brakes failed

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carverbaby

Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2014
Messages
23
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!" :lol: this happened around 7:20 in the morning.

anybody experience any issues at all w/ their brakes?
 
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?
 
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...
 
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.
 
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?
 
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)
 
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.
 
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
 
carverbaby said:
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.
 
Any word on the brakes? This is the first time I've seen something that makes me hesitate to go buy a Soul EV this month.

And as a LEAF owner, I've been warned that if I need body work, that they must remove the battery pack before they doing any curing of the paint.

Googling turns up 140 degrees as the maximum temperature. http://www.mynissanleaf.com/wiki/images/3/3e/BODY_SHOP_ADMINISTRATION_MANUAL_FOR_CERTIFIED_EV_DEALER_2011-Nissan-LEAF-Body_and_Paint.pdf

Good luck!
 
I got assigned a new claims adjuster which is good because I like this person better. Quite frankly, I'm a bit disappointed in how this was handled by AAA and I did expired this to the new adjuster. I don't understand why they would have authorized repairs prior to kia even looking at the car when my stance was that it was a brake issue. If they do find something they could have saved the money spent on the parts they ordered already.
Anyway, kia's flying someone up to look at the car on Wednesday. No point in worrying about what ifs until they check the car out. And they did say that they can't access the data remotely. Also that even the dealerships can't pull the unit out/read the data and that the data is permanent even if the batteries are completely dead.
For what it's worth, I do love everything about the car except that there's no power seats and it's not a convertible. I don't really want any other car but my wife understandably does not feel the same
 
i just got off the phone w/ Kia and got bad news in that they did not find anything wrong w/ the car. What's worse is that they're saying that impact was not sufficient to trigger the EDR data so they have no black box data to review. I asked if the 'black box' is supposed to be constantly recording but they said that the recording is only triggered by certain parameters and the car was going slow enough that it did not trigger recording.
the fact that the car was going so slow that the the EDR data was not recorded kind of corroborates our version of the events in that we clearly did not step on the accelerator instead of the brake and that the car basically rolled into the storefront. my wife was certainly stomping on something and it sure as heck wasn't the gas but kia's engineer did not find anything mechanically wrong w/ the car. which was my biggest fear b/c now they won't assume any responsibility and it becomes our word against whoever's.

i'll have to call AAA and see what they say but they've told me before that they're just an insurance company and this is between us and Kia.

fkkkkkkkk
 
Just talked to insurance and it's bad news. Because there's no evidence of defect/failure, we basically have to accept responsibility.
Guilty and I don't even know how we can prove we're innocent.
Anybody have any ideas on what else I can do?
 
Demand a transcript of the crash recorder data. It should show what pedals were pressed and when.
 
They're saying that the impact wasn't big enough to even trigger the crash recorder data. Is that possible? From the way they were talking before, it sounded like it was an "always on"type thing
 
Most crash recorders are always on and holding the last few seconds of data by doing an overwriting loop through the memory. A big enough impact will stop it from doing the overwriting loop so that data can be captured. In your case if the impact wasn't big enough and I suspect the vehicle has been powered on for more then a few seconds then the data will have been overwritten. They need a big enough impact to trigger so that they don't go off every time you go over a bump in the road - normally an impact big enough to trigger the airbags even if it was in a direction that wouldn't cause the airbags to fire.
 
I don't think you can prove anything; certainly not in a court of law; with the information you have available. So you'll have to take responsibility for now, and then..

(Just brainstorming)

- Is there anything going on with the accelerator pedal? There was a recall on them. Is the gizmo installed as part of the recall there, and possibly causing problems?

- Post to other Soul EV internet forums about your issue (Facebook has a decent sized group), so if someone else has the problem, they can contact you about it.

- Assuming you keep the car and think it could conceivably happen again, consider installing a dash cam, with a second camera mounted where it can see the pedals? (Might not work at night, but might be better than nothing.)

- Try to duplicate the problem. Was it a super-short trip? Some EVs have strange behaviors when they're at 100% charge and can't/won't do regenerative braking. (Ford Focus according to http://electrifyatlanta.com/wp/?page_id=25 )

But I put in an order anyway... Hopefully won't regret it.
 
Hi Carverbaby,

Sorry to hear you're having problems getting KIA to help.

When I had a Charging Module Failure it was a struggle at first as well... The first case worker I was in contact with at KIA consumer affairs was pretty sketchy.

Eventually, I felt it would be prudent to gently suggest that KIA probably wouldn't want customers criticizing their new EV model or their service network out on the internet.
I'm not saying they were unfair but some reason for them to take action needed to come to light ...

A new case representative called me the next day and I was told everything would be taken care of.

Clearly, each repair incident is different but that's what worked for me.

:| .. AJ
 
I must say this is starting to sound to me like a classic case of pedal misapplication. This sort of thing came to light in the Toyota "scandal" a few years back and the vast majority of crashes were from traditional pedal misapplication. Same with the Audi 5000 and Jeep Grand Cherokee issues. Very few actual defects ever found, just changes to prevent user error.

Since regen takes the car down to ~3 MPH before the friction brakes kick in, that is about the speed the car would be going in the event that the friction brake system failed, particularly in a parking lot situation. In order to do $12,000 of damage to the car I would imagine the car would need to be going faster than 3 MPH.

Furthermore, the pyrotechnics that would have triggered the data recorder freeze (seatbelt pretensioners, airbags) only activate when the vehicle has a pretty massive deceleration over a very short period of time. From 40 MPH to 0 MPH in .2 seconds, etc. So we have a window here wherein the car is going greater than 3-5 MPH but not fast enough to trigger pyrotechnics.

Sounds to me like your wife had slowed the car to the point where it couldn't accelerate fast enough to decelerate quickly enough for pyrotechnics, then inadvertently applied the accelerator and hit the wall.

Despite there being no "black box" data because the deceleration rate wasn't severe enough to trigger a freeze of information, if the brake system had in fact failed there would be a telltale dash warning light and a code stored in the ECU.

Brake masters and high-pressure systems tend to be pretty binary in regards to them working or not; I find it unlikely that the system failed briefly then un-failed back to a ready state. I suppose anything is possible but this seems far-fetched. Even if the friction brake system had in fact failed, regen should have brought the car down to a very low speed before the vehicle was out of control.
 
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