A class action lawsuit has been filed by a large number of Genesis GV60, Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 owners in the United States alleging that a charging port failure could affect the charging speeds of their EVs or prevent charging altogether.
A court in California will be hearing the case. According to Business Wire referencing legal company Hagens Berman, the Hyundai-Kia alliance could be found in violation of multiple local laws, and its attempts to mitigate the issue could only aggravate things.
The advertisements claim that the traction batteries of the electric cars named above all need between 5-7 hours to reach max charge from a Level 2 home charger. In reality, the claimants say, the car’s charging port tends to overheat within 30 minutes or so from the start, leading to an emergency shutdown of the charging process. This means that, first, charging consumes more time and electric power, and second, the whole process has to be continually supervised for safety.
Hyundai Group revealed that it was aware of the issue and released a software update this March to address it. However, the modifications it introduced left many owners unhappy. In most cases, the new software reduces the charging power whenever overheating becomes an issue. As a consequence, a full charge takes 10 hours or even longer to achieve. One of the owners complained that refilling his Hyundai Ioniq 5 from zero to 100 percent took a whopping 20 hours.
As such, the lawsuit includes misleading advertisement charges: its authors believe that Hyundai-Kia EVs are actually unable to replenish their charge as fast as claimed.
