2016 Soul EV @ 3rd day: "Check EV System" light on. What the

:x What the... It drives fine but... I wonder what went wrong.

from starting up to warning shows (41s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRd-U6XCAdk

The service manual lists possible sources of the fault as VCU, MCU, BMS, LDC, FATC, OBC. Which is basically saying something important and electronic is not working. It could easily be a very simple communications fault, maybe a connector wasn't snapped in properly.

VCU = Vehicle control unit (main computer for making driving decisions)
MCU = Motor control unit (controller for the main drive motor)
BMS = Battery management system (determines state of charge, etc)
LDC = Low-voltage DC-DC converter (charges the 12V battery, replaces the alternator in an ICE car)
FATC = something to do with climate control
OBC = Onboard charger (converts main electricity into DC for the battery).

So if your car is driving ok, one might suspect an LDC, FATC or OBC fault?

I _think_ the amount of power taken by the LDC is labeled 'Electronics' in the power display screen. Check that is more than zero. Check charging works from the mains. Check A/C works. But also I would take my car to a dealer!

Hope that helps...

Thanks. I will, just wish it's not Sunday today.

Weird, it works fine now, no more warning.

Warning came back, seems like it comes on right after I stopped charging @ 5.6kWh at a ChargePoint EVSE and started driving. :roll:

Hmmm - maybe the On Board Charger is reporting an error? Interesting that it goes away though, over heating? Or maybe the BMS is reporting that some cells are in a bad state.

In any case the dealer will be able to see what it is when they plug in to the diagnostic port. But do let us know!

It's at the dealer right now. They are still working on it. Looks like the cooling fan for the battery malfunctions.

EV stuck at dealership still (3rd day), and they still have no clue how to fix and awaits Kia Canada for answers. :shock:



Sigh, well, they got me a courtesy car yesterday, but I MISS MY SOUL EV!

Due to all of the brand new technology and systems in these cars and they tiny EV volume Kia sells, dealer technicians are really inexperienced in diagnosing and repairing these cars. Their only option is to refer to the handful of procedures that Kia Corp has provided to them. Any issues that don't fall within those procedures have to be documented at the dealership, communicated to Kia HQ, and resolution is then lead by the EV engineering team in Korea. Replacement driveline, battery and electronics parts aren't stored on site at dealerships, they have to be sent from Korea.

Fanbanlo - it's possible that resolution of your issue might be as easy as swapping the battery fan. But if this is the first this particular fault has surfaced, the issue will be thoroughly investigated and documented in tandem between your dealership and the EV team in Korea (many timezones away, so little overlap in their shifts for direct communication) which slows down the completion of such a repair.

Soul EV returned to my hands, but not fixed. They weren't able to reproduce it consistently and they rather have me test it for them and asked me to bring it back to them if the light comes on again. :shock:

Wow...

Good news, finally fixed!

The battery monitoring module was at fault therefore the the blower fan did not start in time. Defective part was ordered on Monday, delivered, installed, verified fixed on Thursday.

Wish it was problem free but at least they do know what they are doing.

Cool, glad you're fixed now. I suppose two weeks isn't too bad, once you know the parts are coming from Korea!

well technically from order to replaced & fixed, took only 4 days. I am not sure if the part was from Korea.

Well, It is happening to my 2016 EV+. This morning the drive to school, the orange triangle EV! came on.
The car, on a 56f day, should read about 85-90 miles of range, and after driving 5 miles, the car gave me 104mi of range. the range steadily increased as I drove.
I suspect it is the same issue of the Battery pack AC unit not doing the right thing. The pack clearly thought it was 80f outside and happy to release 100+ miles like it does in summer. So the range jumped up. Artificially warm batteries.

Now I have to drive it 65 miles to my dealer, leave it there and see what happens.

Did you ever get stranded with the warning light on?

I had last Sunday also the problem of "Check electric vehicle system" warning:



When I tried to startup my Kia Soul EV by pressing the Power button, the above error message appeared. I could not drive.
After several times stopping and starting via the Power button, the error message was gone.

The problem was not the 12V battery, which is already changed a year ago.
The car was charged at a public charger from 60% to 100%. The car was fully charged (100%) and the public charger was stopped.

Unfortunately I had to charge in the sun. Outside temperature was 27 degrees Celsius. Normally I try to charge in the shadow and mostly I charge till 80%.

Maybe cooling of the batteries was not working?

Later I did a readout with Torque Pro of the diagnostic error codes. The following was reported:

Fault log report generated by Torque for Android
=================================================
P1BA7: Unknown code - More information may be available on the web
P1B77: Unknown code - More information may be available on the web

I did search for these error codes and found this:

https://www.obd-codes.com/tsb/2017/kia/niro-hybrid/

Communication Number: PS491, Date: 2017-02-27 Category: 111000 ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:BATTERY
Summary: PITSTOP: Voltage Protection Device (VPD) DTCs P1BA7 and P1B77 -
The Voltage Protection Device (VPD) (1) is mounted on top of the HV battery pack. If the HV battery overcharges, the battery cells/modules/case can swell. If swelling occurs, t

I did not have this problem again, but still informed the dealer about this problem. They will come back with an answer coming Monday.

September 23, 2019, the car suddenly went into “Turtle” mode and then the battery alert came on. Then the car stopped. EV system showed 60% battery level. I had it towed into Kia Dealer
They had my car for 4 days then told me that the high voltage system was fine even though they got a High Voltage Battery code P1B96. They told me I only needed to repair the 12 Volt harness to the front proximity sensors. (evening of September 27)
I was charged over $500 for this.

October 1, the car went into “turtle” mode again while showing 63% battery level. I immediately went back to Kia Dealer and shared this info. At this point I was told that my car would not be looked at until November 5, 2019. I was told to continue to drive and just keep an eye on battery level. So, I worked to keep the battery level above 60%. This meant I only had a 60 Km range.
October 21, at battery level 65%, it went again into “turtle “mode. I happened to be on my way to a charging station and I crawled into it. When I tried to charge up, it kept shutting the charging off with no charge getting in. I had it towed into Kia Dealer again.
November 5 2019 they ran tests and found at least 1 dead module of high voltage battery.
They now have the battery pack out for testing. Hope they win soon.

Just as an update. Yesterday my DC charger failed. last week charged from 20-85% on Chademo, then the orange triangle came on and the turtle poked it's ugly head for reduced power. So yesterday, hooked to chademo at 20% SOC and ramped up to 40kWh and then stopped and threw up codes on the driver and center stack External Charger fault or Error and no more charging. 240V AC still works, limped to one of those to get home.
My journey now starts to get the DC charger replaced. fingers crossed. 02/2016 Built car. 31K miles. not that much DC charging, maybe once a month for the last year.

There is no DC charger on the car - the DC charger is what you plug in to. It talks over a CAN bus connection directly to the BMS and the terminals are connected directly on to the battery.

A faulty BMS including bad monitoring such as fanbanio had is a strong possibility.

I too started getting that 'Check EV System' warning light a couple of weeks ago. Brought my '16 Soul EV in to my dealer. who struggled to find out what was wrong. They gave the car back to me after resetting the system a couple of times, and the light went out. A day later, the light came back on, I brought it back in, and this time, they determined that the OBC (On Board Charger system) was at fault. They replaced the OBC (still under warranty!), and so far, so good!

The G-O-M now indicates a higher figure than before. After over 4 years and a little over 51K miles, the best I could hope for after a full Level 2 charge would be 85 miles. Now, I'm seeing 96-98 miles. I'm wondering if this is real (i.e. the car could now travel at least 10 more miles) or just a result of the G-O-M being worse at guessing with the new OBC.