Charging Fault error.

Friday Dec 4th i got my winter tires installed at my Kia Dealership and they did an update on the car at the same time. When i got home i plugged it in as usual (SunCountry 32amp) and retired for the night. The next morning when i got into my car i was surprised to see that my car did not charge at all while plugged overnight, and i had a "Charging fault error" that was displayed. :shock: I unplugged my charger waited a few minutes and plugged it back in, but i got the same error again!! I thought it might be a problem with my Level 2 charger so I connected my 110 charger that came with the car and had the same error displaying on my dash. My car has 9 Km of range left so i won't be able to drive it to my dealer as they are about 25 Km away. I guess they will have to tow it to the shop. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

It might be due to the update, but when they charged it at the shop after the tires were installed it was working perfectly. :?

Wow, that is a bummer. Is there a CHAdeMO charger nearby? The problem might be with the OBC. Since CHAdeMO doesn't use it you might be able to charge.

It just occurred to me that in theory an off board charger could be made to connect to the CHAdeMO port for situations like yours. It would sure be easier to borrow an off board charger than get a flatbed truck or trailer.

No CHAdeMO charger nearby, unfortunately. Got the car towed to the Kia dealership and now i'm just waiting for them to call me back. Will keep you posted.

Got my car back yesterday! They had to change the OBC At a cost (to Kia) of $9400!
If anyone is thinking about buying these cars, don't, lease them instead. Can you imagine having these problems if you bought the car and the warranty is up, YIKES!

Still love my car though. As soon as Kia comes up with more range on their Soul EV (which should be soon btw) i will trade this in for the newer model.

Doesn't the 7 year warranty cover the OBC as well?

Wow, $9,400? That's crazy. Quite the markup...

BTW, how did you become aware of the cost to Kia? Do you mean dealer invoiced parts (on the work order), or do you mean what Kia actually pays for the OBC from their vendor/sub?

Strangely, I found this. The OBC is part no. 364000E040:

http://www.kiapartsnow.com/parts-list/2015-kia-soul-ev/electronic-control.html

The OBC there is listed for $2,792.58 USD. Looks pretty darn easy to swap out, form the schematic and just looking at my own vehicle.

Good find! That site also lists the battery pack at $13,511 and the UVO infotainment assembly at $3,904 :shock:

Yeah that pack price is scary. Hopefully mass production brings that down to something manageable and the cells end up being very durable!

Also, for an apples to apples comparison, I wonder how that UVO ranks in terms of price to comparable units in ICE vehicles?

2016Electric said:

Wow, $9,400? That's crazy. Quite the markup...

BTW, how did you become aware of the cost to Kia? Do you mean dealer invoiced parts (on the work order), or do you mean what Kia actually pays for the OBC from their vendor/sub?

Strangely, I found this. The OBC is part no. 364000E040:

http://www.kiapartsnow.com/parts-list/2015-kia-soul-ev/electronic-control.html

The OBC there is listed for $2,792.58 USD. Looks pretty darn easy to swap out, form the schematic and just looking at my own vehicle.

Click to expand...

I saw the price on the work order that was sitting on the counter as i signed my copy.

Btw, since they changed the OBC my car is now drawing 25 to 26.2 amps whereas before it was drawing 29-30 amps. :evil:
I have a Suncountry EV40P EV Charger.

AndY1 said:

Doesn't the 7 year warranty cover the OBC as well?

Click to expand...

Yes it does, the repairs and towing didn't cost me a cent.

vinnymess said:

2016Electric said:

Wow, $9,400? That's crazy. Quite the markup...

BTW, how did you become aware of the cost to Kia? Do you mean dealer invoiced parts (on the work order), or do you mean what Kia actually pays for the OBC from their vendor/sub?

Strangely, I found this. The OBC is part no. 364000E040:

http://www.kiapartsnow.com/parts-list/2015-kia-soul-ev/electronic-control.html

The OBC there is listed for $2,792.58 USD. Looks pretty darn easy to swap out, form the schematic and just looking at my own vehicle.

Click to expand...

I saw the price on the work order that was sitting on the counter as i signed my copy.

Btw, since they changed the OBC my car is now drawing 25 to 26.2 amps whereas before it was drawing 29-30 amps. :evil:
I have a Suncountry EV40P EV Charger.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry for you. Apparently, this is what they changed from MY2015 to MY2016 Kia SOUL EV. MY2015 charges at full speed at every amp number the EVSE tells the car to charge and MY2016 does it at 10-15% slower - at every speed. If it's set to 10A, it will charge at 8.5 Amps and so on.

Either you got a different charger than what you had before or the new charger has a different firmware, the same as MY2016 Souls, which charges more slowly, than it should.

Check this thread: http://www.mykiasoulev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=453

Hi Vinny, I bought a 2016 Kia Soul in October 2015 I live in the Vancouver Lower mainland. I have had this charging error several times. 1st time I was trickle charging on a non dedicated circuit and overloaded the circuit so it stopped charging. The car paused charging too, I got an error....and it took time before it allowed me to charge again. There is a DC charger at the bottom of my hill 5km away. That saved me. In November I got a LEVITON 32amp Level 2 station installed, our load calculation here at the house warranted that we get a load miser installed to be to electrical code. We have a 100 amp main we are kind of maxed out. We were told that if there are too many loads, washer, dryer stove etc etc running the load miser would stop the car charger. Well I came home one night and this happened so I got the same charging fault error. The EV light was on for a while it took about 12 hours before it would let me charge, I drove to the dealer by then it was off, they found nothing wrong. In total it has happened 3 times to me. It does not seem to happen unless under these circumstances, quirky. I am taking my car in for the steering column recall next week and will bring this up. Any thoughts? I will come back on and let you know the findings after my appointment. Thanks

Well had a problem again with the charging fault when trying to set climate it delayed charging and would not let me charge on L2 at all! Problem was I was in meetings at work and did not notice until it was too late and I was kind of stranded. Not that I had a range issue I just could not get my car to accept a charge at a station. So I went to PowerTech where they are testing different brands of fast chargers... No on the Eaton one got the check EV system error message! Then I tried the Signet unit and I was able to charge to add 20% and it stopped! I got the error message on it after that. I limped home and it would not charge here until the next morning but it also stopped after10km was added. I managed to juice it up enough to get to the dealer 2 days later. After keeping my car for a day they found nothing wrong! They said I had my charge timer button left of the steering column depressed. Believe me in desperation to get home I checked that, locked unlocked doors....tried setting the timer to charge immediately etc. The Kia tech is deer in the headlights on this one he says they ran a diagnostic on my OBC to find no problems. I will not use my charge timer now... Ever. I will try using pre warm climate only from home. I also noticed my history has gone from 19kWh/100km it got colder (-2c) to 23kWh/100km for the same drive. Since this day/incident my computer shows 34kWh/100km even when I drove/limped home at eco8! It has not gone back down despite conservative driving and warmer temperatures. The battery range on the guessometer seems realistic and to be working OK. Do I have an OBC issue?... I think I have a computer issue. I would love some feedback on what to do. A week later she seems to be running normal other than the eco history still looks wrong. Waiting for the next bomb to drop....help!

And it happened again would not charge again. I have not used any climate presets or delayed charging on the car. It is just being finicky. The dealer is keeping the car and will drive it a bit to see if they can replicate the error. I live 50km from the dealer not fun. The dealer service dept. says they are having lots of Soul EV issues, range.... Charging etc. Are all you guys making out OK?

I have had mine since the last part of Oct.
No charging issues so far (knock on wood).

I used the supplied level 1 charger, for a while, but have used a level 2 at home for about a month.

Thanks wrickcook that's good, I hope they figure out my situation. I am a member of the Electric Car club here and othe Kia EV drivers are doing ok too.

I had an OBC failure .. no fun.

It was fixed pretty quickly & I haven't had a problem since.

I still love the car.


Please read this thread ...

http://www.mykiasoulev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=176

- Ayejay

Hazeyone said:

And it happened again would not charge again. [snip] The dealer service dept. says they are having lots of Soul EV issues, range.... Charging etc. Are all you guys making out OK?

Click to expand...

That is frustrating. I know how frustrated I was when my car wouldn't charge from Aervironment CHAdeMO chargers. It turned out to be a loose ground wire that went to the battery pack fan.

My predicted range is at about 70 miles when the temperature is a little under 40F. It is typically a conservative estimate I've found by comparing the actual miles traveled compared to what is predicted to be available at the end of the trip. I think the range issues most people are having is coming from not really understanding how much the many factors affect it. Add to this the fact that the predicted range is just a best guess hence the term guess-o-meter.

I usually charge with my EVSEupgraded panasonic charger which is a 20A device but I do frequently travel and quick charge. In November I even tested charging at 20A (18A actual) on 120V which was much better than 12A (11A actual) at 120V.

The only other issue I have had has been that the address book folders got corrupted. Resetting hasn't fixed anything. I finally just deleted everything in each folder, renamed them with numbers then started populating them again. Seems to be working ok for now.

Hope your charging issue gets resolved soon.

Hi Hazeyone,

sorry for the late reply. In my case I never used the set climate nor the delayed charging before I had problems with the car not charging anymore. Since they changed the OBC I have had no more issues with the car. As far as range is concerned, I now get approximately 105 KM per charge. But, i am also driving in -11 Celsius with the heating running on full blast.
Still love my car though. Hope they find your problem soon and rectify the situation.

Thanks Vinny. They kept my car for a week. Could not duplicate the error after driving it and charging. They apparently reset the timer settings to factory settings. Next time it happens they want me to get it towed there immediately so they can see what it is. 1 day with it home same problem again at a public charger and the EV light was on for quite a while. The public charger says charging complete or paused by the car. I am driving to work on Friday if it happens there she gets hooked up and off to the dealer. So frustrating....I hated the gas courtesy car and missed my EV, but I worry that I will get stranded :|