Kia’s flagship electric car suffers from a battery problem

First I realized there was a problem with the Kia Pioneer EV9 When I tried to unlock my car last year. The huge three-row SUV was sitting in my driveway completely dead. The key doesn’t work, the app disconnects from the car, and you’re already late for your appointment. Fortunately, I had prepared for such a scenario, having read about the EV9’s widespread 12V battery issues.

I was able to open the car using the manual key provided by Kia, access the trunk to access the 12v battery, and use a booster I purchased to bring it back to life. Like many ICE cars, a 12-volt battery powers most of the car’s low-voltage electrical systems, so when the battery fails, the car is rendered useless. Contact your local Kia dealer to report the problem. I was prepared for the 12 volt battery issue, but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

A few weeks after Kia rolled out software updates to address the 12V battery issue, I started noticing strange charging issues with my EV9. Every time I tried to charge beyond 80 percent, the car would jump from 82 percent to 100 percent on the home AC charger, as if it had miraculously instantly charged the last 18 percent. I also noticed that the car’s range was noticeably reduced when charged to 100 percent, making it difficult to complete some long trips without needing to charge again.

It sounded like a battery issue, which is the type of issue I’ve read a lot of people posting about on EV9 owner groups on Facebook. I reported the issue to Kia and they were unable to replicate it initially until I was able to record the issue on my phone while charging with a DC fast charger. The car will drop to a 0 kW charge rate at 82 percent and take about 10 minutes to fake its way to 100 percent without changing the car’s rated range at all.

After watching a variety of YouTube videos, I purchased an on-board diagnostic (OBD) scanner to plug into the car to get more information about the battery. OBD II scanners allow you to see how much power is left in the battery pack in the current state of charge, as well as read voltage levels across the individual cells of an electric vehicle’s battery.

The EV9 has a standard battery pack Highly praised By engineering consulting firm Munro & Associates. It contains 38 individual modules that can be replaced, making it easier for technicians to complete repairs. Using the OBD II scanner, I was able to see that at 100 percent charge, I only had 71 kWh, when I should have had about 96 usable kWh from the 99.8 kWh battery. This means I lost 25 percent of the battery and therefore 25 percent of the range. I could also see that some of the battery cells were empty and not holding a charge, but the car was still running and there were no errors or problems charging up to 82 percent.

After a few diagnostic sessions, the local Kia dealer eventually came to the conclusion that the high-voltage main battery pack was defective and needed to be replaced. Instead of leaving it in the garage for a week or two, I signed up for Kia’s battery repair programme, which does not include an ETA and is part of Kia’s eight-year warranty cover for UK electric car batteries.

I quickly learned after speaking with more than a dozen EV9 owners in the UK that the wait can be up to nine months for a battery repair, which is the amount of time it would take to create another future rear-seat passenger. Unlike some EV9 owners I spoke to, I was able to continue using my car until Kia was ready to fix it. Some EV9 owners have had issues similar to mine, where the car stops charging at a certain percentage and the range drops. Others have had the battery pack fail completely or have seen the range drop to just 30 miles, rendering their cars unusable.

Qasim Sawijit described the EV9’s battery failure issues as a “nightmare” in messages to him Edge. His EV9 failed in January and his local garage offered a smaller EV6 as a free car while he waited an unspecified period of time for his car to return. “Kia is absolutely pathetic, there is no update with a chase, and when I get an update, it is a meaningless update,” says Sawijit. His EV9 is only a year old, and he says he now wastes hundreds of pounds a month on renting a car he can’t use.

Saowijit isn’t alone in his frustration with Kia’s customer service. “My car has been sitting at the dealership and hasn’t been moved for five months,” EV9 owner Helen Crawforth explains in a message. Crawforth also got a free car, but it’s an ICE car which she says “costs me a fortune”.

Blair Ogilvie first started having issues with his EV9 in September 2024. “The first issue was the 12V battery issue,” he said in a message. Months later, he started having problems, just like me, with the main high-voltage battery not charging properly and his EV9’s range dropping dramatically. Eventually, the battery failed further in December and its range was reduced to about 80 miles, causing “other systems including the collision avoidance system to fail.” Ogilvy told me that Kia said the car was unsafe to drive, and that his EV9 had been off the road since December without an ETA fixed.

The stories of more than a dozen EV9 owners I spoke to are all very similar and point to Kia struggling to replace the batteries in its flagship electric vehicle. But the problems facing Kia and Hyundai electric cars go further. Both sister brands, operating within the Hyundai Motor Group, have suffered a variety of issues with integrated charge control unit (ICCU) failures in recent years across the Ioniq 5, EV6 and other models. An ICCU malfunction can cause the vehicle to lose power while driving, which is a very serious problem.

Both Hyundai and Kia have begun issuing warranty extensions worldwide for affected cars in recent weeks, after remaining mostly silent about the issues for years. The change of heart came months later Consumer Reports highlighted In February, up to 10 percent of Hyundai and Kia EV owners experienced ICU-related issues, depending on the trim and model year.

Corbin who runs Ionic Man The YouTube channel, which has a singular name, had been covering ICCU failures closely before his Ioniq 5 got… Battery problem last fall. “What you experience with your car is exactly what I experienced with my Ioniq 5,” Corbin says in an email to . Edge. “They replaced the battery within two weeks, apparently due to preferential treatment as others were waiting months.” Hyundai then loaned Corbin an Ioniq 5 press car while his personal car was repaired He suffered the same failure. “Hyundai became aware of the cell issue in early 2025 and issued a filing Technical services bulletin “Guiding dealers to replace failed packages that showed the relevant trouble code,” says Corbin. Kia hasn’t issued a similar bulletin for the EV9 yet, and the local dealer is struggling to find a clear fault code for the problems I was having.

EV9 owners in the US are also experiencing similar battery issues, but messages on Facebook owner groups suggest wait times are slightly better than those across the Atlantic. “Wait times may have decreased, but at least I’ve heard anecdotally that they can still last for months,” Corbin says.

I contacted Kia PR in the UK about battery issues with the EV9 and general ICU issues in late March. After initially responding in March about a possible statement, Kia UK PR ignored my repeated requests for comment earlier this month.

Two days after chasing Kia UK PR for the first time since March, the local dealer called to say my car was suddenly ready for repair. My EV9 is now sitting in an industrial unit about 100 miles away, and I’m still not sure when I’ll get it back. Kia has loaned me a much smaller EV3 for my growing family in the meantime, a car that has also suffered from ICU issues over the past 18 months.

Before Kia’s ICU issues, the brand was also hit with a pandemic-era car theft problem. Thieves call themselves “Kia Boys” Post videos on TikTok And other social media platforms with instructions on how to steal Kia cars, often using just a USB cable. The absence of electronic immobilizers in many Hyundai and Kia vehicles manufactured between 2015 and 2019 led to the separation of the two brands. Roll out software updates To prevent thefts. It’s not clear if Kia and Hyundai can address their ICU and battery issues with software this time around.

If you’re experiencing similar issues with your Hyundai or Kia EV — whether it’s unexplained loss of range, charging issues, or strange battery behavior — it pays to take the time to scan your vehicle with an OBD II reader and check the health of the high-voltage battery yourself. There are a lot of Easy-to-follow guides is available, and the data can reveal problems long before the dealer acknowledges them. The more owners document these malfunctions, the harder it becomes for Hyundai Motor Group to ignore what appears to be a growing problem with battery failure.