[steved]

I had my 12v Battery die a few days ago. What made it worse was that I was 240 miles from home in Mid Wales (UK). It was all good when I arrived at the cottage I was renting not long after lunch. I plugged the Type 2 cable into the car and the charger before I went inside.
Later on, I set the charger to activate at 01:00 and charge for 5 hours.
It didn't charge. The car was dead when I came to it in the morning.

Being miles from anywhere apart from a small railway station 0.5 miles away, I was a bit stuck. Getting recovered would take all day and I needed to be in that area later in the day (best man at a wedding) so I had to try something different. Thanks to the internet, I located a battery a train ride away (and a taxi to the store).

As I returned with the battery and lugged it up a hill which is no joke, I wondered if the act of plugging in the charger and later setting a charge time caused a drain on the battery that could have caused it to go flat? I did make it to the church on time. The previous post by EV-Technician is why I'm posting here.

Anyone have any thoughts on that idea?

I have a Yuasa battery with a 5 year warranty in the car. On my return from Wales I have my car booked in with the dealer for two recalls, one being the ICCU issue. The other is the limp home change.

 

[steved]

After reading what seems like hundreds of posts of dead 12V batteries in relatively new cars, I can't help but feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Kia power management architecture (hardware or more likely software) relative to the 12V battery.

Blame is repeatedly placed on the battery and/or things like the electric company pinging the car. I say there is no excuse for this, when there's a giant energy source in the form of a HV battery just sitting there, and no shortage of computing power, sensors and monitors.

The car's software and power management hardware should be able to keep the 12V battery properly charged, and if necessary prevent frequent pings that draw excess power - or at least issue a warning long before things have gotten so bad that the car can't be started.

Kia has created an architecture which seems very fragile when it comes to charging and maintaining it's 12V battery.

A quick search for "EV 12v battery problems" returns many posts and only a few are about Kia's. It is a common problem with many EV's I had one fail in my I-Pace after 2.5 years. Then, I went through 4 different alternators on a Ford Capri 1.6 in 18 months. Luckily, it was a lease and the leasing company took it back. The replacement was a VW Passat. The 12V battery failed after 6 months.