Can't find certified Soul Ev. 5 mile commute make it unnecessary?

[RussellGolfs]

I can't find a certified preowned Soul EV anywhere online (Carvana, myev, cars, vroom, shift, etc) or in Chicago/Milwaukee and nearly all I find have no warranty or 1 year left on warranty. Do online retailers accidentally say there is no battery warranty when there actually is? Am I this bad at shopping compared to all the deals i read about on this forum?

I have a month or two to shop and my commute is only 5 miles each way with a charger available at work (own an ICE minivan for longer trips and this car is just for work). Am I perhaps too anxious to assure a warranty and even a severely degraded battery in a 2015 Soul EV or something will still serve my needs fine for 5 years? I'm trying to stay under $15k and cheaper the better but would have sprung to $20k for 7 years of warranty.

With a 5 mile trip, can I forego heater and heat pump in cold winter Wisconsin?
Many thanks in advance!

 

[user 1703]

I found a 2019 Kia Soul EV with only 13,000 miles on Carvana this past January. It was a great deal but they just don't come up that often. Just have to keep checking the sites. I hope to keep this car for at least 5 years.

Good luck with the search! They are great cars.

 

[RussellGolfs]

Did Carvana list a warranty/what warranty do you actually have on your 2019?

 

[user 1703]

Carvana provides a short warranty of 100 days or 4,189 miles (weird).... but I have the remainder of the Kia warranty of 5 years/60,000 mile basic warranty and a 10 year/100,000 mile powertrain/traction battery warranty. The Kia warranty transfers over from the prior owner. Make sure to register with the Kia owners web site which helps to get Uvo moved over as well. I still have a year on the original 3-year free Uvo that transferred over. I fully expect (knock on wood) to have very few problems with this car as I had virtually no issues with my 2015 Nissan Leaf. Other than replacing the original tires on my Leaf I basically had no maintenance costs. By far the least expensive "total cost of ownership" I've ever had with a car and I expect nothing less with the Kia.

Good luck!

 

[RussellGolfs]

Thanks again stevensmarkd. My local kia dealer swore if they didnt certify it that it came with no warranty. What kia owners website do you speak of? How were you bold enough to buy a carvana car that didn't advertise the warranty and somehow know it existed as I cant find any literature but forum posts on the subject and my KIA dealer believes the opposite (granted they may be ignorant). Thanks a ton.

 

[JejuSoul]

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If you are talking about a 2015 Soul EV all original warranties other then the battery warranty will have expired.
We have discussed the details many times previously on this site.
Information you get from the dealer is often inaccurate. Download the actual warranty from Kia and read it yourself.

Am re- posting the warranty info for the Battery Capacity Warranty. It is this that has the 70% limit.
It applies to the car not the first owner.

The warranty manuals are here.
USA: 2017 Soul EV Warranty Manual
Canada: 2016 Soul EV Warranty Manual
UK: Warranty Terms and Exclusions

The Korean warranty is 10 years, 160,000km to 70% SOH.
The United States is 10 years, 100,000 miles to 70% SOH.
The Canadian warranty is 8 years, 160,000km to 70% SOH
The United Kingdom is 7 years, 100,000 miles to 70% SOH.
Europe is 7 years, 150,000km to 70% SOH.

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[IanL]

The United Kingdom is 7 years, 100,000 miles to 70% SOH.

Interesting that it's 65% for vehicles shipped after 1 August 2019, i.e. 64 kWh models.

 

[RussellGolfs]

Thanks all. Understood the 10 year warranty has been posted elsewhere, but there are many other threads on this site ( https://www.mykiasoulev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1567 ) that show people uncertain whether the warranty is valid due to lack of every maintenance record or due to sale across a border or uncertainty of how long the battery has been at zero charge etc which would void warranty per the warranty on Kia site you posted link to. And people affirming the hesitancy and advising to avoid purchasing the car as warranty is uncertain. Does the soul ev android app let you (and KIA corporate) monitor if any of those battery warranty voiding events have occurred (e.g. storage at too hot of a temp)? In case of online retailer one couldn't do such an app check and would at the least get stuck wasting shipping costs. Appreciate the help in advance.

Backstory: My local KIA dealer has a dinged/dented (but no accident on car fax) 2017 Soul EV that appeared to have a 60% battery capacity. They let me test drive it but then gave me the no warranty story and basically refused to let me make an offer on it.

 

[RussellGolfs]

I really liked the beat up soul ev I tested (I can only imagine an average used soul EV would be even nicer), but the Volkswagen egolfs 8 year warranty is so much more clearly applicable and advertised that I'm thinking it'd be more valuable to me to know for certain what warranty I have for 2 years shorter duration on a car I wouldn't like as much as the soul ev than to mess around with all these KIA hoops and uncertainties. Talk me back from the brink y'all.

 

[user 1703]

https://owners.kia.com/ is the owners portal once you have purchased a Kia. I contacted several Kia dealers to make sure any remaining warranty on my 2019 would be honored and they all said yes. The battery warranty has maintenance requirements but you do not have to have a Kia dealer do the maintenance if you use an independent shop. I would suggest contacting other Kia dealers in your area and also just contact Kia directly to confirm any remaining warranty. As for the one you are looking at with 60% battery, I personally would not go down that road and that is why I wanted the newest I could get which has 100% capacity and only 13,000 miles. As for Carvana, they give you seven days once you take delivery... you can take to a dealer or mechanic you trust to check it over and if you are not happy, then return it. I know several people that have purchased from Carvana that did not like the first car that was delivered (for various reasons) but ended up getting another car from Carvana and loved it. The hardest part is getting past the "I can't drive it or check it out" part... but I knew exactly what I wanted so it was not a big deal for me.

Again, good luck, but please think hard about getting one with a bad battery and hoping to get a warranty replacement.

- Mark

 

[IanL]

I would be very wary if the dealer is saying no warranty - he must know something which would make KIA rule it out - maybe it's been used as a hire car or taxi, or something like that. Not sure I'd go for a VW - out of the frying pan and into the fire. I would keep looking for a better Soul EV.

 

[EVDee]

I'd be wary of anything a dealer says.

For example, the local dealership near me had a 2018 ex-Taxi for sale and according to them it had warranty.
Meanwhile the 2016 I was looking at elsewhere didn't according to my local dealer. Why? It had been used as a taxi prior..
When I asked him to explain why that one wouldn't be covered under warranty when theirs would be, that's when it switched from no warranty coverage to the battery being crap. Long story short, guess who swapped out my battery under warranty this year? :lol:

Do your own research, dealers are clueless or liars.

 

[RussellGolfs]

Thanks Mark! Did your friends that did returns on Carvana have to eat the delivery fees or did they just pay the 1 delivery fee and get 3 cars delivered back and forth? Thanks!

 

[RussellGolfs]

Thanks a lot to all of you! That's why I'm here doing the research as car salesmen can't be trusted.

 

[JejuSoul]

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I just browsed the facebook Kia Soul EV forum and saw this :-

Last month I got a new kia, paid for the £500 3 Yr service plan as when I asked the service department, the third service was £530 alone due to battery fluid needs changing.

In 6 years the only fluid that I have had changed at service is the wiper fluid. They did this for free.

 

[user 1703]

My friend did not like the first car, but kept the second. Yes, you do eat the shipping cost if there is one. If you find one at a local hub it is free, but mine came from CA, so the shipping was $590 which I would have to eat if I had not kept the car. There appear to be a lot of folks on forums that have bad things to say about Carvana, but my experience, and my friend's was good and that is all I have to go by.

 

[RussellGolfs]

Update:Local dealer fixed all the dents etc and claimed to have verified that the warranty on battery was in effect until 2027. They presented me a "warranty coverage validation" headered paper with the VIN etc. At signing state of Wisconsin has boxes on one of the forms saying "Extended warranty" or "Manufacturers warranty" or "Warranty expired/Unknown" and the latter was checked. I questioned how that could be in light of their warranty validation sheet and they said the form they printed me was from CarFax but they dont know for sure if KIA would agree with Carfax. At which point I was out an hour of my life and out the door saying I'd take the night to try to validate their version of the story, which is that the state form refers to like 3,600 mile bumper to bumper warranty or something and therefore they have to mark it expired/unknown. And they claim I already have practically irrefutable proof of the warranty being valid but they refuse to sign a document of their own with their own names verifying this fact.
Am I demanding too much and the warranty really is there, or am I right to feel like they are gaslighting me and trying to sell me a car without a warranty at a car with a warranty's price?
It was $16k after all taxes/fees for a 2017 Soul EV with battery heater and heat pump that lived its life in New York. Footer of their "warranty coverage validation" was
Https://webdcs.kdealer.net/Service/SVCWC102_WarrantyCoverageView.aspx

 

[RussellGolfs]

If the Soul EV has a manufacturers warranty it would be appropriate to mark that box rather than the "as is-no warranty". It is illegal to mark the "as is-no warranty" box if there is a manufacturers warranty and visa versa. Either they accidentally checked the no warranty box and they can check the "manufacturer warranty" box in the morning or they can affirm there really is no manufacturers warranty and were trying to gaslight me. I've sent them this message/pointer to Wisconsin policy.

https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/dmv/cons-protect/know-rghts/warrantyproblems.aspx

 

[IanL]

It sounds to me that the dealer thinks the car has a KIA warranty, but he does not want to be liable if it turns out that KIA would refuse a claim. The Soul EV android app does not offer any data on whether a warranty-voiding event has occurred. It may be different in your country, but here, if the required maintenance has not been performed by a KIA dealer and therefore recorded in the database, KIA require sight of the documentation/records to establish that it has been done.

The only way to be certain would be for KIA to check whatever data they use (my guess is their own database and a read-out from the KIA special test equipment which the dealer should have), and to confirm that the warranty is valid at this time. Good luck with that.

 

[user 1703]

I'm sure you can find a better deal than that... my 2019 with only 13k miles was 17.9k. I would keep looking and then make sure any expected warranty is valid by calling Kia corporate directly. I would not take any car dealer's word for anything, but that is just me.