2015 Soul EV Batteries replaced with Re-Man battery

[Arkitech]

This has me worried. I've seen a lot of horror stories that the reman packs don't even last a yr. But I guess we'll see what happens. Smh. I ended up having a case opened with Kia corporate and the case got escalated (I think because Techline was being a bit slow to respond). Long story short: Took my car in to get the recalls done after noticing range issues. They performed the recall repair (replacing/upgrading BMS) and said "oh, the car is ready to pick up". Drove it off the lot and within .5 miles all the lights came on (Turtle/EV System warning). Took it back. They were convinced the issue was the 12v battery, but it wasn't it was the EV battery. They reached out to Techline. Techline approved replacing it. However, when I asked if the batteries had any kind of warranty like 12mo/12000mi, I was told that it was done under "good faith" and not because of the recall so no. Even though the symptoms that the recall specifically states would happen HAPPENED to my car (with pics to prove it).

I reached back out to my escalations manager and they looked over the case and said "yeah, this doesn't make any sense to me". So she's reaching out to the dealership to try to determine what reasoning they replaced the battery under because it looks to her like it was done under the recall. We'll see what happens.

Also concerning, my GOM still shows 78 miles rather than what it SHOULD show as a brand new vehicle. So I'm wondering if they ACTUALLY replaced the BMS. If they did, shouldn't it show just the default numbers and not random numbers? Because the BMS wouldn't have any info about the battery pack. If they DID replace/upgrade it and its guessing 78 miles of range just from the battery voltage, that's around 80% range which puts me dangerously close to the 70% threshold.

 

[JejuSoul]

I have two 2015 Soul EV's. Both have had the battery pack replaced under warranty. The warranty period was not extended by having a new pack. It continued to be ten years after the original purchase. My cars will soon be out of warranty.

My warranty replacements were for degradation and a failing battery. I got completely new cells.
It is also possible to get a battery replacement due to the 'fire-safety' recall.
This replacement is not limited by any warranty period.
I assume there is no new battery warranty that comes with this. Maybe someone who had this can confirm.

The problem with re-manufactured packs is that they contain a mix of older cells. Sometimes they are fairly well balanced, sometimes not. One of the side effects of misbalanced cells is that they trigger the 'fire-safety' recall software check. This leads to another replacement battery.

Given that there is no other large source of used cells it seems likely to me that these 'triggered' re-manufactured packs are opened and disassembled; then the cells are individually tested and reused in a 'new' re-manufactured pack.