Yep, it happened to me yesterday. Went to the garage and found my EV6 GT totally dead The car is only 3.5 months old with 3500 miles on it. This is crazy! I called Kia roadside, and they sent someone with a jump starter, which got it running right away.
After seeing so many posts about 12V battery failures in these cars, I’ve been eyeing those jump starters on Amazon but never pulled the trigger. One’s getting delivered today!
Now, the frustrating part—I can’t get my Kia service department to call me back! I’m hoping they’ll run diagnostics to confirm it’s just the 12V battery and not the ICCU.
So, I’ve got two questions for those who’ve been through this:
Shouldn’t the amber light come on after something like this? I thought the high-voltage battery would start charging the 12V after it drains.
I’ve got a 2022 First Edition that I bought used earlier this year. Had 12V battery issues before the recall, which the dealership pretty much ignored. After the recall, they replaced the ICCU and supposedly updated the software. But when I went to pick it up, the 12V battery was dead again. They replaced it on the spot.
A couple of weeks later, the battery died again. Took it to a different dealership, and they said the first one hadn’t done the software update. They fixed that, but while it was at the body shop (they scratched my car), the battery died repeatedly because they left the key fob inside.
Picked it up, it was fine for about a month, but then I started getting notifications that the 12V battery was below 40%. Eventually, it died again, and I replaced it with an AutoZone AGM battery. Even that battery died after sitting for a few days. Had it towed to the dealership on Monday.
No updates yet, but I’m seeing some lane-keeping assist errors now. I’m thinking of running a poll to see how many folks still have 12V issues even after the software update and ICCU replacement.
I ended up buying the portable rechargeable jumper that Technically Jeff posted a while back. It was on my wishlist, but seeing posts like yours made me nervous. Don’t want to be caught without it!
Robert said:
I ended up buying the portable rechargeable jumper that Technically Jeff posted a while back. It was on my wishlist, but seeing posts like yours made me nervous. Don’t want to be caught without it!
Same here. Now I’m just waiting for Amazon to deliver mine. It sucks because I was just getting over range anxiety with this new EV, and now I have battery anxiety
The first time it happened, my car was in the shop for 22 days back in January. They said it got stuck in an update and was constantly draining the battery. It happened again last week, and they swapped out the battery this time. But I’m not convinced since we had another update recently. I’m looking into lemon laws because I shouldn’t have to worry about this in a $50k car.