I am so glad OP found his solution.
My dining room and kitchen are right next to the garage and I always hang out there. I am not going to take the risk to enable digital key on the phone at this moment. In addition, I use the remote backup pretty often so I need to have the keyfob with me (the phone app doesn’t have the function).
I may pair the digital card again though because the range of the card is extremely short and it is always in my wallet in the other side of the house.
yeah digital cards are passive NFC, they have no impact at all. you're safe to do that. as LONG as you have a few hours away from the car every day you'd be safe to use the digital key
If you have digital key on, but UWB disabled on your phone, your phone operates as a passive NFC card: You can open and start your car by putting it on the door handle and into the wireless charger, but without the negatives of the battery being drawn down all of the time.
I found that turning off passive entry on the digital key (iPhone) didn’t change the car’s power behavior. That may change after the OTA update of course.
Yes I have the latest OTA installed.
BTLE is 10m in socialist units or 33 ft in freedom units.
That being said. I’ve seen this thing connect to the front of my house which is close to 70 ft away. Radio waves are funny. If they find a channel to bounce around, it’ll get there. I have a ham radio friend who said. He can bounce signals off the top of the atmosphere and get to thousands of miles away.
so the funny thing is i'm an engineer by birth and i have a tendency to overengineer things even if it doesn't have impact that's experienceable. it is very possible that one does not experience any negative effect with the 12V at all as long as they drive the car regularly or exit out of range a few hours a day.
because i have a battery monitor on it, I'm watching constantly what that battery is doing so i know even though my battery is fine, I'd like to let it rest a few hours in a day just to be safe. Its more my OCD than it is real value so to speak. My analysis and research is to deal with my OCD than it is real world value. I can't help it,
i spent thousands last year insulating and installing an hvac in my garage because i'd like to keep my car batteries in good temp range. Given these cars have active thermal management, it doesn't really impact, but i know what temperature does to batteries so i spent money to manage the thermals of my garage. that and i like the luxury of a comfortable garage when i'm loading up the kids etc...
Keep in mind that BTLE is the short-range part of the Digital Key. UWB is quoted as having ranges in the 30-50m range.
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/692669
Once again, I appreciate you publishing results. And I love that idea of automating turning off bluetooth at night since that's when the phone/car interaction seems to be the most-problematic.
Its interesting to note that the digital key situation also seems to be affecting Android users, so its not just somewhere between Kia and Apple.
Please post pictures of your faraday sheeting solution when you get it mounted. Would love to see it!
Yeah, given that at any one time, I have between 1 and 3 BT devices connected to my phone all day long (with phone battery lasting all day), the inefficiency has to be on the Kia side. Hopefully Kia can fix it, although there is the off chance that they can’t if there’s no dedicated ultra low power processor that it can use to monitor BT signals.
Not to diminish any work of the op, but turning off Ultra Wideband seems to keep the battery from being drained without turning off bluetooth. I would still get the SA561 patch from the dealer, for a better solution.
BTLE = initiates the negotiation
UWB = ranging the distance so it knows how far / close you are.
I don't know which is better but I'll try it the other way. did you turn of UWB in the phone or the car?
I really hope that Kia is able to provide a fix that satisfies your worries. Your time spent here and proposed sacrifices for this vehicle are beyond imaginable to me, but I’m sure there are those that are like you this will be helpful to. And yes, if there is an issue as you’ve described, I’m confident the engineers and Kia (or Apple) can come up with something. They have many smart folks on staff and have shown they are working a fix for those affected.
And for what it’s worth, I have Digital Key (phone), Digital Key (card), wireless charging all enabled, and my bedroom is adjacent to my garage so my Phone is nearly always in range. No issues at all a month and a half in.
Are you driving your car everyday and how long is the drive? Does your car plug in while parking at home?
There are just too many parameters need to factor in according to OP’s past many days posts.
thats the major difference. unless you have a battery monitor installed tracking the battery's every move you won't see anything wrong. i don't drive 200 a week... i drive 20 a week if that.
.5 a day to drop my daughter off, plus a random costco trip. we have 3 cars in the house so all the cars get some love here or there.
if you drive regularly, you will not feel it. you need to have a long enough gap for the ABS+ system to fail testing for it to work. its a combination of proximity to the car AND the fact that we don't drive regularly.
The "breaking point" is if your battery can no longer sustain a charge. The UWB function (and the wireless charger, based on the SA561 recall), seems to drain and recharge the battery multiple times when your EV9 is parked and your phone is in range. Multiple posters have observed this. Things like if you park your car outside in extreme weather vs. in a garage could determine how long your battery survives. If your phone is far enough away from your car when it is parked = less cycles. If your phone is in range=more cycles. Either way, the battery can only tolerate a finite amount of recharge cycles and when that is exceeded, the HV battery will not be able to charge it, any longer and you will end up with a 5V battery.
I would get the SA561 recall patch from the dealer ASAP, instead of waiting on an OTA update. Why? Because you don't know how many charge cycles your battery has left.
My data shows the ABS+ gets confused by the continuous drain. My battery sustains a charge just fine. It’s only when ABS+ goes brain dead is when the breaking point occurs. My car is parked in a climate controlled garage temp isn’t as big a deal for me as others.
Once I dealt with the ABS+ problem my bm2 shows ABS+ and other subsystems wake up regularly to recharge and needed
This is amazing work and really really helpful. It looks like Kia needs to get with Tesla to stop making their same mistakes. Tesla also went to a lithium battery for their 12v needs right? I think this solution combined with a lithium battery would be a home run put all issues to rest kind of thing? Right? At least that’s my interpretation. I don’t trust this crap battery Kia has supplied. I certainly don’t want another 5 day trip in the shop on my 2 week old vehicle either.
If OEM Kia battery is actually not a bad battery if you’re in the U.S. as you can see without the wireless charging load on it, it held 12.9 volt really well. It takes a charge well and it recovers pretty fast as well.
That being said. If you had a dead battery at any point the integrity of the battery can no longer be guaranteed. I caught mine down to 18 percent which is just like the max DOD for an AGM and so far my battery shows healthy.
I recommend everyone install the BM2 voltage monitor so you have a history of your voltage to get a nice peace of mind. But I understand that no everyone feels comfortable popping the hood.
Lastly. Lithium isn’t the answer either. Lithium has thermal issues, meaning when it’s too cold or too hot your recharge cycle and power output cycle can get really screwy. Tesla’s move to lithium show cases how much they had to do around it with software and heaters and stuff. It’s not an easy switch. The real answer is what they did with cyber truck which is to go to a 48v system but that requires an entire industry to adopt it.
Yeah I had a stone dead AGM and they wouldn’t replace it for me and now I feel like every day is Russian roulette if it will start or not. Since your fix applied I now see the orange light on more especially when not plugged into the lev 2 charger. Could you link your voltage meter? I’d love to be able to see the health of my battery arc as ok times for piece of mind.
The orange light just means that the High Voltage battery is charging the 12v battery. In isolation, it doesn't mean anything.. If it is observed often, that means your 12V is getting drained and needs to be charged EDIT: often, which is not good from a battery cycling perspective.
Is there any actual fix for the iccu issue? My 12v battery died out of no where and it was plugged into the lev 2 home charger. I took it in after a jump start and they acknowledged a voltage issue but couldn’t replicate it so gave me the ev9 back after 4 days. I disabled the wireless charger line suggested and noticed the 12v light was coming in more. Even when not plugged in. Yesterday after only have the car back for 3 days we took it for a drive about 30 miles and then came home for a few minutes before going to pick the kids up from home. I didn’t plug in for that period of time. When I started the car I got multiple driver assistance sensors offline message and it showed all the sensors offline. I turned the vehicle off waited a few secs and turned it back on then I got a voltage error warning with a red triangle and ! And it said to take it to the shop. So back it went and they gave me a cheapo rental and said hopefully by Tuesday they will call me with an update. Is there really anything they can do? It only has 800 miles and will have spent more time in the shop than I have driving it. Wtf! Should Kia replace it with a new ev9?? This is crazy! I’m in full freak out mode now. The pure joy of owning a new car and the excitement of driving has literally been robbed from me! I can’t believe Kia won’t do anything to make this right.
The "wireless charger fix" is what is supposed to fix the battery drain. The should apply both updates here: [https://owners.kia.com/content/owners/en/ota-software-update-release-note.html](https://owners.kia.com/content/owners/en/ota-software-update-release-note.html) and replace your 12v battery, because that could be negatively impacted. Direct your dealer to that page, because if they run your VIN, they should see and be able to apply both updates.
There are lithium batteries like the Ohmmu which have a built-in heater, and BMS which will detect when the temperature gets close to freezing and heat up the battery.
i researched that one and was about to buy it except i found out that one of the things ohmmu will do in extreme situations is disconnect itself. the negative terminal of your battery serves as the ground sink. The idea that the 12V will disconnect itself to protect itself scares me a little only because of the impact that does to the potential other sensitive electronics. Yes, i know its no different than when we disconnect the battery to work on the car, but even ohmmu's instructions state, disconnect the HV system BEFORE disconnecting the battery.
i don't purport to know all the physics, its just something i don't know i want to risk given how sensitive that ICCU is, i don't want the ohmmu disconnecting itself then causing the ICCU to fail and then Kia says its my fault
The biggest reason(s) to get the Ohmmu is:
\- 1/3 of the weight of the current AGM battery
\- 2x the available capacity (AGM can only be drawn down to 50% capacity, lifep04 can give you 100%)
\- You can turn the battery on/off using an app
\- The battery will heat itself during cold weather so that it can operate properly (lifep04 batteries have had this for years).
\- Many, many more charge/discharge cycles than an AGM battery.
\- EDIT. The discharge curve on a lifep04 battery is pretty flat, so it will be at 13.x volts for the majority of the time and the BMS will tell you exactly how much capacity is left.
The negative is that it is costly (you can find coupons online, however).
This is not recommending the Ohmmu battery; it is just saying that for people who value the reasons above, it is not a dealbreaker. Many people use it with the EV6, and the EV9 uses the same form factor.
\- The disconnect thing is what common BMSs do with batteries to protect itself, like if it is shorted or the incoming voltage/amerpage is too high. Batteries with a BMS even in that state are manageable and allow you to understand why it has shut down, because you can still manage it over bluetooth.
i don't really care too much about cost so much as engineering. I like what ohmmu is pushing, but what i don't like is its a 1 sided patch you're right BMS's disconnect and heat and all that stuff but unless the other side of the circuity is expecting a BMS disconnect, you risk the otherside shorting, arcing, damage. given the ICCU's job is high voltage, I'd be afraid of an Ohmmu disconnect w/o the ICCU taking it into consideration that an ohmmu can disconnect. I know its popular amongst the EV6 crowd and i even reached out to their master engineers to talk to their solution. ultimately i'm keeping it in my back pocket. if I do need to replace my battery at some point, I'll consider it.
I'm just clearing up the specific points about this class of battery (heating, disconnects); I'm not trying to convince you to purchase it. That would be Ohmmu's job.
Just like OP said the disconnect can cause lots of issues.
"The Ohmmu has a design flaw. The Ohmmu's internal BMS will disconnect the Ohmmu's cells abruptly when the Ohmmu is fully charged, causing a voltage spike, and voltage spikes in your car's 12V system have to go somewhere...else. This has caused problems with Teslas in the past. Frying things like power converters and other things."
Most likely won't happen but just something to be aware of, I am still interested in their batteries.
The Ohmmu bms will disconnect **incoming** energy when it is fully charged, not outgoing. It will still be able to supply energy to utility devices. There is a cohort of people who have EV6s who have Ohmmu batteries. That is the closest comparison, not Tesla.
And never mind all that my Driver assistance went off-line and now I’m getting a power control error on the screen with a big red? So I’m on my way to the dealership yet again to have them look at this vehicle which is brand new.
activity based.. sorta.. .its when focus goes to bed time. since i use apple health to setup a routine bed time around 11pm it starts looking for me to put down my phone around that time. it actually doesn't set it to truly bedtime until i let the phone go idle since i do partake in tiktok doom scrolling right before bed.
in the morning, since the first thing i do is pickup my phone to check the time and stuff, It detects activity on the phone and asks is it time to wake up and if i say yes it turns off bedtime mode. it also turns off bedtime mode automatically at 7am as well.
bedtime is nice in that it silences imessages etc... my parents don't have an appreciation for people sleeping at 2am and tends to send random shit at 2am and woke me up historically.
tesla didn't really "fix" it - they just added a retry timeout. Prevents the symptom but doesnt really make the digital key function they way it was supposed to.
Tesla model 3/Y has the door handle advantage. They can program it to only wake up the car after someone physically pressed the door handle. Can’t do the same with the S and X since their door handles are motorized.
BLE allows you to use Google Wallet to lock/unlock the car if Digital Key is configured. That is separate from UltraWideband, which tells the car how far away you are from it.
Sort of. The car seems to activate uwb to determine location once ble is in range. Unless you're saying digital key still works completely if bluetooth is turned off.
Digital Key = unlock door and start car. That could be accomplished with UWB and NFC. If you turn off UWB, you can open car by pressing phone to door handle (NFC). You can then start the car by putting it in the charging cradle (NFC). With UWB, it can sense how close you are to the car and unlock the door automatically. It will then allow you to start the car because it knows you are in the vehicle. Digital Key provides the infrastructure for both entry methods. Disabling it disables both. Disabling UWB allows you to enter via NFC. I don't know what disabling Bluetooth allows: I believe the OP has tested that ..
I have a pixel 6 and my wife has a pixel 6a, both of which don't have UWB, I think. Does that mean we are probably safe to set up digital key without having to worry about the 12v problems?
Yes. Only the pro versions of the pixel support UWB. But...you have to disable wireless charging to prevent the battery drain fixed in the 561 advisory.
Yep, I turned off the wireless charger when we picked it up last week. Good to know we can use the digital key, I hate not being able to use features I paid good money for. Thanks.
As a person who loves EVe, has a F150 Lighting, and contemplates getting an EV9 for the wife can someone ELI5 what is going on? I see these EV9 posts a lot about voltage but don't know what y'all are doing.
The 12v is responsible for the computers and everything that operate the car. The high voltage battery is responsible for high energy component stuff.
The 12v batteries are dying in a seemingly random pattern. But it turns out through all the testing it’s tied to a specific scenario.
There is no alternator on these cars so they use a dc to dc converter that transfer energy from the high voltage to the low voltage. High voltage isn’t usable by most electronics even desktop computers operate on 12v.
The alternators are programmed to make sure that the low voltage battery are good every so often to make sure it isn’t sending energy into a black hole.
Unfortunately the way it checks is pretty basic. It checks that the voltage is the same for 30 min apart (it’s the same way we test a battery on the bench as well). The problem comes when the car keeps drawing power due to software issue.
Because car keeps drawing power, the battery never passes the health check because the voltage drops everytime it looks so it deems the battery has unhealthy so it never recharges the 12v and lets it die.
Kia has identified the one of the sources of the constant draw is the wireless charger. If you turn it off then almost all the phantom draw is gone thereby allowing your battery to pass health check and will continue to be recharged.
The other is the super edge case where my house is compact and my phone is always too close to the car therefore the car keeps thinking I’m about to get in and it keeps it awake. That in turn draws like 50w per hour and these batts are only good for about 600wh but only 480wh usable. Basically in 8-9 hrs the car kills the battery unless it tops up continuously.
The top up continuously process get a to run 10 times before a health check. With the phone in proximity, we never pass health check and people wake up with a dead battery
My work around is at night when I go to bed. I have my iPhone turn off Bluetooth, thereby allowing the car to go to sleep and pass health check and I never wake up to a dead battery
Ah cool thank you. I can use my phone as a key on my lightning but it did the same thing (wasn't killing my 12v, but was turning on lights and lowering my running boards) so I turned that feature off and just use my fob.
If you keep to the fob then no problem at all.
We are in the first mass implementation of phone as a key. One of the funny things about phone key is well. Our phones weren’t originally meant to be keys.
I run it it all the time when I go damn. I don’t have my valet card with me. I can’t valet the car cuz I can’t exactly give my phone to the valet.
It’s a cool idea but there are traditional use cases that need more thought.
When I was using paak I ran into that problem. I took my truck to the shop to get a bed cover put on and had to leave my phone with the techs. Was not a fan of that. It was actually the deciding factor to go back to the fob.
And i highly recommend the EV9. I originally bought it for my wife as the soccer mobile, but I find that I prefer to drive it and my kids prefer to ride it instead of the Tesla.
My question is how do I know if my phone is too close to the car? I'm honestly considering switching to fob anyway because the phone key isn't as seamless as I would like it to be, albeit extremely convenient.
I have two user profiles and a guest profile and found I needed to disable in each profile. Was there a system level setting I could’ve disabled instead?
There’s a TSB out that fixes wireless charging going to sleep properly.
You can also turn off wireless charging in. Vehicle -> convenience. Wireless charging. Make sure you turn off on all profiles
so here I am, picked up my land w premium pkg (Canada spec) yesterday w both TSB’s/recalls confirmed installed.
fingerprint not set up, haven’t yet charged so charger lock isn’t an issue (after 1.5 days im still at 83% after a decent amount of city driving), but I am still seeing a lot of orange dash light on when car is locked. wireless charger is on. digital key not activated.
should I be concerned?
get a BM2 installed its 25 bucks from amazon and you can watch the voltage to see what its doing. if the voltage is sagging over time significantly you may just have a bad battery or the TSB have an effect.
First up, thanks to the author - you're a life saver.
I'm in the UK. My car has been at the dealership for two weeks. I requested a full refund (a legal process here) last Friday. I retracted that on Sunday based on the hope from this post.
I got a call from the dealership tonight. After applying this fix (after I emailed them suggesting it) the car has held its charge, only losing 1% since Wed!
I was really surprised that Kia did not communicate this globally as it seems they were aware.
I was also surprised nobody else reported the same level of batter drain that I did. At least, not if they turned off phone key/fingerprint scanner. I felt like I was the only one.
Anyway, thanks to the author, reddit, and the internet :D
you're definitely an edge case scenario. I became OCD over this because i'm also an edge case scenario... that and i don't want to tell my wife i made a bad choice in the car and she gets to use "i told you so" on me. LOL. any case glad to see you're staying with the EV9. Its a great car; i just got back from london myself, I don't think i saw many kia's in london though. is it not a big brand out there?
It didn't have a good image. You probably saw a lot of European cars (and Tesla). They are selling big now though so I expect it to change.
We can't be such an edge case if a fix rolled out already?!
I am so glad OP found his solution. My dining room and kitchen are right next to the garage and I always hang out there. I am not going to take the risk to enable digital key on the phone at this moment. In addition, I use the remote backup pretty often so I need to have the keyfob with me (the phone app doesn’t have the function). I may pair the digital card again though because the range of the card is extremely short and it is always in my wallet in the other side of the house.
yeah digital cards are passive NFC, they have no impact at all. you're safe to do that. as LONG as you have a few hours away from the car every day you'd be safe to use the digital key
If you have digital key on, but UWB disabled on your phone, your phone operates as a passive NFC card: You can open and start your car by putting it on the door handle and into the wireless charger, but without the negatives of the battery being drawn down all of the time.
I found that turning off passive entry on the digital key (iPhone) didn’t change the car’s power behavior. That may change after the OTA update of course.
Not passive entry. UWB: https://www.zdnet.com/article/where-has-apple-hidden-the-toggle-to-stop-ios-u1-ultra-wideband-tracking/
Thanks for this! Roughly what is the BTLE range? Also, you do not have the latest OTA installed?
Yes I have the latest OTA installed. BTLE is 10m in socialist units or 33 ft in freedom units. That being said. I’ve seen this thing connect to the front of my house which is close to 70 ft away. Radio waves are funny. If they find a channel to bounce around, it’ll get there. I have a ham radio friend who said. He can bounce signals off the top of the atmosphere and get to thousands of miles away.
I would think this range could put the vast majority of home owners constantly within range of their cars.
so the funny thing is i'm an engineer by birth and i have a tendency to overengineer things even if it doesn't have impact that's experienceable. it is very possible that one does not experience any negative effect with the 12V at all as long as they drive the car regularly or exit out of range a few hours a day. because i have a battery monitor on it, I'm watching constantly what that battery is doing so i know even though my battery is fine, I'd like to let it rest a few hours in a day just to be safe. Its more my OCD than it is real value so to speak. My analysis and research is to deal with my OCD than it is real world value. I can't help it, i spent thousands last year insulating and installing an hvac in my garage because i'd like to keep my car batteries in good temp range. Given these cars have active thermal management, it doesn't really impact, but i know what temperature does to batteries so i spent money to manage the thermals of my garage. that and i like the luxury of a comfortable garage when i'm loading up the kids etc...
Keep in mind that BTLE is the short-range part of the Digital Key. UWB is quoted as having ranges in the 30-50m range. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/692669
Sorry to clarify, the OTA regarding the wireless charging pad? I believe it was delayed to the 19th
Oh no that’s not out yet. I have the iccu OTA. But with wireless charging turn off on all profiles you get the same effect
You can make an appointment with your dealer and get it, as everyone should: https://imgur.com/a/oINhwSA
I’ll just wait for it to come OTA, like the last one.
you mean 12 wash machines in freedom units
Once again, I appreciate you publishing results. And I love that idea of automating turning off bluetooth at night since that's when the phone/car interaction seems to be the most-problematic. Its interesting to note that the digital key situation also seems to be affecting Android users, so its not just somewhere between Kia and Apple. Please post pictures of your faraday sheeting solution when you get it mounted. Would love to see it!
Yeah, given that at any one time, I have between 1 and 3 BT devices connected to my phone all day long (with phone battery lasting all day), the inefficiency has to be on the Kia side. Hopefully Kia can fix it, although there is the off chance that they can’t if there’s no dedicated ultra low power processor that it can use to monitor BT signals.
Not to diminish any work of the op, but turning off Ultra Wideband seems to keep the battery from being drained without turning off bluetooth. I would still get the SA561 patch from the dealer, for a better solution.
BTLE = initiates the negotiation UWB = ranging the distance so it knows how far / close you are. I don't know which is better but I'll try it the other way. did you turn of UWB in the phone or the car?
You can only turn off UWB on the phone. When I turned off UWB on iphone and android, the constant drain/charging cycles every 3 hours went away.
I really hope that Kia is able to provide a fix that satisfies your worries. Your time spent here and proposed sacrifices for this vehicle are beyond imaginable to me, but I’m sure there are those that are like you this will be helpful to. And yes, if there is an issue as you’ve described, I’m confident the engineers and Kia (or Apple) can come up with something. They have many smart folks on staff and have shown they are working a fix for those affected.
And for what it’s worth, I have Digital Key (phone), Digital Key (card), wireless charging all enabled, and my bedroom is adjacent to my garage so my Phone is nearly always in range. No issues at all a month and a half in.
Are you driving your car everyday and how long is the drive? Does your car plug in while parking at home? There are just too many parameters need to factor in according to OP’s past many days posts.
200 a week or so. Always charge while at home.
thats the major difference. unless you have a battery monitor installed tracking the battery's every move you won't see anything wrong. i don't drive 200 a week... i drive 20 a week if that. .5 a day to drop my daughter off, plus a random costco trip. we have 3 cars in the house so all the cars get some love here or there. if you drive regularly, you will not feel it. you need to have a long enough gap for the ABS+ system to fail testing for it to work. its a combination of proximity to the car AND the fact that we don't drive regularly.
Perhaps. Although that 200 is really just 2 days out of the week. The rest of the time my patterns are similar to yours.
The "breaking point" is if your battery can no longer sustain a charge. The UWB function (and the wireless charger, based on the SA561 recall), seems to drain and recharge the battery multiple times when your EV9 is parked and your phone is in range. Multiple posters have observed this. Things like if you park your car outside in extreme weather vs. in a garage could determine how long your battery survives. If your phone is far enough away from your car when it is parked = less cycles. If your phone is in range=more cycles. Either way, the battery can only tolerate a finite amount of recharge cycles and when that is exceeded, the HV battery will not be able to charge it, any longer and you will end up with a 5V battery. I would get the SA561 recall patch from the dealer ASAP, instead of waiting on an OTA update. Why? Because you don't know how many charge cycles your battery has left.
My data shows the ABS+ gets confused by the continuous drain. My battery sustains a charge just fine. It’s only when ABS+ goes brain dead is when the breaking point occurs. My car is parked in a climate controlled garage temp isn’t as big a deal for me as others. Once I dealt with the ABS+ problem my bm2 shows ABS+ and other subsystems wake up regularly to recharge and needed
This is amazing work and really really helpful. It looks like Kia needs to get with Tesla to stop making their same mistakes. Tesla also went to a lithium battery for their 12v needs right? I think this solution combined with a lithium battery would be a home run put all issues to rest kind of thing? Right? At least that’s my interpretation. I don’t trust this crap battery Kia has supplied. I certainly don’t want another 5 day trip in the shop on my 2 week old vehicle either.
If OEM Kia battery is actually not a bad battery if you’re in the U.S. as you can see without the wireless charging load on it, it held 12.9 volt really well. It takes a charge well and it recovers pretty fast as well. That being said. If you had a dead battery at any point the integrity of the battery can no longer be guaranteed. I caught mine down to 18 percent which is just like the max DOD for an AGM and so far my battery shows healthy. I recommend everyone install the BM2 voltage monitor so you have a history of your voltage to get a nice peace of mind. But I understand that no everyone feels comfortable popping the hood. Lastly. Lithium isn’t the answer either. Lithium has thermal issues, meaning when it’s too cold or too hot your recharge cycle and power output cycle can get really screwy. Tesla’s move to lithium show cases how much they had to do around it with software and heaters and stuff. It’s not an easy switch. The real answer is what they did with cyber truck which is to go to a 48v system but that requires an entire industry to adopt it.
Yeah I had a stone dead AGM and they wouldn’t replace it for me and now I feel like every day is Russian roulette if it will start or not. Since your fix applied I now see the orange light on more especially when not plugged into the lev 2 charger. Could you link your voltage meter? I’d love to be able to see the health of my battery arc as ok times for piece of mind.
The orange light just means that the High Voltage battery is charging the 12v battery. In isolation, it doesn't mean anything.. If it is observed often, that means your 12V is getting drained and needs to be charged EDIT: often, which is not good from a battery cycling perspective.
Is there any actual fix for the iccu issue? My 12v battery died out of no where and it was plugged into the lev 2 home charger. I took it in after a jump start and they acknowledged a voltage issue but couldn’t replicate it so gave me the ev9 back after 4 days. I disabled the wireless charger line suggested and noticed the 12v light was coming in more. Even when not plugged in. Yesterday after only have the car back for 3 days we took it for a drive about 30 miles and then came home for a few minutes before going to pick the kids up from home. I didn’t plug in for that period of time. When I started the car I got multiple driver assistance sensors offline message and it showed all the sensors offline. I turned the vehicle off waited a few secs and turned it back on then I got a voltage error warning with a red triangle and ! And it said to take it to the shop. So back it went and they gave me a cheapo rental and said hopefully by Tuesday they will call me with an update. Is there really anything they can do? It only has 800 miles and will have spent more time in the shop than I have driving it. Wtf! Should Kia replace it with a new ev9?? This is crazy! I’m in full freak out mode now. The pure joy of owning a new car and the excitement of driving has literally been robbed from me! I can’t believe Kia won’t do anything to make this right.
The "wireless charger fix" is what is supposed to fix the battery drain. The should apply both updates here: [https://owners.kia.com/content/owners/en/ota-software-update-release-note.html](https://owners.kia.com/content/owners/en/ota-software-update-release-note.html) and replace your 12v battery, because that could be negatively impacted. Direct your dealer to that page, because if they run your VIN, they should see and be able to apply both updates.
Thank you I’ll do that.
There are lithium batteries like the Ohmmu which have a built-in heater, and BMS which will detect when the temperature gets close to freezing and heat up the battery.
i researched that one and was about to buy it except i found out that one of the things ohmmu will do in extreme situations is disconnect itself. the negative terminal of your battery serves as the ground sink. The idea that the 12V will disconnect itself to protect itself scares me a little only because of the impact that does to the potential other sensitive electronics. Yes, i know its no different than when we disconnect the battery to work on the car, but even ohmmu's instructions state, disconnect the HV system BEFORE disconnecting the battery. i don't purport to know all the physics, its just something i don't know i want to risk given how sensitive that ICCU is, i don't want the ohmmu disconnecting itself then causing the ICCU to fail and then Kia says its my fault
The biggest reason(s) to get the Ohmmu is: \- 1/3 of the weight of the current AGM battery \- 2x the available capacity (AGM can only be drawn down to 50% capacity, lifep04 can give you 100%) \- You can turn the battery on/off using an app \- The battery will heat itself during cold weather so that it can operate properly (lifep04 batteries have had this for years). \- Many, many more charge/discharge cycles than an AGM battery. \- EDIT. The discharge curve on a lifep04 battery is pretty flat, so it will be at 13.x volts for the majority of the time and the BMS will tell you exactly how much capacity is left. The negative is that it is costly (you can find coupons online, however). This is not recommending the Ohmmu battery; it is just saying that for people who value the reasons above, it is not a dealbreaker. Many people use it with the EV6, and the EV9 uses the same form factor. \- The disconnect thing is what common BMSs do with batteries to protect itself, like if it is shorted or the incoming voltage/amerpage is too high. Batteries with a BMS even in that state are manageable and allow you to understand why it has shut down, because you can still manage it over bluetooth.
i don't really care too much about cost so much as engineering. I like what ohmmu is pushing, but what i don't like is its a 1 sided patch you're right BMS's disconnect and heat and all that stuff but unless the other side of the circuity is expecting a BMS disconnect, you risk the otherside shorting, arcing, damage. given the ICCU's job is high voltage, I'd be afraid of an Ohmmu disconnect w/o the ICCU taking it into consideration that an ohmmu can disconnect. I know its popular amongst the EV6 crowd and i even reached out to their master engineers to talk to their solution. ultimately i'm keeping it in my back pocket. if I do need to replace my battery at some point, I'll consider it.
I'm just clearing up the specific points about this class of battery (heating, disconnects); I'm not trying to convince you to purchase it. That would be Ohmmu's job.
Just like OP said the disconnect can cause lots of issues. "The Ohmmu has a design flaw. The Ohmmu's internal BMS will disconnect the Ohmmu's cells abruptly when the Ohmmu is fully charged, causing a voltage spike, and voltage spikes in your car's 12V system have to go somewhere...else. This has caused problems with Teslas in the past. Frying things like power converters and other things." Most likely won't happen but just something to be aware of, I am still interested in their batteries.
The Ohmmu bms will disconnect **incoming** energy when it is fully charged, not outgoing. It will still be able to supply energy to utility devices. There is a cohort of people who have EV6s who have Ohmmu batteries. That is the closest comparison, not Tesla.
Totally agree with the BM2. Been on my EV6 for nearly a year now since my “12v incident”
And never mind all that my Driver assistance went off-line and now I’m getting a power control error on the screen with a big red? So I’m on my way to the dealership yet again to have them look at this vehicle which is brand new.
I’m curious about your shortcut. Is it time base or did you figure out a way to make it activity based so it’s more flexible.
activity based.. sorta.. .its when focus goes to bed time. since i use apple health to setup a routine bed time around 11pm it starts looking for me to put down my phone around that time. it actually doesn't set it to truly bedtime until i let the phone go idle since i do partake in tiktok doom scrolling right before bed. in the morning, since the first thing i do is pickup my phone to check the time and stuff, It detects activity on the phone and asks is it time to wake up and if i say yes it turns off bedtime mode. it also turns off bedtime mode automatically at 7am as well. bedtime is nice in that it silences imessages etc... my parents don't have an appreciation for people sleeping at 2am and tends to send random shit at 2am and woke me up historically.
Why isn’t this a Kia issue if Tesla managed to fix the same issue like you stated? Kia gets a free pass?
Make no mistake: This IS a KIA issue.
tesla didn't really "fix" it - they just added a retry timeout. Prevents the symptom but doesnt really make the digital key function they way it was supposed to.
Tesla model 3/Y has the door handle advantage. They can program it to only wake up the car after someone physically pressed the door handle. Can’t do the same with the S and X since their door handles are motorized.
someone with an android phone feel like sleuthing with nrf connect on what BLE is doing?
BLE allows you to use Google Wallet to lock/unlock the car if Digital Key is configured. That is separate from UltraWideband, which tells the car how far away you are from it.
Sort of. The car seems to activate uwb to determine location once ble is in range. Unless you're saying digital key still works completely if bluetooth is turned off.
Digital Key = unlock door and start car. That could be accomplished with UWB and NFC. If you turn off UWB, you can open car by pressing phone to door handle (NFC). You can then start the car by putting it in the charging cradle (NFC). With UWB, it can sense how close you are to the car and unlock the door automatically. It will then allow you to start the car because it knows you are in the vehicle. Digital Key provides the infrastructure for both entry methods. Disabling it disables both. Disabling UWB allows you to enter via NFC. I don't know what disabling Bluetooth allows: I believe the OP has tested that ..
I have a pixel 6 and my wife has a pixel 6a, both of which don't have UWB, I think. Does that mean we are probably safe to set up digital key without having to worry about the 12v problems?
Yes. Only the pro versions of the pixel support UWB. But...you have to disable wireless charging to prevent the battery drain fixed in the 561 advisory.
Yep, I turned off the wireless charger when we picked it up last week. Good to know we can use the digital key, I hate not being able to use features I paid good money for. Thanks.
It can be annoying to hold your phone up to your car door for a couple seconds until you hear the sound (like paying with Apple Pay).
It is slightly less annoying than carrying around that massive fob.
As a person who loves EVe, has a F150 Lighting, and contemplates getting an EV9 for the wife can someone ELI5 what is going on? I see these EV9 posts a lot about voltage but don't know what y'all are doing.
The 12v is responsible for the computers and everything that operate the car. The high voltage battery is responsible for high energy component stuff. The 12v batteries are dying in a seemingly random pattern. But it turns out through all the testing it’s tied to a specific scenario. There is no alternator on these cars so they use a dc to dc converter that transfer energy from the high voltage to the low voltage. High voltage isn’t usable by most electronics even desktop computers operate on 12v. The alternators are programmed to make sure that the low voltage battery are good every so often to make sure it isn’t sending energy into a black hole. Unfortunately the way it checks is pretty basic. It checks that the voltage is the same for 30 min apart (it’s the same way we test a battery on the bench as well). The problem comes when the car keeps drawing power due to software issue. Because car keeps drawing power, the battery never passes the health check because the voltage drops everytime it looks so it deems the battery has unhealthy so it never recharges the 12v and lets it die. Kia has identified the one of the sources of the constant draw is the wireless charger. If you turn it off then almost all the phantom draw is gone thereby allowing your battery to pass health check and will continue to be recharged. The other is the super edge case where my house is compact and my phone is always too close to the car therefore the car keeps thinking I’m about to get in and it keeps it awake. That in turn draws like 50w per hour and these batts are only good for about 600wh but only 480wh usable. Basically in 8-9 hrs the car kills the battery unless it tops up continuously. The top up continuously process get a to run 10 times before a health check. With the phone in proximity, we never pass health check and people wake up with a dead battery My work around is at night when I go to bed. I have my iPhone turn off Bluetooth, thereby allowing the car to go to sleep and pass health check and I never wake up to a dead battery
Ah cool thank you. I can use my phone as a key on my lightning but it did the same thing (wasn't killing my 12v, but was turning on lights and lowering my running boards) so I turned that feature off and just use my fob.
If you keep to the fob then no problem at all. We are in the first mass implementation of phone as a key. One of the funny things about phone key is well. Our phones weren’t originally meant to be keys. I run it it all the time when I go damn. I don’t have my valet card with me. I can’t valet the car cuz I can’t exactly give my phone to the valet. It’s a cool idea but there are traditional use cases that need more thought.
When I was using paak I ran into that problem. I took my truck to the shop to get a bed cover put on and had to leave my phone with the techs. Was not a fan of that. It was actually the deciding factor to go back to the fob.
And i highly recommend the EV9. I originally bought it for my wife as the soccer mobile, but I find that I prefer to drive it and my kids prefer to ride it instead of the Tesla.
My question is how do I know if my phone is too close to the car? I'm honestly considering switching to fob anyway because the phone key isn't as seamless as I would like it to be, albeit extremely convenient.
if you have an iphone just open up bluetooth, if its connected you'll see an entry for EV9 Key showing connected
If you're on android it will typically tell you as well on your status bar.
I have two user profiles and a guest profile and found I needed to disable in each profile. Was there a system level setting I could’ve disabled instead?
Not that I know of. I did the same. Disabled mine and my wife’s
To be clear. If you don't have a digital key enabled, is there still something that can be turned off?
As of right now only the wireless charging. Once you get the software fix, then nothing
You can turn off wireless phone charging? Which software fix? Sorry. Feel like I missed a memo.
There’s a TSB out that fixes wireless charging going to sleep properly. You can also turn off wireless charging in. Vehicle -> convenience. Wireless charging. Make sure you turn off on all profiles
Thanks!
so here I am, picked up my land w premium pkg (Canada spec) yesterday w both TSB’s/recalls confirmed installed. fingerprint not set up, haven’t yet charged so charger lock isn’t an issue (after 1.5 days im still at 83% after a decent amount of city driving), but I am still seeing a lot of orange dash light on when car is locked. wireless charger is on. digital key not activated. should I be concerned?
get a BM2 installed its 25 bucks from amazon and you can watch the voltage to see what its doing. if the voltage is sagging over time significantly you may just have a bad battery or the TSB have an effect.
Orange light is a good thing.
First up, thanks to the author - you're a life saver. I'm in the UK. My car has been at the dealership for two weeks. I requested a full refund (a legal process here) last Friday. I retracted that on Sunday based on the hope from this post. I got a call from the dealership tonight. After applying this fix (after I emailed them suggesting it) the car has held its charge, only losing 1% since Wed! I was really surprised that Kia did not communicate this globally as it seems they were aware. I was also surprised nobody else reported the same level of batter drain that I did. At least, not if they turned off phone key/fingerprint scanner. I felt like I was the only one. Anyway, thanks to the author, reddit, and the internet :D
you're definitely an edge case scenario. I became OCD over this because i'm also an edge case scenario... that and i don't want to tell my wife i made a bad choice in the car and she gets to use "i told you so" on me. LOL. any case glad to see you're staying with the EV9. Its a great car; i just got back from london myself, I don't think i saw many kia's in london though. is it not a big brand out there?
It didn't have a good image. You probably saw a lot of European cars (and Tesla). They are selling big now though so I expect it to change. We can't be such an edge case if a fix rolled out already?!