Hi all! Curious if anyone else has had this issue. I was reading about it on the Kona electric page but haven’t seen anything here yet. We started hearing a strange noise a few weeks in to owning our Ioniq 5 AWD - right around 1,000 miles. Happened as the car accelerated or decelerated - most noticeable between 20-50 mph. Got worse if it sat out in the sun for a bit. Took it in to the dealership we bought it at and they couldn’t hear the noise until we took them for a ride along. I’m a little baffled by them “not being able to hear it” because by that point it literally sounded like we were driving a lawn mower. At this point it has been at the dealership a week waiting diagnostics and repair. Latest I heard they didn’t know for sure what was happening but think it may be the motor gear box. They’ve ordered one and we are all crossing our fingers that it fixes the problem. After reading about similar issues with the Kona EV I’m not holding out much hope. We are of course super upset. This is our first EV - we’ve wanted a Tesla for years - but decided to go with this because my husband actually liked the feel of driving it better than the model 3. Regretting regretting regretting. Thought I’d document the issue here in case anyone is experiencing anything similar and just as an FYI for anyone thinking that this issue that happened with the Kona EV has been resolved with this car. Apparently it hasn’t been.
We heard, sometime back, that some owners of the AWD in Europe complained of high pitch sound from the front motor area at highway speed; no complaints from RWD cars. Not sure if it was determined to be only related to the front motors. There is a thread on this forum about this issue. Please keep us updated on how it was resolved!
Apparently in Europe there is a newly released(April 23, 2022) Hyundai service 10D216 campaign, presumably its worldwide. The German forum members are implying serials ending between 035630 and 045459 are most at risk. Apparently in Germany, 37 vehicles are currently affected. From what I can understand a magnet on the inside of the front motor / gearbox assembly can detach and cause grief. The high pitched noise at highway speed is just "normal" inverter harmonics.
Ioniq 5 https://www.ioniqforum.com/threads/high-pitched-motor-noise-at-motorway-speeds.39496/ https://www.ioniqforum.com/threads/awd-revving-noise-when-front-motors-not-engaged-does-your-awd-sound-like-this.39854/ EV 6 https://www.kiaevforums.com/threads/high-frequency-noise.1937/ https://www.kiaevforums.com/threads/ev6-awd-model-eco-mode-or-while-the-front-motor-goes-dormant-noise-present.1764/ https://www.kiaevforums.com/threads/awd-front-motor-whirring-noise-now-with-audio-video-how-many-experience-this.1538/
Update: still waiting for the fix on this. New gearbox should hopefully be here next week. It’s been well over a month. I don’t know about the magnet on the outside of the gearbox. I don’t think that’s our issue. When I talked to our service people last week and asked how confident they were that they had pinpointed the correct issue they said that they tested the car with their diagnostic tools and the gear box is basically screaming at them once they hit about 10 miles per hour. So basically our gearbox failed after 1,000 miles. Doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence in this vehicle.
The biggest problem with EV repair is availability of parts. They just don't make 'extra's,so you have to wait. The corollary is the parts were designed a year or so ago in a lab onesey-twosey. Then they ramped up a factory to make it in "bulk" but a very small bulk. This is no different from ICE, except the latter is mostly doing minor modifications to proven designs that were years and years in the making, with reliable mass-production techniques. So EVs are getting the 1-2 punch of immature designs, and immature manufacturing processes. Punch 3 is real people break things differently in different environments. So what we get is a constant re-engineering of the basic designs to account for the needs of mass production, and real world conditions. I think long term you will be pleased, but expect more early ownership bumps until they get the bugs out of processes. As it is much of the mechanical stuff is simpler and not as expensive to replace and maintain.
