See this discussion that has been going on for some time EV6 Bricking / Zombie Issue

 

See this discussion that has been going on for some time EV6 Bricking / Zombie Issue

Thanks for that.

 

Hi,

I just observed this very problem this morning. Car was not on charge. Car would not go into Drive or Reverse.
Would love to know if there is a reset we can do to reset the system.
I think its the sensor for picking up the Key. Or its software related to it, thats causing the problem.
Car would not turn off, not lock/unlock. Only the parking brake and putting car into Park/Neutral would work.

It doesn't give you a lot of confidence in the car especially when there is so much electronics and sensors etc.... for so many items!

Our car is just a week old with over 600miles on the clock.
I would say the only thing that was different, the car was parked over night with less than 50percent charge. Every other night I had it charged to 80% as we had quite a few runs to do the following day.

 

Just make sure to never switch to R or D when the "Ready" sign is not showing on the dashboard. If you do, turn the car off, lock it, open it and try again.

Switching to Drive or Reverse while the car is not ready, could trigger the anti-theft protection. Doing so repeatedly (trying a few times to switch gears) might trigger a fault that needs a 12V reset or a wait period for the car to reset itself.

 

Spot on.

 

When it is on -> Key fob detected -> OK (Strange to give it orange?!?)
When it goes on and goes out -> key is not detected...
It's a bit weird way of showing it's status. The person must have tought it was still working with old fashioned dashboard with real lights that only have 1 colour...

But it should be ON and ORANGE. When it is NOT on, the key is not detected.
When it returns worthwile to check with below info.. I would change the key fob battery (most likely a standard CR2032) just to be sure...

 

I would recommend not to put the key in the second water bottle holder and metal bottle between the key fob and EV-start button.
Most likely it will function 9 out of 10 times, but radio signals will not penetrate the metal bottle making it harder to detect.

It is clear the reception is in the EV-button... Putting the key on the EV-button would even allow to start the car without the battery in the key-fob. Fallback system.. Worth to test once...

 

Excellent! This is all great information!!
I will keep an eye on it and do as suggested here.
The car is booked into Dealers for the 3rd January. I will keep you posted if anything changes.

Thanks everyone for your help!
Ray

 

This is a worry as if my wife is driving and she's alone it could be a major issue.

Hopefully someone soon will have good news of a software update to resolve this.

 

I read in Dutch review on Dutch car site autweek.
How to get out of zombie mode…


Put the car on P, handbrake, then push the on/off button and keep it pressed for 10seconds.

Then it can be started again.

It is the car theft alarm that causes zombie mode. Somehow when the key is not detected the Kia sees you as a burglar instead of owner…

Hope it will be fixed in future. But worthwhile to try

 

Will be good to know if this works.

 

 

So basically it’s because people are pressing the button twice and not having their foot on the brake?

 

Yes in most cases. There is the odd case where the car does not recognise the key for some reason.

 

Should be an easy software update fix then

 

Another Video.

 

There are some videos on YouTube about getting out of "zombie mode" if that helps.

 

The fix is in.........

-Enter car with key fob and shut door
-Push Start and wait a sec
-Push again and wait for screen to come up
-Push again and hold for 10 seconds
-Push again
-Put foot on brake
-Push again
-Turn knob to select gear

Print above and tape somewhere until KIA fixes problem.......lol

 

We found ourselves hit yesterday with zombie mode. Having stopped for lunch, we returned to the car and found P and N were our only options. We hadn't charged although I had been playing with remote parking. After turning on and off a few times I searched for this post which I'd seen previously. We followed the procedure of removing both keys some distance away from the car and then retrying with result that normal ops resumed. I contacted the dealer about it today but once again they had less knowledge than us! Thanks tho to FreakyBeanz as without your post we'd have been stuck.

 

Damn. This appears to be a case of RTFM!

It appears that there are several "start modes" in the vehicle.

Zombie Mode appears to be the “On” mode.

This is from the online manual - please see the attachment!

Kia really need to up their game in their customer handover procedures for this vehicle, and ensure that this is fully highlighted to customers!

 

Today, I visited my local Lidl to charge up my EV6. It's the closest 50kW charger and at 26p per kW it's cheaper than my current flexible tariff at home.

I parked up, plugged in, initiated the charge via the Kia Charge app, locked the car and went inside to grab some lunch.

I walked back to the vehicle, opened the door and pressed the start button turning on Utility Mode so I could listen to music while eating.

When the vehicle reached 90% about 40 minutes later, the charging stopped and I unplugged the cable.

When I got back in the car I tried to turn it off and nothing happened. I tried selecting drive and nothing happened.

I pressed the break paddle and tried the above but again nothing. I tried using the key to press the start button and again nothing happened. I also tried getting out of the car and locking the doors but that wouldn't work either. I was totally stuck.

After reading the manual, calling my local dealer and waiting for a call back the issue resolved itself. 20 minutes later

I also tweeted Kia who said
"There are three recently released service actions for your dealer to complete, one of them being the start logic improvement."

I already have an appointment at my local dealership on Mondays for the HVAC issue so I'm hoping they'll be able to sort this out too.

It seems to always happen if I turn the car on or into utility mode and then get out (with the key in my pocket) to open the rear doors or get/put something in the boot.

Has anyone else has this issue? How long did it take to resolve?

 

Today, I visited my local Lidl to charge up my EV6. It's the closest 50kW charger and at 26p per kW it's cheaper than my current flexible tariff at home.

I parked up, plugged in, initiated the charge via the Kia Charge app, locked the car and went inside to grab some lunch.

I walked back to the vehicle, opened the door and pressed the start button turning on Utility Mode so I could listen to music while eating.

When the vehicle reached 90% about 40 minutes later, the charging stopped and I unplugged the cable.

When I got back in the car I tried to turn it off and nothing happened. I tried selecting drive and nothing happened.

I pressed the break paddle and tried the above but again nothing. I tried using the key to press the start button and again nothing happened. I also tried getting out of the car and locking the doors but that wouldn't work either. I was totally stuck.

After reading the manual, calling my local dealer and waiting for a call back the issue resolved itself. 20 minutes later

I also tweeted Kia who said
"There are three recently released service actions for your dealer to complete, one of them being the start logic improvement."

I already have an appointment at my local dealership on Mondays for the HVAC issue so I'm hoping they'll be able to sort this out too.

It seems to always happen if I turn the car on or into utility mode and then get out (with the key in my pocket) to open the rear doors or get/put something in the boot.

Has anyone else has this issue? How long did it take to resolve?

We had this too after charging with an Instavolt charger and we had the car in Accessory mode to listen to the radio while charging. We were able to drive away to another car park, but we then couldn’t get the car going again when we wanted to leave. It took about 10 minutes.

After some furious pressing of the EV button, then opening and closing the charging door and car boot and also locking and walking away from the vehicle and back again it then started up first time.

I’m not sure which of those things sorted it, if any.

We took our car into the dealer for something else early this week and it had 3 updates installed; Heating, Traction and Start. The latter is probably the one that Kia referred to in their tweet. We only had the issue once but i know others have had this issue many times.

 

Had this happen to me several times now. Long press method on the EV button did not resolve the issue, instead I find the following worked for me.
1. Switch off the car normally
2.Open and close driver side door, the infotainment screen should now switch off. If not, try to switch off the car again.
3. Wait for the car to completely switch off (This takes around 1-2 minutes till you hear a sound from the car disengaging, this is also the same time you get the car not locked notification on your Kia connect app on the phone)
3. Start car as usual with pedal pressed and all will be good.

One more issue I find is sometimes the car cannot detect the key if it is put inside the cup holder. I usually have it in my jacket.

 

The local dealership have made 3 modifications today, one of these being the "start logic improvement" so hopefully this won't happen again. I'll know in just a few days when I go to Lidl and charge up again.

 

Happened to me and I followed the guidance earlier on this thread leaving keys out of range of car and I could power it down. This happened one hr after collecting my new car. Back to dealer for software upgrade. My problem seems to be linked to a faulty door lock/sensor - the dealer quoted me 3 months to get the part!!! Waiting for them to call back again with a more acceptable solution while I drive a courtesy car around and my EV6 sits in their garage.

 

I suspect it will keep happening to you I'm afraid until the dealers resolve it.

 

So I have had my car for 6 days and had Zombie mode about 4 times.
The walking well away from the car trick has worked so far for me.Told my dealer and Service are supposed to be coming back to me.Was this sorted with a software update because?. Very annoyingly I asked them I wanted all updates and the Infotainmemt seems to be only up to July last year!

 

The fix is in.........

-Enter car with key fob and shut door
-Push Start and wait a sec
-Push again and wait for screen to come up
-Push again and hold for 10 seconds
-Push again
-Put foot on brake
-Push again
-Turn knob to select gear

Print above and tape somewhere until KIA fixes problem.......lol

 

Just remember to always have your foot on the brake when you press the s button.

 

Thanks.I do now do that religiously and also have taken to putting the parking Brake and Neutral on before turning off.But despite that it has still done it.The only cure seems to be taking the key as far from the car as possible and a little bit of time.

 

Also make sure you don't double click the start button.

 

Thanks.I have generally avoided that too.Having read various reports about this on this site and another.It appears there maybe a software fix(hopefully).

 

 

Oh the irony of it….

Three months of owning our ev6 and not one occurrence of this problem until I comment on this board. Went out, jumped in the car doing everything the same as I have been and bang! Can’t select any drive and battery light on. As you say, lock it and walked away for 20 minutes and she’s fine again though I did notice the UI and selecting the user profile was very sluggish on this trip out.

We’ll see what she’s like tomorrow and I hope I haven’t opened a door for a gremlin.