Charging Fault error.

[JejuSoul]

2nd Update: OBC replaced. Car charging fine now.

Glad the car is fixed. Any info on the replacement OBC.

There is another new report from Germany. They had the same 'External Charger Error' as yours. The one on the Nav Screen. Like you they had their car towed.

 

[Tekguy26]

I'm getting this really sick feeling in my stomach now. My brother bought his car a month after I got mine. Love the car. One day my brother tells me his car didn't charge (1 month after buying it). He's close to a L3 charger and went there and Chademo worked. Based on what I knew from this forum it was definitely the OBC. The dealer he just bought the car from quietly closed a week after he got his car. He tried 2 other dealerships each giving him a hard time because they don't have a full time EV specialist. In the mean time they won't take the car and won't provide a loaner. After a lot of unnecessary work he eventually gets the car in and "fixed". Only to have it fail again a week later. The first time his car was just sitting in the shop for a week. This time around it was another 2 1/2 weeks. They replaced the OBC again only to discover it was a loose wire. I'm not impressed by Kia's service for EVs after hearing this.

So my turn. A few weeks ago I get a call from the Kia dealership I bought my car from to come in for service. Curious and surprised I asked what kind of service? She tells me 12,000Km service oil change and tire rotation. I'm stunned .. then I reply this must be a mistake, my car is an EV. She then asks what's an EV. I yell oh my god, Electric vehicle into the phone then ended the call.

Fast forward last week. My wife is rear ended by a lady while she is waiting at a red light. The lady is at fault so she agrees to pay for the damages. Seeing as it only appeared to be minor we take it into Kia for a quote. That same morning my wife sees the Charging Error message on the car. I told her to restart the car it might go away. Nothing. So after getting the quote for the bumper they looked into the charging error. Told it was the OBC and that it would be over $7000 so my wife calls me. I'm livid. I told her no matter what, do not let them tell you it was caused by the collision. This is clearly a warranty issue. If they try to pin it on the accident they will never own it again. Eventually the manager agrees it is a valid warranty issue and orders the part. Again it's about a week out but they refuse to loan us a car in the mean time. The only way to use the car is to use the Level 3 charger that's 20km from my house.

TLDR; EVs are great when they work and this is my first but last Kia based on service experience.

 

[2016Electric]

Hey Tekguy26, are you in the Toronto area?

 

[Tekguy26]

Yes I am as a matter of fact. Are you experiencing the same?

 

[SoulEV2016]

Told it was the OBC and that it would be over $7000 so my wife calls me. I'm livid.

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

36400A = 2000 USD.
Working job = 18min.

OBC is covered by the 7 years warranty.

http://www.automobile-propre.com/forums/kia-soul-ev/carnet-d-entretien-et-garantie-sur-un-soul-ev-t5146.html

 

[Tekguy26]

Not sure where you got that price, but for Canada it is over $7000 based on my brother's experience as well. They were reluctant to replace it due to the cost. Also for me they quoted price because they tried to pin the failure with the collision.

Its definitely a warranty issue which was why I didnt want them to try to get it through insurance. Even though my wife was not at fault, i didnt want to have this minor accident to appear on the car history.

 

[2016Electric]

No, not experiencing the issue thankfully and after around 17,000 km, hoping I've gotten one of the lucky OBC units. I figured you must have been GTA like me when you described how far the nearest L3 charger is.. Effing sad that we still have pretty much nothing to show for the EVCO program $20 million funding which was provided to grant recipients this spring. But I digress.

The closed dealership wouldn't happen to be Meadowvale Kia would it? Anyway, pretty disgusting treatment on your warranty work. And the OBC is worth nowhere near $7k. It's available online through a Kia oem parts supplier in the $2k range. So, in addition to total crap service, our dealers here are ripping us off (OBC is a very easy part to replace in terms of labour.)

I get the sense that kia Canada was forced to sell these cars, and they have very little interest in truly promoting and supporting the EV movement (or even their own product!)

Tell you something though... I would never have settled without a loaner car, when a brand new $40k car was out of commission so needlessly long. I suggest in the future, you don't settle for such shabby treatment either. Btw, mind sharing which dealership treated you that way, so we can all avoid it?

 

[Tekguy26]

Hey 2016Electric,

Good investigative skills you have. Yeah I had to go to PowerStream to charge the car until the car can be serviced. That's the closest L3 that's free to use. Apparently a whole bunch of charging stations are supposed to be ready by March 2017. Yeah I got mine at Richmond Hill where they rave about having the only EV certified expert in the whole province. So that's where My wife brought the car. My brother practically lives down the street from Richmond Hill dealership but had the good sense to shop around and got a better price... unfortunately it was at Meadowvale which closed down right after he took delivery. My wife doesn't have patience for car issues but I think she felt compelled to handle the situation since she was the one involved in the collision, even though not her fault. Fortunately if you can call it that, the body shop will provide a loaner at $40 a day which the other party is willing to pay. The part should be ready once the repair is completed. I'll probably go in and have a talk with the manager in case they were just picking on my wife because she is a woman. Then I'm going to report this BS to OMVIC and send a letter to corporate. The dealership acknowledges that Kia has a hassle policy for providing loaner vehicles so not sure why this wasn't the case. Also never once did they suggest the car can still be charged at a Level 3 therefore still drivable. I only knew that from this thread and from my brothers experience.

This entire experience has just left a bad taste in my mouth about Kia.

 

[2016Electric]

Haha, thanks.
Hmm.. Richmond Hill huh? That's where I picked mine up. Funny, I received the same oil change phone call. Sigh.

So note to self, maybe don't go there if the Kia ever decides to act up. Knock on wood, nothing so far.

On a positive note, I looked up our warranty on the kia Canada website last night.
http://www.kia.ca/content/Owners/warranty/2016_Kia_Warranty_Manual_en.pdf
Per page 4, it looks like almost everything expensive under the hood is covered for a LONG time. So, aside from some possibility of inconvenience during poor quality service, economic risk should be limited.

Also, definitely looking forward to more than a couple L3 chargers per million people in the GTA!

 

[Birkeland]

So after about 33.000 km on my odometer, my OBC stopped working. No error messages in the display though. Just a steady clicking sound under the hood when I connected the charger, and after about 1 minute, it stopped charging.

I drove to my dealership who confirmed problem with the OBC by reading error messages with the KDS software. Since this seems to be a fairly common problem, they had the part in stock, and 1,5 hours later, the OBC was replaced with a new one. I am really glad this happened in my guarantee periode.

I am really impressed with the service at my KIA dealership. Every time I report something, they take it seriously and fix the issue in a matter of days (except when they changed my instrument cluster, which took some time to receive). This far they have changed the right hand side mirror, the instrument cluster, the HVAC and now the OBC.

The service man (or whatever they are called) told me that the KIA producer takes all the information about occuring problem with specific parts seriously coming from KIA Norway, and the KIA producers seems to fix the problems on all cars produced just a couple of months later so the problem won't occur later on newer cars.

 

[JejuSoul]

Birkeland can you tell us -
1/ what is the version of your new OBC (look at the sticker on the back of it)
2/ is your charging now 15% slower
3/ what version of the Torque Pro codes do you now use for the OBC?

Anyway I think you are lucky to get such good service. There is a recent report from California.on the facebook page that is not so good.
see https://www.facebook.com/groups/SoulEV/permalink/1158064077607537/

...
it won't charge. I plug in my L2 charger and it tries to start charging for about 30 seconds. The charging lights blink appropriately, but the dash shows 14:50 to complete charging. The car clicks continuosly for those 30 seconds and then charging shuts off. Does the same with the L1 charger. Brought it back to the dealership. Ugh....
They told me today that the repair will take 4-6 weeks because the part is on back order !

also interesting is this reply

Had the same issue here (all the same symptoms) and it was the OBC. Apparently there was a shortage of replacement chargers after they issued a service campaign on the possible OBC failures.

And another car with problems - will update when I found out what this means.

I didn't want to face it, but at 55,700 miles, Evie is sick. Got the dreaded error AFTER they had already replaced the OBC.

 

[JejuSoul]

Here's how Tesla handles the 'Charging Fault error'. Firstly an obvious red warning. Far better than ( a seemingly random combination of the following error warnings.) the blinking lights / beeps / warning on the dash / warning on the navi screen that we get. The Tesla info is from https://teslaowner.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/master-charger-replacement/

and this message on the dash.

I called the Tesla roadside number ... Tesla pulled the car logs and found a fault in the master charging system. This car simply was unable to add any charge (or any miles to the battery), so I had to take it in for a service visit.
...
Several days later I got my car back with a new master charger installed. I am so glad my car is under warranty as that part would have cost me about $2,000!

This is how service should be done. You phone that there is a problem and they use telematics to check the car

 

[SoulEV2016]

i don't want telematic on my car (like the i3 ...).

because telematic need to identify the problem BEFORE THE failure (why tesla don't have call the owner BEFORE the failure ? The failure appear in the log ... and Tesla have an "always ON" internet connexion).

 

[GrantM]

My leased Soul EV is currently at the dealer in Irvine, California, for what seems to be an OBC failure. The EV has 22,000 miles on it, and 2 days ago stopped charging on my Bosch L2 at home that I been using for almost 2 years. The dealer, however, is saying they have no ETA when the new charger assembly will arrive.

 

[JejuSoul]

GrantM I hope you get your car fixed promptly. This is a well known error. The spare part should be stocked. Let us know what happens.

My charging failure today had nothing to do with the OBC. Instead it is a rain caused error.
It is raining here today. I tried to charge twice at a nearby public charger, both times started normally, but the charger just quit after about 30 seconds. No error messages at all. When I get home everything is fine on my wallbox.
Torque Pro shows this just before the failure.

.

 

[SoulEV2016]

Have you the RED light (of the charger cord) on the dashboard that it flashes ?
http://www.automobile-propre.com/forums/kia-soul-ev/mon-voyant-du-cable-de-charge-clignote-en-rouge-t5445.html

It's because the button to start/stop the charge is dead (on the Type 1 on charging station).
When you press the button on the Type 1, the charger stop or resume.

And when this button is always pressed, the red light flash after 15-20 seconds ... because the car don't understand why you take the button pressed because the car see correctly the main supply (230v) for the charger.

push the type 1 button 20-50 times to remove the bad contact (unplugged to the car for this) ... or leave a post-it to indicate this problem (type 1 cord in ERROR).

 

[JejuSoul]

SoulEV2016: thanks for the info. I am not alone in seeing charging errors that are NOT caused by faulty in equipment in our cars.
My error is not the same as yours, I did not get this warning on the dash. The red cable icon comes on - it does not flash.

The charging stand I used yesterday is one that has had multiple problems before. I continue to use it occasionally because it is free, conveniently situated, and I know someone at the company that designs the electronics for it. Here is a photo from September. I was using the stand with my own cord because the attached cord has a fried nozzle. That nozzle no longer fitted into the car's charging slot.

I reported the fried nozzle and it was 'repaired'. Yesterday I used the attached cord rather than my own because it was raining and I didn't want to get my own cord wet.It didn't work and I couldn't be bothered to test any further. No pictures from yesterday because it was raining and I didn't want to get my phone wet either. Again I reported the problem to my friend who works at the company. His reply.

I've checked with the manufacturer and they said that they didn't replace anything but remove rust with some chemicals. it looks like it's no longer water proof. I don't recommend to use it.

 

[SoulEV2016]

In my country (and territory), we know the rust problem on plug equipment (Wet fog like lake fog =
You are soaked when it does not rain :mrgreen: ).

We always use copper grease on connector : http://graisse-belleville.fr/graisse-au-cuivre/60-graisse-au-cuivre-helios-seringue-20ml-3700118500504.html

On this pictures, it not rust but copper-grease.

 

[Birkeland]

Birkeland can you tell us -
1/ what is the version of your new OBC (look at the sticker on the back of it)
2/ is your charging now 15% slower
3/ what version of the Torque Pro codes do you now use for the OBC?

1. The only sticker I can see is this one (what should I look for)?:

2 and 3. I suspect the charging is slower. I am not sure what version of codes I use on Torque Pro, but when I try to check the charge power in kW it shows 77 :shock: when I use my 10Ah charger. It usually shows 2,2kW. So the codes I have for Torque Pro needs to be updated it seems. It charges considerably slower now it seems but until I update the codes I do not know by how much. I will keep you updated when I get the time to update the codes.

My 32A charger is broken, so I am stuck with my 10A charger. I am really not happy about the charging taking even longer because of the OBC replacement.

 

[SoulEV2016]

on torque pro subject, you have different CSV for OBC 2015 ... and a replaced OBC 2016.