ABS Malfunction?

I have had this happen twice and its a big worry. Thanks to narrow roads and people driving too fast, I've had to emergency brake a couple of times. There is an almighty bang (sounds like its coming from the back end) and for a short time (say 1 - 1.5 sec) virtually no braking (maybe just regen) then things are back to normal. Luckily no accident resulted. Other cars I've had have never behaved this way - usually just a rapid drumming noise.

Has anyone else experienced this, please?

No, when I've had to emergency brake the ABS has behaved just like other cars.

The one bit of braking behavior that I don't like is of you are doing heavy regen and the front wheels lock then the regen kicks out for a while and it almost feels like the car is accelerating. Braking normally at that point works fine though.

IanL said:

I have had this happen twice and its a big worry. Thanks to narrow roads and people driving too fast, I've had to emergency brake a couple of times. There is an almighty bang (sounds like its coming from the back end) and for a short time (say 1 - 1.5 sec) virtually no braking (maybe just regen) then things are back to normal. Luckily no accident resulted. Other cars I've had have never behaved this way - usually just a rapid drumming noise.

Has anyone else experienced this, please?

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I have had the same problem. I has happened 4 times now. There is the bang and the car goes into fault mode. By pressing harder on the pedal the car can still be stopped but I doubt that would be the case in a real emergency braking situation. To get going again I simply turn the car off, and place into park. Wait a few seconds and restart normally. There are no fault codes or light showing once I have done this. My 2015 Kia Soul Battery SoH is about 55% and one thread suggested that the regen caused it. If so then slowing from 110km/h would surely show an issue but it does not. The fault occurs under medium to heavy braking irrespective of the State of Charge. I am in NZ and my Kia was imported from England by a dealer in 207/2018. The support here for the Soul is not good because they were never sold here by Kia New Zealand. I could not claim on my premature battery depreciation and Kia quoted me $42k for a replacement battery!!!

Thanks for posting. I haven't noticed a fault indication when it has happened to me. If it happens again, it would be good to get the KIA dealer to check for a historic fault code. Of course. there may not be one. When I had an intermittent defective valve in the HVAC system, the yellow triangle came up, but no code was ever recorded.

Gary68 said:

... My 2015 Kia Soul Battery SoH is about 55% and one thread suggested that the regen caused it. If so then slowing from 110km/h would surely show an issue but it does not. The fault occurs under medium to heavy braking irrespective of the State of Charge...

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Regen braking will fail if it goes above the power limit the battery can accept. This happens much more often with a heavily degraded battery; especially when one cell is much worse than the others. There is no relationship between this failure and SOC, nor to the speed you are going.
But in my experience, a regen failure causes the car to turtle. It doesn't create an error code. And there is certainly no bang.
The braking error you and Ian are talking about is probably not regen related.

Come to think of it, it hasn't happened to me since I changed the tyres from the low rolling resistance type to Goodyear 4Seasons Gen3. Perhaps that's because of better grip, so the ABS is not having to act. It really needs a skid pan to test it, but there isn't one in the island.