RECALL) KONA EV - BMS UPDATE and 20% Reduce cell capacity

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TheLight75 said:
Oh, I'm sure they'll be replacing batteries. From a logistics & cost perspective it makes sense for Hyundai to:
  1. Work to get the BMS update onto all affected Kona EV's. The update is a critical piece to start diagnosing batteries which aren't staying in spec. It's the front-line to help identify specific batteries to replace which saves them time & money versus replacing all of them
  2. To minimize impact to owners with faulted batteries, they should simply replace them (most likely with remanufactured batteries) so the owners can be on their way
  3. Hyundai will then likely take apart the faulted battery packs to replace the faulty cells, check wiring & wear/tear, re-certify the battery and add it to the available stock of remanufactured battery packs
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That is exactly what I would expect to see.
 
Jimct said:
Of all the incident reports I can find, it looks like the only one where the owner claims the car wasn't plugged in was the July 2019 Montreal fire. I strongly suspect it was plugged in, maybe by another family member without his knowledge or he simply forgot. For the meantime, out of precaution I'm charging the car outside and not to 100%, but I feel pretty confident that otherwise parking in the garage is pretty safe.

This, from Wikipedia:
Hyundai Kona Electric[edit]
First reported Hyundai Kona fire took place in Hyundai’s Ulsan production plant in May 2018.[110]
On July 26, 2019, a Kona Electric was parked in a residential garage in Montreal, Canada. The owner reported that the car was not plugged in at the time. An unprovoked fire began, and this triggered an explosion that projected the garage door across the street and caused damage to the attached structure. There were no injuries.[111]
Another Kona Electric caught fire while charging in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, South Korea on July 28, 2019.[112]
A fire in a Kona Electric occurred in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea on August 9, 2019. The flames began at the floor of the rear seat of the vehicle, which was parked at the time.[113]
On August 13, 2019 a Kona Electric caught fire while being charged in an underground parking level at an apartment in Sejong City, South Korea. The vehicle was completely destroyed.[114]
On May 29, 2020 a Kona EV which was being charged at the electric charging station in Sangyeok-dong, Buk-gu, Daegu, Korea caught on fire. The fire went out in two hours, but the vehicle was completely burned, causing 29 million won of property damage. [115]
Kona EV caught fire in Jeju Island, South Korea on Sept. 26, 2020. The vehicle was parked, connected to an EV charger inside the parking lot of an apartment building. [116]
On Oct 4, 2020 a Hyundai Kona electric vehicle (EV) burst into flames in the early hours of Sunday morning while parked in the underground parking lot of an apartment in Daegu, South Korea [117]
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Actually my views now involve charging the car more often to 100% (as the manual states -once a month recommended) is probably more important now to achieve top end balancing and keep that cell deviation as low as possible. (Right now I have only charged to 100% 3 times in a little over 1.5 years of ownership) Charging outside to that level is probably a good thing, and driving down to somewhere in the mid 80's right after would be wise as well.
 
TheLight75 said:
  1. To minimize impact to owners with faulted batteries, they should simply replace them (most likely with remanufactured batteries) so the owners can be on their way.
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The problem is that Hyundai seems to have no inventory of replacement batteries. Either that, or Hyundai is holding off any replacements until they get a go-ahead from corporate.
 
TheLight75 said:
Oh, I'm sure they'll be replacing batteries. From a logistics & cost perspective it makes sense for Hyundai to:
  1. Work to get the BMS update onto all affected Kona EV's. The update is a critical piece to start diagnosing batteries which aren't staying in spec. It's the front-line to help identify specific batteries to replace which saves them time & money versus replacing all of them
Click to expand...

There is another issue here - there are far too many cases where the update is only partially applied. I don't know the details about the how/why, but it is a complicating factor. At best, it annoys the customers when they discover this - I suppose it is possible that cars may not be fully protected until the software update is fully applied.
 
It sounds like the update protects the battery from additional damage from fast charging. Cell damage is cumulative, it will be interesting to see how they handle battery replacements and if they have the data to predict previous damage.


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Recoil45 said:
It sounds like the update protects the battery from additional damage from fast charging. Cell damage is cumulative, it will be interesting to see how they handle battery replacements and if they have the data to predict previous damage.
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Is it fast charging that directly causes damage, or is it really just excessive battery temperature during charging?

Remember that one other thing in the BMS update that was fixed was that battery cooling wasn't working for some reason, which could lead to battery temperatures reaching 50C or 120F (or higher) during charging.
 
ericy said:
There is another issue here - there are far too many cases where the update is only partially applied. I don't know the details about the how/why, but it is a complicating factor. At best, it annoys the customers when they discover this - I suppose it is possible that cars may not be fully protected until the software update is fully applied.
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I spoke to the Hyundai tech that came to my dealer to fix my BMS update. He said that it is fairly unusual for four modules to need updating in one go, and that on their software, there's no way to have it do multiple updates in one operation, and at least one of the updates can appear all or partly off an area of the screen, so that the user needs to scroll down to see it.
However if it's really that simple, it's not clear why they appear to be sending specialist techs out to fix bad updates rather than providing instructions to the dealers to a) get it right first time and b) fix it if not done right.
It is possible that it's down to their internal admin procedures -it's been known for months that the "aux battery saver +" menu item not disappearing is a symptom of a bad update, but they've not amended the update instructions to get the service guys to check this after doing the update
 
And I have no doubt that there are many ( most?) cars that have had the update done incorrectly - it's been reported so often in forums, and that has to be a small proportion of users. At some point they're going to have to issue another service bulletin to check that previous updates have been done correctly.
All seems a bit of a mess.....
 
ericy said:
Is it fast charging that directly causes damage, or is it really just excessive battery temperature during charging?

Remember that one other thing in the BMS update that was fixed was that battery cooling wasn't working for some reason, which could lead to battery temperatures reaching 50C or 120F (or higher) during charging.
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I feel you are correct, it would ultimately be temp that causes the damage, regardless of reason.


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mikeselectricstuff said:
I spoke to the Hyundai tech that came to my dealer to fix my BMS update. He said that it is fairly unusual for four modules to need updating in one go, and that on their software, there's no way to have it do multiple updates in one operation, and at least one of the updates can appear all or partly off an area of the screen, so that the user needs to scroll down to see it.
However if it's really that simple, it's not clear why they appear to be sending specialist techs out to fix bad updates rather than providing instructions to the dealers to a) get it right first time and b) fix it if not done right.
It is possible that it's down to their internal admin procedures -it's been known for months that the "aux battery saver +" menu item not disappearing is a symptom of a bad update, but they've not amended the update instructions to get the service guys to check this after doing the update
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Interesting. I have had this problem where they told me they did the BMS update but the aux battery + option is still in the cluster and the GOM was not reset so it appears that it was a bad update. Talking to them again this week to try to sort out. Hopefully they are aware of some of this stuff going on...

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mikeselectricstuff said:
And I have no doubt that there are many ( most?) cars that have had the update done incorrectly - it's been reported so often in forums, and that has to be a small proportion of users. At some point they're going to have to issue another service bulletin to check that previous updates have been done correctly.
All seems a bit of a mess.....
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Sample bias at play here: people who had the update done properly don’t come and complain on the internet :-)
 
Post #5 here says that LG Chem supplies battery cells to HL Green Power, a joint venture of LG Chem and Hyundai Mobis, who assemble the cells into battery packs; Hyundai Mobis then supplies the BMS. LG Chem has denied a problem with their cells, and the issue could equally lie with assembly of the battery packs or with the vehicle's BMS. It could be a while before we find out.
 
lars2885 said:
Post #5 here says that LG Chem supplies battery cells to HL Green Power, a joint venture of LG Chem and Hyundai Mobis, who assemble the cells into battery packs; Hyundai Mobis then supplies the BMS. LG Chem has denied a problem with their cells, and the issue could equally lie with assembly of the battery packs or with the vehicle's BMS. It could be a while before we find out.
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That could be, but if they can get some faulty cells into the lab, they might be able to narrow it down. Once you have had a fire, the evidence is destroyed.

I believe the main point of the BMS change is for early detection of cells going bad so car owners will bring their cars in for service and have the battery replaced (if required).
 
At the same time, each of the four parties will be quite anxious to shift the ultimate blame, though Hyundai will wear it in the first instance.
 
lars2885 said:
At the same time, each of the four parties will be quite anxious to shift the ultimate blame, though Hyundai will wear it in the first instance.
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The issue of who is ultimately to blame is sort of academic interest, but it doesn't really affect me one way or another. I suspect it is only a small number of cells that are actually faulty - this is just based on the relatively small number of fires (out of 77000 cars, there have been maybe a dozen fires). As the BMS update rolls out they will find a few more - no idea how many, and they will probably never tell us. Just from my pack alone, there was (apparently) only one bad cell out of the 96 total.

The #1 thing is really to ensure that there are no more fires.
 
Hi, I've just had my BMS updated, in South Aust as part of my 1 year service. I can confirm that it seems to have limited my range by around 20 %. I'm a bit furious.
They didn't mention a thing about that to me, I asked about the nature of the update and they said it was a recall safety issue.
I'm awaiting confirmation that they have now limited the capacity of the battery and then I will have a few quiet words to them about compensation and battery replacement.:mad:
 
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