I have a 2019 EX Premium Launch Edition with Battery Heater and Heat Pump. It is my daily driver, and I intend to use it for an occasional road trip. I will probably travel more often in a few years, after I retire. Most of the people and places I like best are well north of here, in New England and Canada, so I tend to configure a car for rough utility - WeatherTech floor and cargo liners (done), Winter wheels and tires (pending), etc. I swapped in LED fog lights per the instructions I found elsewhere on this forum. (Thank you whomever for posting that; it is an easy and effective mod.)
I absolutely love this car, but I have a couple of questions/suggestions I wish I could run past the Kia engineers who designed/built it:
1) Why no 12v socket in the cargo bay? If I'm trying to repair a flat tire, I want to plug the inflater in right there, right?
2) Why no switch on the light in the cargo bay? If I'm car camping with the hatch open, I want to be able to turn that light off to save the battery, right?
3) 60kg/130lb load limit in the cargo bay?! What if I want to sleep in there? It should be at least twice that, in my opinion. (I intend to find a way to address this, and will publish it here after I figure it out...)
4 DC Fast Charging Speed is awkward. Because it reports above 75 kw at handshake, we pay for higher charge rates than we are actually getting on average at Electrify America 100+ kw charging stations. Rate of charge throttling is very aggressive when initiated with 50% or higher state of charge, or when pack is cold. 100 kw or better up to 80% SoC would be so much more practical. As it is, we're looking at roughly 2:1 travel:charging time, 3:1 at best, on the road, traveling at highway speeds. Is any of this addressable in software, and is there a fix forthcoming?
Just my 2 shillings...
I absolutely love this car, but I have a couple of questions/suggestions I wish I could run past the Kia engineers who designed/built it:
1) Why no 12v socket in the cargo bay? If I'm trying to repair a flat tire, I want to plug the inflater in right there, right?
2) Why no switch on the light in the cargo bay? If I'm car camping with the hatch open, I want to be able to turn that light off to save the battery, right?
3) 60kg/130lb load limit in the cargo bay?! What if I want to sleep in there? It should be at least twice that, in my opinion. (I intend to find a way to address this, and will publish it here after I figure it out...)
4 DC Fast Charging Speed is awkward. Because it reports above 75 kw at handshake, we pay for higher charge rates than we are actually getting on average at Electrify America 100+ kw charging stations. Rate of charge throttling is very aggressive when initiated with 50% or higher state of charge, or when pack is cold. 100 kw or better up to 80% SoC would be so much more practical. As it is, we're looking at roughly 2:1 travel:charging time, 3:1 at best, on the road, traveling at highway speeds. Is any of this addressable in software, and is there a fix forthcoming?
Just my 2 shillings...
