Red Range Bars Started to Blink w/ Concomitant Loss of Range

iletric · May 4, 2015

A very strange situation indeed.

I was driving on freeway in 50F temp with car half full when all of a sudden noticed the three red bottom range bars blinking when I hit bumpy road. I also started losing range somewhat faster.

I had to slow down to 60 mph and drag myself home in slow lane while the blinking kept going on, now full-time. At some point only the last bottom bar would blink alone, then the rest would join in and blink as a block of 3.

Next day, full charge as usual, car was acting normal, no blinking at all. I may have to have the car checked out if it happens again...

mtndrew1 · May 4, 2015

iletric said:
A very strange situation indeed.

I was driving on freeway in 50F temp with car half full when all of a sudden noticed the three red bottom range bars blinking when I hit bumpy road. I also started losing range somewhat faster.

I had to slow down to 60 mph and drag myself home in slow lane while the blinking kept going on, now full-time. At some point only the last bottom bar would blink alone, then the rest would join in and blink as a block of 3.

Next day, full charge as usual, car was acting normal, no blinking at all. I may have to have the car checked out if it happens again...

Mine has done this, literally, from day 1. I even posted a video of it to the Facebook Soul EV group. I have noticed no odd range reduction so I would caution that you might be misreading other factors.

A few other people chimed in on FB that their Souls do this too. I think it's just a design flaw. It almost always happens to me when I've charged to 100% the night before (rare) and drive the car down to about 75%, shut it off, do something, then get in and go again. I've had no correlation with bumpy roads or anything that I can put my finger on. It just happens sometimes and then after a reboot it goes away.

If you provide your email I'd be happy to send over the video of my SOC bars blinking from the bottom up, as you describe.

iletric · May 4, 2015

Has anyone brought it to attention of Kia and/or brought the car to the dealer and have Kia techs look at it and try to fix it?

I was concerned, since my range started going south, that it may have something to do with some sort of bad connection to part of the pack, or some board, or a short somewhere. Maybe a firmware upgrade is needed.

Kia definitely needs to address it, because it curiously affects only the red bars and it's most likely not a display problem.

irfca · May 5, 2015

Too funny ... I notice this same thing for the first time myself yesterday in the last 10km of my drive. I was at 54% battery (thank you warm weather ... I used to be at 25% in the colder months!) driving at 80 km/hr. The bottom block of 3 red bars, and 3 white bars were flickering intermittently. Some times 2 of the 3 white bars in the next bank of 3 white bars flicker too. It was not consistently when I went over bumps. However, the pattern was consistent ... always from the bottom red bars up ... the white bars only flickered if the red bars flickered, but they did not always flicker when the red bars flickered.

I say "flicker" vs "blink", because it was more of a fade in and out vs a clean, fixed on/off "blink". What I don't know is if it has done it in the past and I just didn't notice it - traffic was light on last 10km of my drive, so I was able to watch this happening a bit more intently. Nextime I'll see if I can video it, although driving and using a cell phone is illegal here.

mtndrew1 · May 5, 2015

I didn't bring it up at my first service because it doesn't have any practical impact on me and I don't want them tearing apart my dash and making new rattles in order to swap the gauge cluster.

ILECTRIC, the next time it happens watch the SOC % in the infotainment energy screen and see if charge depletion is progressing as you would expect. I'd bet a dollar that in SOC terms it's chugging along as normal. I'm of the very strong opinion that this is just a software glitch in the gauge cluster and not symptomatic of a larger problem.

Like irfca mine sometimes includes some of the white bars, too. Always from the bottom up.

mtndrew1 · May 5, 2015

Let's see if this works. I've never uploaded to YouTube before.

http://youtu.be/RT0fMTSTIzM

fanbanlo · May 5, 2015

Looks like a defective OLED screen.

mtndrew1 · May 5, 2015

fanbanlo said:
Looks like a defective OLED screen.

Could be, but it's only those segments and lots of these cars do it, leading me to believe that it's a firmware glitch of some sort.

I'll let someone else be the guinea pig and get their dash ripped apart before I deal with it. At some point Kia will figure it out and issue a bulletin and then I'll consider it. It doesn't bother me as it's very intermittent in my car and, even when it does happen, it doesn't have any effect on the operation of the car.

iletric · May 7, 2015

Flicker is probably a better term, the off lasted only a fraction of a second and my white bars did not flicker at all, just the red ones, and on occasion the bottom red one only - and that was a blink, not flicker.

My half-way SOC is always around 60% (41.4 miles, average 45-50 mph), the flicker started at about 25-30% SOC (estimate) on the way home. There was a temp drop from 70 day to 50 night. And the range loss was real, I was missing at least 8 miles, so I did have to slow down. Whether it was caused by the low temp is somewhat questionable, I really thought of the battery and its connections and all the electronics that communicate with it as I drove. Of course the whole shebang is greek to me.

I have the route down pat, so I know exactly where I should be with miles remaining both ways, and the miles just weren't there. I'd definitely like to see Kia address this. Just like they need to address the preheat, precool weirdness. I'm not doing it at all because it got me in trouble when I disconnected during preheat/precool (can't remember which) and it became a problem with some sort of "unexpected battery drain" message. That was freaky. A restart fixed it.

mtndrew1 · May 7, 2015

Does yours resemble my video?

iletric · May 7, 2015

No. Mine played like piano keys, not so consistent. And then just the last one, blinking alone.

Pretty bizarro... Well, the first year, right? I'm glad though I made the jump. That Leaf was going on our nerves, the range, the loss of value, slow charger, all the dumb stuff, like not recognizing the phone when I'd get in, unless it was the primary, etc. Time was right to sell it to the dealer for decent money.

notfred · May 14, 2015

I glanced through a Norwegian and a German Soul EV forum and found someone in Germany reporting the same issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQGpd8bk8NQ

Here's the forum topic through the marvellous power of Google Translate:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&u=http://www.goingelectric.de/forum/kia-soul-ev/blinken-der-soc-anzeige-t10471.html&usg=ALkJrhhi7dyT6LOcwpvq8yaaL7qHF87a1w

fanbanlo · May 15, 2015

Wouldn't this be covered by warranty? Just get it replaced?

iletric · May 16, 2015

It's a hassle to bring and leave the car 30 miles away at the dealership. Particularly if it does not affect the performance (x-cept for the perceived range loss I felt I was observing).

So far knock on wood, I have not been able to reproduce it, driving the same route under similar conditions. So, I'm going to wait.

irfca · May 16, 2015

I've been watching carefully over the past few weeks, and have not had the problem reoccur. Given that, I think it is more likely a software problem. My guess would be the display is updated every few milliseconds, and there is some kind of rounding or calculation error that is affecting the lower bars ... either the battery level associated with the bars is incorrect, or the calculation to determine if the bar should be on or off has a bug ... so the problem likely needs a specific battery level or range, and maybe even a specific consumption level ... not knowing what kind of a processor they use, if they have real floating point or emulated floating point via integers ... almost anything is possible!

iletric · May 17, 2015

irfca said:
...if they have real floating point or emulated floating point via integers...

They sure have that for the cruise control. I hate the fact how it fluctuates -1 +1. It won't stay fixed for me. Kia needs to look at Spark in that regard. You set a specific speed number. Love it.

Birkeland · Jul 4, 2015

I just returned from my KIA dealer, and they will replace the instrument cluster because of the flickering. It is an error or weakness (I don't remember the exact words) in the instrument cluster causing the last bars in the SOC to flicker.

I was afraid it could have something to do with bad battery cells, so I had them check it out but my battery was fine. I also asked if they could check min and max deterioration of the battery, and it was 0%, so after 1875 miles, the battery is showing no signs of deterioration.

My main reason to go to the dealer is because there is water in the turn-signal light in the passenger side mirror. This will get replaced.

Other than that, I am really pleased with the car.

mtndrew1 · Jul 4, 2015

Would you mind following up here after some time with the new cluster to report whether or not it fixed the flickering issue?

I'd like this repaired but I don't want my dash disassembled only for the condition to return.

Birkeland · Jul 4, 2015

Yes, I will post a follow up. The cluster will not be replaced until earliest August, due to vacation and also the dealership has to send in an application to KIA Norway (I live in Norway) to get permission to get it replaced. Why they have to get a permission from KIA Norway headquarter, I do not know.

Birkeland · Jul 31, 2015

I just had my car at the KIA dealership to replace the instrument cluster because of occasional blinking of the last bars on the SOC-meter. When they installed the new one, they had to enter some codes in order to get the car to accept the new instrument cluster but they were not able to get it to work. The car did not accept the codes, and because of summer vacation time, they were not able to get hold of any people who could be of assistance. So they reinstalled the old cluster until they get the proper codes.

They had also gotten the newest firmware update for the car, and I asked if they could install that as well, but also there the car did not accept the codes in order to get it to work. So still waiting.

They replaced the passenger side mirror due to water in the LED turning signal light.

Red Range Bars Started to Blink w/ Concomitant Loss of Range

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