OBC Not Working But Need Charging

[edzee3]

My 2015 Soul-EV (with 28,000 local miles) has the now-common "External Charger Error!" display whenever I power-ON, and whenever I plug in my home Level-2 charger connector.
Right now, the car is at the Cerritos-KIA Service Center waiting for diagnosis/service. But that seems to be taking a long time. With uncertain results.

I would like to know, from fellow owners with similar problems, that IF I used a commercial Level-3 DC Charger ; Would the car accept the charge ?
If so, an option would be for me to take back the car from the service-center and to continue driving the car with just Level-3 charging, as we have several choices of Fast-charging Units in the local area..
Of course, that would rule out home-charging.

My 2015 Soul-EV is still under the 10-year warranty (to Feb-2025) and I want to maintain that option.

So, any info, experience, and thoughts welcome.
I appreciate all the efforts of fellow forum-ers and benefits I have received here over the past 9 years.

 

[EVDee]

I can't say for certain regarding yours, but when my OBC died it didn't work on either AC or DC charging.

 

[edzee3]

EVDee; Thx for your reply. When and how did you get your OBC fixed ? And did you have to do anything unusual to get the work done ?
I worry that my car will be hung up at the dealer Service before my OBC is working again: I hope I'm wrong.

 

[FLKiaEV]

On my 2016 Soul EV+ the OBC died but DC charging was unaffected. I simply took it to a Kia dealership and they replaced it at no cost. My understanding is that during DC charging the OBC is bypassed and all charging control happens on the charger side. If neither charging option is working then you almost certainly have some other issue going on. Hopefully you're still under warranty.

 

[EVDee]

EVDee; Thx for your reply. When and how did you get your OBC fixed ? And did you have to do anything unusual to get the work done ?
I worry that my car will be hung up at the dealer Service before my OBC is working again: I hope I'm wrong.

This happened to me either last winter or the one previous - basically the worst time for this issue. I took it to the dealership and they diagnosed it. Unfortunately for me I was out of warranty and had to pay out of pocket. Took about a week and once they had the part they had it replaced in the same day.

I see others have commented that they could charge using DC chargers - I remember reading the same thing at the time and actually took my car from the dealership to a nearby DC charger to give it a boost but had the same failure message.

 

[edzee3]

Kia of Cerritos came through and Tech replaced the OBC (1-day to diagnose and replace !) and we're back on the road.
Thanks for all the help on this forum.

Ed
Long Beach

 

[Nigel]

When my OBC failed a couple of years ago I had no option than to use the residual range to get it to the dealership. Still under warranty at the time so they quickly changed out the OBC for a new one - that failed as soon as they attempted to charge the car!!! Three weeks of "Diagnotics" and I got the car back with a second new OBC that's worked faultlessly since then. I have no idea what happened to the first replacement OBC but it seemed very odd that it failed immediately. I wonder if there was some sort of fault that killed the original OBC and then the replacement?