of warranty would fit that category.

 

Doesn’t Tesla have a similar slowdown after 80% during supercharging?

In the hobby world you also cannot maintain a fast charge past a certain point. The two issues you encounter are cell temp and over voltage on some of the cells in the string. Cooling and BMS related hold down can mitigate both to some extent, but they both have limitations and ultimately charge rate must be reduced. It’s just the nature of charging.


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This is a legitimate problem. If the car randomly bricks its self out of warranty my only recourse would be to take it a dealer who will gladly fix it with a new pack for $30+ thousand dollars. I am going to guess a Kona EV's residual value out of warranty won't be even remotely close to that.
At least if car bursts into flames I have insurance for that.

 

Exactly, what happens is that the customer ends up with the cost of the problem. This because Hyundai is forcing a new SW despite arguing that there was nothing wrong with the old sw... well if battery production is the problem, then fix production and give owners new batteries without this fault. Who would buy a used Kona well knowing that it suddenly can brick it self?

 

You must have good insurance... The potential collateral damage from a car fire could be quite high, and there's a risk of injury or death as well.

It's an interesting point, though: If you can get insurance that covers you in the case of a vehicle fire, or nearly any other type of damage/major repair item, why couldn't the battery have similar coverage? In both cases you have a fault that results in an unusable (and totaled) vehicle, but a fire has a much higher chance of collateral damage which a comprehensive policy would also have to pay for... so why shouldn't a comprehensive policy cover a bricked battery, too?

Don't forget that the "bricked" scenario only occurs if there is a major fault in the battery pack that the BMS system cannot compensate for. So you may as well be asking "Who would buy a used Kona well knowing that it can suddenly catch fire while charging?" because that's the alternative, and equally extreme, scenario.

Also worth mentioning that there is at least one level of "warning" known to exist, where the pack can fail testing but not to the extent that it gets immediately disabled.

Well it seems it's not known exactly what the problem is, or which vehicles have the problem, or what the total risk factor is. It could very well be that the scope of the recall is expanded to older models, and models newer than the recall dates come with the new software already installed.

Since you seem really upset about it, what would you suggest they do instead? Difficulty: Not only is wall-to-wall battery pack replacement logistically impossible, there is no guarantee it will completely resolve the underlying problem.

 

I suggest they start telling the truth. And fix only the thing that is faulty, without any type of degradation. The official statement is that there is nothing wrong with sw or bms. Only the battery. If this sw is temporary needed, then it’s ok, but forever?..NO.
If so, they have to inform the customer of what he will loose/compromise and compensate for this. For example lifetime warranty against this fault on the battery, not limited to km or years. And paying compensation due to loss of range or increasing charging time.

 

The official statement - if you can consider their filing with the NHTSA a "statement" which is fair enough - is that the packs were produced "with internal damage" ... this does not specify what caused that damage, or the nature of the damage. Could be a manufacturing defect in the cells, could be a cockup in the assembly process, could be the result of bum software. The only thing that document admits is there is a problem related to physical damage to the cells.

Do not assume that just because they no longer explicitly mention the BMS software, that the BMS software is totally blameless. The way I see it, all they've done is make the description more ambiguous so the lawyers have more to work with when the issue inevitably ends up in court... either between Hyundai and LG, Hyundai and the government, or Hyundai and the dealers/owners.

 

Also posted to another thread, just got my car back from dealer for sw update, no issues but it took 4 hours, I'm really glad I dropped it off instead of waiting. A side note, I wondered if they would notice the disconnected VESS, but it's not reconnected, so good.

 

Mine is still at the dealer - I don't know if they did the update or not. It did go offline for about 5 hours yesterday, and it has been on the charger all day long. Currently 99% SOC. BlueLink GOM says 298 miles. Update - just got BlueLink alert that charging is complete..

I get the feeling that they are just being overly cautious - they don't want to give it back to me unless they are 100% sure that things are good.