brakes failed

[carverbaby]

i was out of town this weekend and my wife took my car to drop off my mother in law at a bus stop. as she was pulling into a parking spot, she couldn't get the car to brake. end result, the car bumped into a convenience store and stopped. i was out of town so my wife called aaa and they had it towed to an in network facility. i called Kia yesterday to report this and they said they'd have someone get in touch w/ the shop. it would likely be towed to a local dealer.

i searched online to see if i could find any other instances of this happening and didn't find anything (not that i was expecting to since this car is so new that the sample size can't be that big). obviously this is a no joke but i just don't know what to do other than wait to see what they find. i love this car but this is definitely a huge concern. one of the cops at the scene was giving my wife a bit of a hard time saying that cases like this (understandably so) are usually due to the driver hitting the gas and not the brakes but my contention is that this is an EV. if she was stomping on the gas, the car would have totally plowed into the storefront instead of not even cracking the windshield. No airbags were deployed. my wife and mother in law walked out totally fine and even my 3 yr old in the middle in the back wasn't even scared. she told me over the phone later that morning that "daddy, your car bumped into a store!" this happened around 7:20 in the morning.

anybody experience any issues at all w/ their brakes?

[mtndrew1]

First step is to go to www.safercar.gov and report the issue to NHTSA so they can keep an eye out for a potential recall.

My brakes haven't given me any issues but the system sure seems noisy to me. I hear all kinds of racket from ahead of the firewall when manipulating the brake pedal at low speeds. I've taken this to be normal operation but your story gives me pause. Was your brake system noisy?

[carverbaby]

thanks, i'll go do that now.

and no, i've never noticed any brake noise but i'm not a big car guy. the only noise i've ever really noticed is the whining sound when backing up or going at low speeds. i know for sure the abs worked cuz it kicked in once when a car zoomed by just as i was about to exit my complex...

[mtndrew1]

Any update on this? What did the dealer say was the problem?

Also, when the car failed were there any warning lights illuminated on the dash?

It has occurred to me that because the Soul uses such aggressive regen that brake system failure would typically only leave the car at about 5 MPH without friction brakes, as that's about the speed they kick in. Everything above that is regen. Pulling the parking brake switch in such a circumstance should be sufficient to get the car stopped.

[carverbaby]

the car hasn't made it to the dealer yet. it's still at the aaa in network repair facility though i've told them not to touch it since Kia strongly recommended that. I would prefer that too since i don't know that they have anyone qualified to examine this car. I called Kia again this afternoon and the rep said that his engineers were out and wouldn't be back until tomorrow so they won't have decided on a course of action until then.

My wife said that she didn't pull the parking brake since she wasn't sure where it was. i wonder what the would have done since it's an electronic switch, right?

[carverbaby]

oh yeah and the estimator at the shop estimated around $12k of damage but they're all superficial parts. they and aaa did say that they would deem it a total loss but the person handling the total loss portion of it was out of the office today. i don't know if they realize that this is an EV...(which is why i didn't want them doing anything to it anyway)

[mtndrew1]

Oh wow. I had taken your "bumped into the store" thing to mean it was bumper scuffs at most; it sounds like you're fortunate that nobody was hurt.

I doubt that a $12,000 repair would total out a $36,000 car so I'm guessing they're basing the value on the gasoline model.

I'm extremely curious to hear what Kia's engineers have to say about the failure. Please keep us updated here.

[mtndrew1]

Did you hear back yet? What did the engineering group say?

Is the car totaled?

[carverbaby]

No, so like I thought, AAA didn't realize they were looking at the EV so after talking to them and the body shop today, they authorized the repairs on the body work. AAA told me they would send a Sr person to look at the car again tomorrow and when I talked to the body shop late afternoon, they said they were told that it'd be Monday. It's kind of annoying that it's taken this long considering I've been calling almost daily A's telling them all along "hey, are you sure? This is the EV we're talking about here".
Anyway, kia can't do anything until the car is either totaled or repaired. They said they'd have to schedule their engineers to fly up from Irvine for the inspection whenever that can happen.
I'll keep you posted.

Thanks

[irfca]

They said they'd have to schedule their engineers to fly up from Irvine for the inspection whenever that can happen.

With the "flight recorder" in the EV, I would have thought / hoped they could access it remotely to investigate what happened - or at least have a dealership download the contents and send it to the engineers for an initial look - having worked in software development for 25+ years, having well thought out diagnostics and tracing / logging is extremely important for understanding and resolving problem - often reproducing a problem can be difficult ... and I would imagine there are a lot of characteristics to take into account with an EV.