Yes. Of course, he is quilty for the crash but I think the guy wanted to question the car's ability to brake in that situation when driver makes a mistake. Questioning that is imo reasonable. I don't think anyone can actually blame the car nor the company if you bump into someone's back.
Yeah, he expected the car’s collision avoidance scheme to work, and it didn’t. How stupid of him. I would never trust the computer to apply brakes in an emergency. The current systems just had control back to the driver with about a second before collision.
You are spot on if I never owned one I would believe it but if you hold down the left regen paddle that also will force the car into standstill with just the regen
I think the guy just spun up some sobstory so he doesnt lose his insurance bonus when he was clearly at fault. So theyre just throwing dirt at Kia for no reason.
Bottom line: auto braking is an extra safety feature. If it fails the driver has already failed. Unless the car was in some kind of self drive mode the crash is 100% the fault of the driver. I've had an occasion in my leaf. If you use adaptive cruise in traffic sometimes when the traffic is crawling it can get too close. Twice I've pressed the brake myself. I don't know if it would have gone on to hit the car in front. No problem if you're actually awake!
Uhh... you don't brake in time, you're at fault. Don't rely on emergency systems. Unless the brakes physically didn't work, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
He either was distracted or relied on the emergency brake system, the mechanical brakes part of an electric car is the same as always has been in all cars and it's not something that can fail intermittently like a electronic device would. We can say a security system related to the brakes failed (the emergency brake system) but that doesn't make it so the car won't stop if you slam on the brake pedal yourself when you see the danger
@@patreekotime4578 I am mechanic I think I know how cars work, only intermittent fail brakes may have without leaving any trace is the overheating of the fluid due to continuous braking, as long and you have brake fluid, don't have a leak on the two independent hydraulic circuits car brakes have or air got in the circuit somehow the mechanical brakes should work
@@David-bl1bt Kia E-niro is built on the Hybrid platform only removed the engine so should have everything the same except engine and exhaust and that stuff.
@@MrEik1234 If the guy claims that it's not an issue with automatic braking - it's issue on normal brakes and that's a big deal. Since there was no problem, this must be a user error :)
I've read this freaking manual yesterday : it's in there, it works between 10 and 85 km/h, and is not supposed to replace the driver's attention. Edit : the 85 is function of driving conditions, and varies
MUCH more likely he pushed the wrong pedal.. He may have thought he pushed the brakes.
4 роки тому+39
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” Douglas Adams. The tire pressure is completely irresponsible.
I think he was trying to squeeze out a bit more economy with the tire pressure. I don't think it was tire pressure but user error that caused the accident.
@@robertchow8829 but by saving some bucks by adding dangerously extra pressure to the tyres you damage everything that lays beyond the tyres since they are the first shock absorber component in the car...
@@robertchow8829 Over pessure on the tires is irresponsible anyway because it can lower the grip but I think like you, it must have been user error, mechanical brakes don't just fail randomly and then look fine after the accident unless the brakes overheated, which I consider very unlikely. Most probably he just didn't press the brake
I will give benefit of the doubt on the tire pressures. My eNiro was delivered with the tires at 48psi and I assumed the dealer would know what they were doing... It was a couple of weeks before I checked and spotted they should be 36 It certainly sounds otherwise like he was relying on the collision avoidance to stop the car.
@@grant_HH I've worked at a Hyundai dealer for some time and cars came from factory with over inflated tyres to avoid the rubber getting deformed if the car was parked for too long, when we checked the car before delivering it to the customer we were supposed to lower the tyre pressure so it was right on spot Wich means someone forgot to do that at your dealer
A really fair, balanced and well researched critique of the event, Bjørn. It would seem that at times, the 'new' technology of the E.V gets the blame for every failing and circumstance; even the human ones.
Niro manual, p. 6-46: "This system is only a supplemen‐ tal system and it is not intended to, nor does it replace the need for the extreme care and attention of the driver." Nuff said.
I've driven e-Niro now for 20k km. I've had two times when the car braked itself pretty hard. Both times were in a situation where car infront is slowing down quickly and turning to right on my lane. I was pleasantly surprised the car being cautious although I was completely aware of the car infront. Unfortunately I don't have more examples because I consider myself as very cautious driver keeping a long safe distance at all times. But I've also had situations where, in my opinion, Kia should've had braked so I don't completely trust it. With that being said, I continue my normal driving and not trusting fully to the car. I think that's the best way in any case :)
Actually, this autobreaking system is not there to be trusted upon, you're the driver, if you fail, the system is there to help avoid accidents, not to be trusted upon to think for distracted driver. In this case, I think the driver depended on it while not paying attention.
@@EggertOlafs Yeah. Maybe I chose my words badly about trusting the car. Point was not to trust in all cases :) I just wanted to share my feelings with e-Niro that there definitely is a lot of situations where the car is not braking. Or I haven't gone that far not braking myself, which is probably the reason. At least e-Niro is not phantom braking like some other cars ;) For a cautious driver that is a pleasant thing. Although this is not about braking but the backside collision warning is absolutely great and spots all the littlest things always. Also cruise is good, so at least most of the sensors in Niro are very accurate and sensitive.
If adoptive cruise control is used this is different, then the car continuously keep a distance. When just driving without that active it will not. Only the safety braking below 10km/h is active. It is not normal to use ACC in a city.
@@MortenB0 As I said: "this is not about braking". I wanted to say a positive review of e-Niro's sensors, other than safety braking. These two things are actually related a bit because there are cases when I'm using ACC in 40km/h in a city and someone is parked to a red light. On those cases I sometimes realize that the car does not necessarily slow down nor brake. Maybe it would but I haven't tested properly. Btw, ACC works from 30 km/h so yes, it can be used in a city area. Not recommended when there are stops and roundabouts but when there's a straight road in a city then why not use it?
I can see a third scenario. I drive the i3 and the moment you mentioned “bumpy tarmac” I could only think of one thing. Many cars suddenly disable regen the moment a wheel could lose traction. In the i3 it’s like shifting into neutral for a second. Can be quite shocking if you don’t know what it is and you need to apply a lot more brake pedal pressure to compensate. Based on the damage shown, it seems like it was a low-speed crash, so this is a scenario which should be discussed.
I have experienced similar on Kia soul driving over drain cover on wet. Car starts freerolling for a moment, abs kicks inn and suddenly you have no brakeforce. I consider my self and experienced driver😁 like we all do. But now that I know about this fenomen it will not surprise me.
@@Barano555 It happens to me anytime I go downhill where there is a metal man-hole cover and it is wet. The car loses all traction and it travels at least 5-8 meters before you can have control back... since I know this if it is a wet morning I just slow down to 20-30km/h and get ready for the jump. Mind you I am in southern Spain and the roads are almost never wet here.
I only know it for IONIQ: in this situation the car switches to mechanical brakes immediately. There is no huge difference the way the car is slowing down only regen is off.
Yep. This happens to hybrid cars too. The "issue" of course is that the regen braking force is applied before the differential. So, if a wheel lose traction, it "instantly" block and the other freeroll. The effect can be/is mitigated with ABS and friction brakes, but how well and transparently it works, is a matter of strategy and time of intervention.
@@gustavopressanto5336 so dusty smooth tarmac and rain is like sope the first 10 minutes. In Norway the tarmac is rougher and not much dust. So in your scenario if you can imagine all the small bumps on the tarmac and a manhole cover going downhill, from the video, and you have not experienced it before? A good abs system in this scenario will react in under .5 seconds. Ok so right side is slipping, we have no brakeforce, then let's apply it to left side. This is not the case with Kia that I drive. Abs kicks in car starts freerolling and then you're sitting there clueless for 2 seconds.
Great video as always. I actually watched this when it aired, and unless I remember incorrectly, according to the guy that had the accident, he actually floored the brake pedal after noticing the the car wasn't slowing down with "normal braking". This of course is impossible to prove or disprove, but I felt it was worth mentioning, as most commenters seem to blame him for trusting the autobrake system blindly.
Hello everyone. I have E-niro since 2019 april, live in Norway (Bergen). Had run already 40k km. This month I start noticing weird things happening with my KIA car brakes... It is hard to explain everything, but I think that it is possible that Kia's braking system has some issues... Here is my short story. Some details first : It was morning, around 06:00, air temperature +6, road dry, no rain, no fog, no oil on asfalt, tires changed to M+S, pressure as in manual says. I drove around 8km from my garage and it happened! My speed was around 50km/h, (regeneration set to 0) and was approaching roundabout. I began to break, and just before roundabout there was realy small bump on asfalt. My wheel drove over it and after that I lost my braking power. I know that my foot was presing breaking equally. But that little bump did something and my car just stopped breaking! I had to repress pedal to start breaking again... I thought it was my mistake, but that happened 3 or 4 times on other days, other places, BUT! everytime was some roads roughness, speed 20-60km/h. I am sure it is something wrong with KIA... I must find out.... So when I found this video, wanted to share my thoughts and experienc. Drive safe and pay attention to the road, don't trust your life to anti collisions system on your car! :)
Very good reflections. I must say I was also wondering about that incident, and also the angle of the journalists in that TV program. I don´t believe that the car has any faults, but I believe that the driver relied to much on the eletronic system - or he pushed the wrong pedal (accelerator rather than brake). In the TV program they only looked at one side (electronic failure) and never looked at potential driver error - even though tire pressure was really high etc.
Owning a EV Niro now for a few months, I have to say that the only way this could have happened is that his foot was still on the accelerator. I came close to hitting someone from behind and it was clearly not the fault of the car, I had my foot ever so slightly on the accelerator which disabled most of the auto regen and also disabled the autobrake because I was distracted and only realized at the last minute that I would hit the car. Si I hit the brakes and all was fine. Bjorn's assessment was dead on about the accelerator. 100% of the time it's driver distraction and not the car. You need to get your foot off the accelerator to make sure you do not override the auto features. I feel 100% safe in this car if you keep your eyes on the road and not look at your radio or display or phone, which I agree is not always easy to do with all the display info available in the car to distract you. In my opinion. The car is 100% safe. I definitely will not sell my car because of his mistake.
My theory from driving Ioniq is that: you brake normally (which is regen up to a certain point) and if for some reason the car thinks it's loosing grip, the normal brakes will take over. However, there is a small gap there and you get the feeling that the brakes fail for a fraction of a second. It scared me the first time but now i know and drive accordingly.
There is no gap if you stomp on the pedal with full force. Only if you gradually increase pressure (what people normally do in normal driving situations).
I think the time gap is the time that the brake pump needed to charge the brake system. Sometimes you can hear the pump working if you step hard on the brake several times in a quiet and tight space.
I test drove the Peugeot e-208 and experienced something similar. I was driving under 40 kmh and slowly began braking but the car was not decelerating fast enough so I pressed the brake pedal even harder, as hard as could, but the car did not stopp immediately. The car stopped gently after about 5 seconds. Those were some of the longest 5 seconds of my life. Thank god, there was no pedestrian or car in front off me. And thank god that I stopped before the junction, being hit buy a truck or something from the side would not be a pleasant experience.
@@Foxor83 Just like the people from KIA suggested could be the problem. There are several Kia drivers in the comments who similarly loose ability to brake because of some bump. The problem is that it lasts for seconds. People report that they travel a long distance without brake power...
If ESP notes any slip on the wheels while braking with regen, it will stop regening instantly and only use disks until the brake pedal is released and pressed again. Had that several times on steep or fast curves with some bumps in it.
So, the guy was driving down a fairly steep slope on bumpy tarmac with seriously over inflated tires... That combination will increase your stopping distance. Especially, for example, when the road is wet/moist/oily. On a road like that, with stopping lights, speedbumps and a turn to the right....why would auto-braking have any role in this? Only if people in front of him suddenly slammed on their brakes, can the system assist in stopping the car. Also....what if the Kia battery was too full to "regen" with the brake pedal? In that case the "victim" had a different pedal feeling than he was used to. So not pressing hard enough until it was too late. Bjorn didn't mention if people in front of the "Kia driver" performed emergency stops them selves. The claim of the Kia Driver seems to be "I applied the brakes as normal, but the brakes said...no soup for you". With no evidence of any mechanical or electrical problem in de brake system, only two scenario's remain in my opinion: - something mysteriously going wrong with the car only once and that error can never be repeated - driver error; reacting too late or just reduced braking power due to too full battery for brake-pedal regen, road conditions, bumpy tarmac, slope and over inflated tires My money is on: Driver Error. It was just an accident. It sucks, but there you go.
@@bjornnyland yes, I heard you say that. Still, theoretically it's possible he had a different pedal feel than he expected. But still think that if everything was working well, he took a too long break behind the steering wheel and used his brakes to late 😉.
I once experienced my e-niro cut regen when completely topped off (I have a downhill from my home). It was a bit uncomfortable, because there was no warning beforehand (at least not one I noticed). I think it strange that KIA doesn’t have an auxiliary system that kicks in when the regen shuts off.
I think you added a useful independent perspective. There doesn’t seem to be any significant common fault. There were lots of other factors which were not reported. I would not be put off buying a Kia due to this incident. It’s still a very decent EV.
Hello Björn, it is plausible for me with this 3 guesses: 1. Driver hast not paid attention and trusted fully the Emergency Brake System. 2. The Van was already stopped much earlier. (Niro approached standing car) 3. The Emergency Brake System works similar to that in my ioniq Electric from Summer 2018. My ioniq seems not to recognize Cars or obstacles already stopped, which i'm starting to approaching. The Emergency Brake System recognize obstacles only If they was already ahead and slowed afther that down before they Stop. It works OK if it was a fresh cleaned Car. And it became mutch worse, if there where a little bit of any dirt / "Schmutz" on it.
I have also experienced this when driving a Hyundai Kona, I brake and come across some dumps and all braking effect disappears. The car continues for several meters without the brakes working. This always happened in the same place.
The dude crached his own car! I drive an ev with driver support systems, the fact that my car contains these systems does not exempt me from knowing the limits/features of the various systems (overwrite through accelerator, or upper and lower speed limits). perhaps this crazy story was a way to get more money in the resale value of the car after the accident damage?
Hi Bjørn, As a french e-Niro's owner, I can just tell you that my brakes work fine :) (even auto brakes) we have cooler/heater liquid battery system but not the heat pump.
I have an IONIQ PHEV with the same blended brake system. When ABS kicks in the regen backs off, and you have to brake a bit harder to compensate. It's weird until you get used to it. With overinflated tires on that rough road you showed us, my gut feeling is that he was late to brake, braked hard as a result the ABS kicked in. Being new to the car with relatively few kilometers driven, he was unfamiliar with this quick and didn't push the pedal any harder. More care and attention to brake early and normally would have prevented this.
A fine review of the issue Bjorn. May I offer a bit more to colour your thoughts. I had a Hyundai Ioniq 28kWh, the FCA, radar operated Front Collision Avoidance, would regularly function if you were getting too close to vehicles on front in heavy breaking traffic, or situations where the distance to stop was small, and you were progressively breaking quickly. Ie the system was prepared to take over, thinking you were not breaking sufficiently heavily as it generally wanted a car length , not half a car length between you and the car in front, (depending on traffic and speed). We now have both a gen. 2 64kWh Kona and a Kia 64 kWh e-Niro. The Kona exhibits a similar FCA response to the previous Ioniq. The Kia e-Niro does NOT. In fact I had to check the specific specification in the UK to see if this feature is there. Typically shown in town driving when traffic has to stop quickly for lights and roundabouts, where there is a percussive reduction in reaction time for breaking. The Ioniq was very quick to release the breaking control (ABS) on poor road surfaces at low speeds going down steep hills. One particular side road I use regularly. The Kia doesn’t, the Kona does. Software intervention seems to be different, perhaps a feature of smoothing out the driving experience? I have yet to experience the Kia taking control as a safety measure, something the Hyundai’s do more frequently, albeit in controlled low speed situations. Just owner experience thoughts to add colour to your own good summary.
Thanks for sharing this video! Believe it or not my brand new 2022 Kia Soul EV just got into a car accident recently with brake failure. No reaction whatsoever after I applied my foot on the brake pedal; the so called regenarative breaking did not engage either which is supposedly designed to help slowing down your vehicle when foot off the accelarator ( I was traveling at a speed of roughly 30 km/h); also the auto breaking failed to function as well. it happened so instant as there was no room left me to react, my car ended up rear ending the vehicle in front of me. I filed a complaint report to Kia Canada, they agreed to do a diagonostic inspection and now I am just waiting for the test result ......very frustrating experience especially during the holiday. I can't not imagine if this accident were taken place on a high way......
The guy wasn't paying attention, just a tiny scratch, he blamed the car and he got all the press attention and they made that high production documentary??... Then a child has cancer... and no one cares...
An excellent appraisal of the crash claim in fantastic detail. I once had a new Ford Mondeo and on my commute home, there was a small spoon-shaped (a smooth rise then drop below then rise back to road level) bump in the tarmac about two foot long. You would barely notice it if you drove straight over it but it was located just before a junction in the braking zone. Every day when I hit that bump whilst braking it would knock the brakes off. I'd have to lift off and reapply them. It was a problem with the ABS. No other bumps did that so these things can happen.
I’ve got a new e-Niro too. As I realized sometimes the radar do not recognise the car in front to me (or just too late) and sometimes on a strong turn or lane pulling the car is A) is too careful and mostly stops despite another car is in another lane or B) thinks the lane is free and starts to accelerate. Both are wrong so I prefer turn it off at turn or if I caught up with another car which stands at a red light. May that not suitable for the city traffic.
I think you have solved the case, I feel the root cause is the bumpy roads and the driver was taking his foot off the peddle but with the bumps in the road his foot hit the peddle just a little that cause the auto braking system to turn off and not protect.. it all happened so fast he did not have time to react by actually pressing the brakes ..
I think people trust to much on all the automatic features not only with EV's but also with Fossil cars. The driver is always responcible for the actions.
Blaim the car when texting while driving. Classy. Not a fan of this automationhype going on. Some automation is great but in dense city enviroment its not. Thats my opinion.
I have the Kona which is mechanically much the same, if not identical. As one or two others have mentioned, if the ABS activates due to a choppy road the regen seems to suddenly drop away and it feels like the braking is suddenly less effective, to some people that might give the impression of a failure. That of course ignores the theory that the FCA should have intervened if the driver was off the accelerator and a collision was imminent.
In my 2017 Ioniq EV, if I brake hard or am regening and go over a noticeable bump in the road, regen will no longer be used and it will immediately switch to friction brakes. Only for the bumpy road situation does the transition feel a little weird, which might give the impression that the brakes are no longer working (or are at a lesser degree). However, I have never experienced such failure or lack of braking power. Slamming on the brakes for me (which I had to do several times over the years) never felt off or gave me a lack of confidence in them... ABS activated fine and it's still running well even after 73k miles.
Last fall I had a similar incident with my egolf one rainy and kind of frosty evening (Not below zero). I drove with only regen out of the parking garage and to the first roundabout. When I pressed the pedal there where no friction at all and I blasted straight trough. Luckily there where no crossing traffic. Some break exercises at a nearby parking lot fixed the problem. If there is a sudden drop in temperature I often experience that the egolf disc brakes does not produce the preferred amount of friction before they are cleaned by using the brakes. I have experienced this with fossil cars disc-only brakes as well.
No one should rely on emergency system . 100% driver error. The mechanical breaks are 100% mechanical, and have redundant brake lines and will still work without that car's computers...
@sebxx If the pressure pump goes, you will have a gradual loss of boost. A sudden rise in pressure would be a such catastrophic failure that the car mechanic should be able to see it. They did not find anything wrong with the brakes.
In my experience with my e-niro, the collision warning attention signal is depending on the difference in speed between the car in front and your own speed. (If there is a large speed difference, it will signal a lot of meters up front, if the speed difference is low, it will signal only +-10 meters up front) If the car in front also had some speed similar to hour own, it will only signal of you are relatively close to it. If the car in front of you suddenly brakes hard (for the light going to orange maybe) then the reaction time between the signal of collision warning and the actual collision is quite short. Like you said, in combination with being distracted and keep pressing accelerator and you have a collision happening.
I drive a fossil. There is a place where sometimes I have to brake because of the red traffic light. Its also a rather bumpy downhill stretch of road. Normal braking already feels like the car is sliding and not reacting very well to the braking. I don't how it would feel and how the car would brake if I had an auto-braking feature. The brakes are absolutely fine
That's really interesting, my Kia e-niro has also had braking issues. Mine has on three occasions applied the Auto Hold function whilst I've been driving. One of these I was driving between 50-60mph and almost had someone run into the back of me as the car unexpectedly decided to stop. On the first two times, Kia could not find any issues. The third occasion they have found an issue and are replacing the brake calipers, however these parts aren't available. They have had the Niro since the start of February and the part is not due until early May. Instead I've been driving a Corsa or an Astra provided by a hire company. A small number of e-Niro clearly have issues with the braking system, which isn't showing up as a fault. As you state, the Kia doesn't record all the driver's actions instead just errors... But the system will presumably only record errors it's been programmed to anticipate.
I have a kona and as other korean cars, when pressing the brake pedal, it first starts slowing down with regen, but if you run in to a pumb or pothole it stops regen and swiches very quickly to friction brakes. I have shitty home road and have experienced dozen of times doing that. Sometimes when its wet or the brake discs are dirty or rusty, the friction brakes can feel slippery for few fractions of a second before brakes kick in. Maby it did the same in that accident?
It would be interesting to know who are the brake and the automatic braking system suppliers. Suppliers are like car brands, there are premium ones and cheap ones, it would be interesting to know who supplies Kia.
I have such car, I've remarked that automatic keeping distance system may be disactivated when there's a groove on the road and it does not work well in curves. Even wit this safety device, but I cannot rely on it every time, always to be aware to take back control of the car. Rgds
It's not about autonomous emergency braking. He claimed he stepped on the pedal, but nothing happened. Could be due to the shift from regen to friction brake. In e.g. the Ioniq, you have to step more on the pedal in the friction part. Also, the majority of people does not apply enough force in emergency situations. Definitely nothing wrong with the brakes.
One thing is clear the driver following behind the other car has the greater responsibility of the two vehicles when it comes to maintaining an appropriate safe distance. It is also both drivers responsibility to ensure that there fokus is on driving the car and not other things that do not have to do with driving safely.
I have a relative new Kia e-Soul (2020) that I have about 5000km of experience with. The automatic safety brake has kicked in twice: once a car drove in front of me in a roundabout, and a second time a deer walked into the road from the forrest. The first instance surely saved me an expansive repair, and the second I might have too. A third time my car braked automatically when I had adaptive cruise control active and a van was partially parked into the road in a bus stop. Not sure if that was a sudden break due to distance target from adaptive control or because of a "dangerous encounter", and it felt kind of unnecessary because there still was room to drive by without crossing into the other lane. Still, very happy with the car! A point that wasn't made, and perhaps not relevant for the e-Niro is that when I bought my car there was no manual in Norwegian so I gave it to the seller and said I wanted one in my language. After a couple of weeks it was available in Norwegian online, but it did not ship with the car. Anyway, I read the Danish one online, and then read some parts of it in Norwegian when it became available to catch any differences. ABC: always browse catalouge (aka car manual :P )
Ive had an bad experience involving the Nissan Leaf 40 kWh. Nissan did a recall for these vehicles since the autobrake could be activated if you would be passing a stationary queue, for example at a traffic light. My car was scheduled for the recall (a software upgrade to be done at the Nissan Service centre) and the same week as the scheduled appointment I experienced this fault, I was passing a stationary queue to my left at a traffic light, and for no reason, the autobrakes were applied. Luckily, no car was behind me.. and I also had to go home for a change of pants. It only proves that no system, either by Kia, Nissan or any other manufacturer is completely failsafe. I still think that they're a good addition to safety, but it does certainly not take away the responsibility of the driver.
Had a Niro since July. Had two brake related incidents. First one occurred when in a stop / Start Queue. Stopping behind a car when up popped an error message telling me there was a fault on the emergency braking system. While I was braking quite hard (at about 10 mph ) there was no risk of a collision. Took it into Kia who had it about 1 month. They replaced the front radar sensor. Second one perhaps a bit more relevant. Was approaching the give way on a roundabout and using the regen paddle to come to a stop, suddenly realised that my deceleration was not enough to prevent an overshoot of the giveway line so pressed the brake pedal and still was not getting enough deceleration, pressed harder and the car stopped suddenly, still a minor overshoot. All this in about 2 second, so difficult to separate detail. My impression was that regen had not really kicked in as expected, thought it was my misjudgement.
Hi Björn, I basically agree with your conclusion. However, as a driver of a Kona Premium, which is based on the same base platform as the Kia, please let me add the following: in particular, the safety-relevant assistance systems sometimes fail depending on the driving situation or road conditions. This can be the case if the system believes it is determining that the driver is not paying enough attention. Other reasons for this behavior can be traced back to the fact that there are dents in the road surface. Or the route, as in the present case, describes a slight curve. In addition, a very fatal situation arises very often in the following case: you reactivate the cruise control assistant (Kona Style) or the so-called "traffic jam assistant" (with the Kona Premium) at a speed of around 50 km / h at a sufficient distance from the vehicles ahead. This assistant was previously set to a speed of 70 km / h the last time it was used. Fatally, the vehicle accelerates once, and it can happen that it does not recognize the vehicles in front quickly enough and simply does not brake. As a driver of a Kona you learn very quick (and that won't be any different with the Kia) that you have to be on your guard at all times when using the safety-related assistance systems and that as the driver you have to be ready to brake at all times. The driver involved in the accident probably did not consider this in the present case.
Hi Bjorn, I had a complete brake failure on my 2019 Kia eNiro FE. Luckily this happened when I started the car on my driveway. There were lots of warnings on the dashboard that the system had failed and the electric system limited drive to 12mph but even stopping from that speed took a LOT of force on the pedal. Interestingly when KIA cleared the fault code it didn't immediately re-occur but took a few cycles and attempts to recreate. Kia have replaced the part (took 7 weeks to get but that's a different story) and the car has been faultless since. Feel free to contact me if you'd like the details.
Channeling my inner Sherlock I can only conclude human error as the mostly likely cause of the bump. Did he use the friction brakes? This is not clear. Did he lift his foot from the throttle?...Also not clear. In my experience of 20 months and 31,000 km the e-Niro has never given any cause for concern in its going or its stopping. All to see on my channel Kia e-Niro Diaries.
I saw many comments blamming the driver, but I want to ask. Is not supposed that AEB should work to prevent crashes when the driver did no push the pedal? In this case he claims that he pressed the pedal. So in this case, should the AEB had to kicked in and helped him? Is possible that if the driver was braking, the AEB would not kicked in at all?
This is an old video but I have an theory now what really might have happened. I have an my21 e-Niro and I've driven it in summer and winter. I live in north Finland so we have obviously snow here on winter. FWD EV usually brakes with front wheel regen (when going to full stop the car will eventually use normal brakes below about 5km/h). I usually drive with regen setting one (very mild) and use brake pedal when deaccelerating. If there is a slip on either front wheel the regen system will be disabled for that braking event. You can feel this and see it in the dash (regen strength is indicated). The regen will come back only if you lift your foot and brake again. When this slip happens and regen is disabled, the car uses only its normal brakes. I have noticed that more braking force must sometimes be used to reach same deacceleration as it was with regen before wheel slip. If you don't press any harder you can end up going further then you meant and even crash when you are late in braking from the beginning. This can't happen if you brake really hard as it activates the emergency braking assist. It is only possible by an accident on slippery surface - like ice on winter. This has not happened to me during summer but I don't find it impossible to occur when there is some dirt on road. Happened once this winter though.
I owned a Holden Volt (Chevrolet and Ampera) in Australia before I bought a Model 3. EV's have fairly high tyre pressures and three times I had a situation where the Volt didn't brake when required. If braking and one tyre was on a metal man hole cover the car would due to the low traction surface pass straight over it. This therefore could make the difference between stopping and rear ending someone. The road conditions were always dry. So after my first experience I had to take care at intersections if braking over a man hole cover.
I had a Tesla Model S 90D where the brakes didn't work at all one morning. The wife was driving out of our garage (big garage for an apartment complex). When she got to the automatic gate she pushed the brake pedal to stop to let the gate open (we don't use the one pedal driving thing, the car always rolls slowly if the brakes aren't depressed, just like a fossil automatic would). The brakes did nothing and she rolled into the garage door. The door had to be completely replaced (40 000 NOK), the car only had some scratches on the front bumper. She was going slow as she was inside the garage, so it wasn't a dramatic crash, just a slow motion "wtf is happening pls stop or I will hit the door - BUMP". She called me and I went out to the garage and tested the brakes and at first they did nothing at all, and after trying them going back and forth a few times they slowly they started working again. I even filmed it to document for Tesla so they could look into it better. It was terrifying, what if a child had run infront of the car on her way out? She would have flattened the kid. The service over at Tesla was absolutely terrible and a whole story in itself. We sold the car because of the crappy service and not wanting to deal with them again. We liked our car and would've gladly kept it if it was given a clean bill of health by the engineers - but the thought of dealing with the service center again and how they treated us did not make us want to have anything to do with Tesla again. I read over at a Tesla forum that it could be the vacuum pump or w/e that had been plugged up by condensation that had frozen during the cold winter night. Don't think this exact scenario is applicable to the e-Niro as this happened in August and I don't think they use vacuum pumps for the brakes, but the point is stuff like this can happen and leave no trace in the logs. The Tesla engineers found nothing wrong in the logs (though they did find that we pressed the brake pedal and obviously the car didn't stop) when they eventually looked at the brakes after we insisted they take a look.
clearly when brake fluid isn't pressurized as expected, it's a completely different feel. (had this on a motorcycle while approaching roundabouts with a passenger, quite a moment)
Well, no one can say what really has happened. Even if it seems that the driver was at fault, it can't be proven. So I'm giving him 0.1% chance that he is saying the true. The more interesting question is: Would tv2 made this material if there was such an issue with a fossil car???
Just to clarify, the brakes didn’t fail, the driver wasn’t paying attention and crashed, the safety system that is meant as a back up didn’t work in this situation.
Very interesting video, @Bjørn Nyland - thank you for such a detailed insight. My gut feeling tells me it's probably driver error... but there is one thing I would be really grateful if you could check out for us fellow e-Niro owners, if you are still able to get to that area without too much trouble? Try running down that hill and the approach to it from further back a few times in SMART REGEN (aka AUTO REGEN) mode (i.e. blue regen mode, right-paddle hold to enable). See whether you ever encounter any FCA System shutdown warning (followed by a smart regen system shutdown, falling back to standard manual regen mode). This is something a number of us have encountered in the UK recently, and although it is not a dangerous situation (if a driver is awake, aware and knows how to drive), it can be a bit off-putting. It would be really nice to rule this completely out of the situation in the video. Details follow for the geeks like me who want to know more... apologies for length, but complex situations take detailed explanations. For those unaware, the Smart Regen mode uses the Forward Collision Avoidance (FCA) system to detect distance between you and the car ahead, and will maintain separation automatically if you are in 'accelerator-off', coasting mode. It will NOT bring you to a standstill (it's in the owners manual; it works down to 6km/h only). And it will turn off if you manually hit the brakes or the accelerator, as you would expect. It only operates when coasting, automatically selecting extra regen as necessary. There have been a growing number of reports in the UK about something affecting the forward-collision avoidance system and causing it to switch off (with warning on the dash, advising FCA system malfunction). The suspicion is some kind of radio-interference, but we're still trying to gather data on it. Once the FCA system goes off, as soon as you next lift the accelerator and come 'off the gas' (so to speak), if you're in Smart Regen mode at the time, it will realise that FCA has gone down, and will barf a warning about 'Smart Regen malfunction' - and revert back to one of the manual (white) regen levels instead. It is known that it happens in a number of very specific locations, often quite repeatable over many days and visits to the same place (but sometimes, annoyingly, not showing up). I've even managed to have my own Kia dealer test it and experience it - yet Kia UK deny they know anything about it when asked directly, and say they've not had any reports (which may be true in terms of 'direct reports', but many of my UK contacts who've experienced this most definitely HAVE reported it to their Kia dealers, so it must be known about at some level of the wider Kia UK or global organisation, presumably...) As I said, those of us who have experienced it are very cautious not to make this sound worse than it is... it is after all just the Smart Regen system going offline as a result of the FCA system going offline, presumably because of a burst of RF interference. Such things happen, and mostly, they won't cause problems (though I do wonder what might happen if it wasn't the Smart Regen system relying on FCA, and was instead the Smart Cruise System that suddenly went offline... would this be a greater cause for concern, given the likely higher speeds involved?). But it would be nice to get to the bottom of the reasons for it, and if possible, prevent it happening/get it fixed. It is the one and only occasional annoyance on what is otherwise an absolutely fantastic, brilliant, near-perfect EV (in my opinion). Hopefully you can see why, knowing this glitch can sometimes exist, it would be good to have this condition ruled out of the August collision in this video Bjørn is reporting on so well. If that street area shows no hint of interference on the FCA system, there or nearby, then I would be happy to say that this video is not related to the ongoing FCA issue, and then I'll just put it down to driver error (which I think is most likely, however hard that seems on the driver in the video). Similarly, if you've ever experienced the FCA System malfunction and shutdown occur on your e-Niro, I'd be interested to know. To clarify, I have an MY20/4 (UK) edition, and I have yet to confirm whether people with the MY19 First Edition UK version have experienced it, nor do I know whether it's affected owners outside of the UK. And there's no point people saying "my FCA system has never malfunctioned/switched off, everything's fine" unless they routinely drive around in Smart-Regen/Auto-Regen mode (because in manual-regen mode the FCA system is not being called-upon constantly, and thus any RF interference it passes through would go unnoticed, and it wouldn't shut down). Being in Smart Regen mode appears to be a prerequisite of being able to detect the FCA malfunction - but once found, it's usually very easy to make it happen again in the same local area. BTW - once triggered, the fix is simply to park up, power off, wait a couple, then power back on again, and usually everything will be normal again. You will not be able to re-engage Smart Regen (or Smart Cruise) until after the FCA system is back online (understandable really). And watch out for that potential delay; if you have your foot on the accelerator in Smart Regen mode when the FCA shuts down, it will not signal the Smart Regen shutdown until you NEXT start to coast (at which time it will realise, warn and disengage). This can sometimes be quite a distance away from the initial FCA shutdown location (I tested it once and got more than a half-mile away before I next needed to coast, for example!) Clearly the Smart-Regen is only truly 'looking for' the FCA when you coast, which is in line with the purpose and explanation in the manual, to be fair. Thanks for reading. If you're interested in discussing this outside of UA-cam, you'll find me (and a thousand-and-a-half other UK e-Niro owners) on the "Kia e-Niro UK Interest Group" Facebook group - facebook.com/groups/691336907895725/ - otherwise feel free to comment here, (if that's ok with Bjørn?)
I have a theory and I believe the key is in the road conditions. Let’s consider a likely scenario the driver lost concentration for a second. Comes through the bend and is surprised by suddenly having to break. IF he pushes the break pedal quickly but hesitates (possibly realizing the he doesn’t need to break that hard) the EBA (emergency brake assist) will activate implementing high break pressure in the system. This pressure will remain as long as the driver keeps the foot on the break pedal. (Driving on winter road you can often come across this.) IF at the same time one of the wheels is loosing road contact the ABS system will control the break power on the wheels will be dimensioned to this wheel. (This is a part of ABS and is commonly referred to as “select low”. This function is critical for the car to remain possible to steer whilst braking. No wheel can break harder than the wheel with the least friction.) Unless the driver lifts the foot off the break and re-applies the break and one is the wheels keeps “bumping” I’d assume the driver will get the feeling there is basically no breaking force. Bjørn, I know you tried braking through this corner but the key would be to keep the wheels on the uneven surface AND swiftly apply the brakes and hesitate. This is one scenario that I find plausible. Another would of course be that the brakes worked fine and the full truth hasn’t been provided. What do I know. 🤷♂️
There needs to be a mandate that manufacturers must include monitoring and recording mechanisms for all systems under electronic control. Two times I experienced electronic system failures and in each case the dealer claimed there was no eviidence. One time I was driving on a busy highway during rush hour and my Honda began to excellerate on it's own. I had to stomp on the brake pedal to counteract this. Problem mysteriously went away with no eviidence. Second issue occurred several times with my Prius. The car engine would shut down at random times. The dealer could not find any evidence. In this case they even had a Toyota expert attempt to diagnose the issue. In the end they replaced the entire Synerdrive unit (under warranty) and the problem went away
EU tried to promote it ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowledge/esave/esafety_measures_known_safety_effects/black_boxes_in_vehicle_data_recorders_en
I don't trust Anti Collision Braking. Many times the car doesn't even see, even a (stand still) car in front. Though, if the car spots a car in front and starts to emergency brake and I then stamp on the brake-pedal, it feels like the car releases it's braking session and only afterwards, accepts my braking input. Which makes the braking distance longer. I haven't tested and measured it, but it feels like that is what is happening. These "new" features takes time for drivers to learn and adapt to. The major issue is (in my opinion) what the driver think the car will do, is not always the same as what the car actually does.
Hi Björn! Interesting subject. One thing I have noticed on my Ioniq is that sometimes it feels it will not brake behind cars stopping at light. To be more precise, when following a car that changes lane to the right in front of me, and I am left with a stopped car at the light at more than 100 m, sometimes, it feels it will not stop/brake with "autopilot" engaged. Not even emergency braking does not kicks in, although I never wait for the warning as it looks it will not stop. I brake "manually". And I guess it is same system on Kia. I agree its not a fail proof system and as a driver you should always try to be there and stop if anything happens, but there are people who trust too much these systems. I am not blaming Kia or Hyundai in any ways, and in fact it is a pity that a TV station solved a technical problem with a CAN-CAN show, but sometimes, these systems fail. What I can blame Hyundai or Kia is that their customer relations is quite crappy. Writing to them to ask them for help on issues with service or sales of different dealers, no one answers. Someone should take responsibility. Sorry for the runt :D . Keep up the good work!
Probably not paying attention, but if the brakes completely failed shouldn't it light a warning? And if it happends enough they will recall it for repairs, i myself have gotten a seatbelt recall on my 2008 volvo so stuff doesn't get caught early
Automatic emergency braking system or not, it is ALWAYS the drivers responsibility to avoid a crash. The simplest explanation is normally the correct (Occam's razor), and in this case the simplest solution is that the driver did not pay attention when driving.
I own an e-Niro and have put on it 21000km Never had an issue with the brakes. The automatic braking has come up a few times because I was trying to stop just with the regen padle and got to close to the car in front. I was going really slow. I think he made a mistake and does not want to own up to it.
Not relevant, there's been few cold days up until now. And when it gets slippery, all motorbike owners either put on studded tires or store away their bikes for the season. The specific section of road, even though in downhill with a curb, is ~50m from the previous traffic light, in a "densely populated area".
I'm late to this thread so can someone confirm: Did the brakes fail to engage when driver depressed the brake pedal OR did the front collision braking system fail to engage WITHOUT the driver depressing the brake pedal?
I did have issues with the brakes on the Niro PHEV. During the last part of breaking moderately it has a tendency to go into something resembling an ABS jittering mode from 10-15 km/h. I assumed it was indecisive on regen and friction brake application (I tried to hit max regen in the PHEV). It happens quite often. With more heavy braking it doesn't happen. On the other hand the automatic emergency brake works. I was in a motorway accident where it warned and braked simultanouosly with me - in time to stop - unfortunately the car behind didn't. 100.000 DKK damage - one day old car 😭 I can't retest it as i just replaced it with an id.3. But it was not due to the brakes.
No heat pump in eNiro in France is a real shame. Winter can be really cold in some regions. Customers are a little mad against Kia France because they chose to cut a lot of features, that you can't even buy in options: heat pump, pre heating battery, blind spot detection, rear cross trafic alert, ventilated seats, seats memory, 220V outlet, etc. A mean choice from Kia France considering you have those in Belgium for the same price.
I have a Kia Optima 2018 PHEV. In the instrument cluster you can set the sensitivity of the emergency braking system. The settings range from hyper sensitive to normal to a bit too slow for my taste. When the emergency brakes kicks in the car beeps like a MF-er and pre-tensions the brakes, and if you don't press the brake pedal it will break after a fraction of a second. I haven't seen the TV2 piece but I suspect that the car either didn't detect the car in front or that he pressed the accelerator like you said Bjørn, and that the emergency braking system was set to the lowest sensitivity.
This happens some times when I activate cruise control with dist.radar on my VW Golf GTE PHEV 2016, some how the system fail to see the car infront and just accelerates unless you abort w brake pedal. Really dangerous if you are not really paying attention.
Hearing the news on brake issues with Kona, don’t you start to think about it again? I mean I do not know how similar the 2 cars actually but I heard many times that drivetrains are common. Could be completely different on software side also. What are your thoughts?
It could be a super mystery, or it could be the most likely reason, and the most likely reason here is that the driver didn't pay attention, but he doesn't want to own up to his mistake, and is blaming the car instead.
I wonder what the regen settings were. If you set it to Auto with 0 regen the car will provide regen braking on the pedal and also automatically add some in based on the front radar and the angle of the car, so if you're going down hill. It's conceivable the regen didn't behave as he expected but he wasn't on the brakes. I have once, many years ago on a diesel Ford, experienced what felt like brake failure at low speed. The issue was a bad non-return valve on the servo vacuum circuit. The result wasn't brake failure but a lack of servo assistance for a short time after starting the car on a cold day... but it was scary. I've only covered 900 miles in the Niro but I have no complaints about the brakes. I've driven in some pretty bad conditions, through lots of standing water, no problems.
If he hit that bump at a higher speed then the wheels may of left the ground,evenly if it was for a split second the abs would not kick in as well as the auto breaking.?
Somehow driver error is no longer a factor. Likely companies will stop featuring auto braking. Is there a possibility of dirty sensors from road debris? In this case blame the rain or driver for not keeping clean?
Maybe it has to do with the one pedal driving thing? It could be his habit to press the accelerator often to get move cuz his regen is so strong - slow down. Or maybe that speedbump accidently pushed him to press the accelerator to deactivate automatic braking. This clearly shows the big flaw of one pedal driving because the drivers just expect the regen or automatic braking to do the braking job - they are just gluing their foot on the accelerator all the time - never move back and forth. I see why VW, Audi, and others stop using one pedal driving on their cars to prevent this habit causing the accident.
You can instantly see what kind of driver a person is by how they handle the steering wheel. Not speaking about Darko specifically, but people who don't take the task of holding the steering wheel seriously, generally tend to have the same lack of respect for other aspects of driving.
4 роки тому
I have kind of same problem with my I3. With summer tires, regenerative braking works perfectly (I'm never braking, even if I'm living in the Swiss mountains), but with winter tires, it's shiiiiiiiit. Sometimes, it works and sometimes, especially in curves, it suddenly stop working and I have to brake "manually". BMW claims that this is normal, due to the winter tires, ABS, computing, ... (bigger wheels and newer tires as the sommer ones). I think it's dangerous, a car not always reacting the same way.
Well, to be honest, I've read some posts about ioniq brakes not working as well and the dealerships not seeing any errors, so if kia uses the same system, they might want to look into that. You mention brakes are "old tech" but due to the regen first engaging I am not sure it's a very traditional system. it might be an electronic pedal, and the computer actuating the actual brake system. If there's a glitch in there that could become an issue. It might also be why Kia mentioned the "grey import" thing, as it might not have had essential updates that could have fixed an issue and have prevented this.
When I reviewed the KIA Niro EV, I wasn't impressed with the braking system. The friction and regenerative braking weren't well integrated, it did a lot of phantom braking, etc. However, this is a different issue, and I personally wouldn't trust a system like that. If it brakes for you, great. Otherwise, I'll be braking myself.
Wow, guys... remember:
Break = pause, chill time, "lunch break" or something going kaputt
Brake = slow down the car
Fix it ;)
Okay okay, I will correct it, sorry. ;)
Give me a brake 😄
also:
to break sth (to pieces): damage something (for example a car)
The people who speak English most competently are often those who speak it as a foreign language
My guess is he wasn’t paying attention and he relied to much on the technology. In other words bad driving and then blame the car for it.
Yes. Of course, he is quilty for the crash but I think the guy wanted to question the car's ability to brake in that situation when driver makes a mistake. Questioning that is imo reasonable. I don't think anyone can actually blame the car nor the company if you bump into someone's back.
@@yourcrazybear That's why it is a driver aid!
Yeah, he expected the car’s collision avoidance scheme to work, and it didn’t. How stupid of him. I would never trust the computer to apply brakes in an emergency. The current systems just had control back to the driver with about a second before collision.
You are spot on if I never owned one I would believe it but if you hold down the left regen paddle that also will force the car into standstill with just the regen
The guy didn't brake and blamed Kia. That's my opinion.
@@yourcrazybear Just like people blaming autopilot for crashing on a highway. Where was the driver when their car was off crashing into things?
Exactly! 👍🏻
I think the guy just spun up some sobstory so he doesnt lose his insurance bonus when he was clearly at fault. So theyre just throwing dirt at Kia for no reason.
Bottom line: auto braking is an extra safety feature. If it fails the driver has already failed.
Unless the car was in some kind of self drive mode the crash is 100% the fault of the driver.
I've had an occasion in my leaf. If you use adaptive cruise in traffic sometimes when the traffic is crawling it can get too close. Twice I've pressed the brake myself. I don't know if it would have gone on to hit the car in front. No problem if you're actually awake!
Leaf does that regularly.
@@schawo2 will it eventually stop, or hit the car?
Uhh... you don't brake in time, you're at fault.
Don't rely on emergency systems. Unless the brakes physically didn't work, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
He either was distracted or relied on the emergency brake system, the mechanical brakes part of an electric car is the same as always has been in all cars and it's not something that can fail intermittently like a electronic device would.
We can say a security system related to the brakes failed (the emergency brake system) but that doesn't make it so the car won't stop if you slam on the brake pedal yourself when you see the danger
@@patreekotime4578 I am mechanic I think I know how cars work, only intermittent fail brakes may have without leaving any trace is the overheating of the fluid due to continuous braking, as long and you have brake fluid, don't have a leak on the two independent hydraulic circuits car brakes have or air got in the circuit somehow the mechanical brakes should work
@@jonathanalcocer3872 you are right, am also a mechanic and brake failures are incredibly rare. Human error is much more likely in this case.
@@David-bl1bt Yes dual hydraulic circuits is the most common and I don't think that's any different with EVs
@@David-bl1bt Kia E-niro is built on the Hybrid platform only removed the engine so should have everything the same except engine and exhaust and that stuff.
Why do people rely on automatic systems instead of breaking themself and have a good look of their surrondings when driving.
Yeah. Is this normal now? lol.
The guy claims that he did try to manually brake, but it had no effect
@@MrEik1234 If the guy claims that it's not an issue with automatic braking - it's issue on normal brakes and that's a big deal. Since there was no problem, this must be a user error :)
I've read this freaking manual yesterday : it's in there, it works between 10 and 85 km/h, and is not supposed to replace the driver's attention.
Edit : the 85 is function of driving conditions, and varies
Yes there's like a whole category for 'System Limitations'
MUCH more likely he pushed the wrong pedal.. He may have thought
he pushed the brakes.
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” Douglas Adams.
The tire pressure is completely irresponsible.
I think he was trying to squeeze out a bit more economy with the tire pressure. I don't think it was tire pressure but user error that caused the accident.
@@robertchow8829 but by saving some bucks by adding dangerously extra pressure to the tyres you damage everything that lays beyond the tyres since they are the first shock absorber component in the car...
@@robertchow8829 Over pessure on the tires is irresponsible anyway because it can lower the grip but I think like you, it must have been user error, mechanical brakes don't just fail randomly and then look fine after the accident unless the brakes overheated, which I consider very unlikely.
Most probably he just didn't press the brake
I will give benefit of the doubt on the tire pressures.
My eNiro was delivered with the tires at 48psi and I assumed the dealer would know what they were doing...
It was a couple of weeks before I checked and spotted they should be 36
It certainly sounds otherwise like he was relying on the collision avoidance to stop the car.
@@grant_HH I've worked at a Hyundai dealer for some time and cars came from factory with over inflated tyres to avoid the rubber getting deformed if the car was parked for too long, when we checked the car before delivering it to the customer we were supposed to lower the tyre pressure so it was right on spot
Wich means someone forgot to do that at your dealer
A really fair, balanced and well researched critique of the event, Bjørn.
It would seem that at times, the 'new' technology of the E.V gets the blame for every failing and circumstance; even the human ones.
Niro manual, p. 6-46:
"This system is only a supplemen‐
tal system and it is not intended
to, nor does it replace the need for
the extreme care and attention of
the driver."
Nuff said.
I've driven e-Niro now for 20k km. I've had two times when the car braked itself pretty hard. Both times were in a situation where car infront is slowing down quickly and turning to right on my lane. I was pleasantly surprised the car being cautious although I was completely aware of the car infront. Unfortunately I don't have more examples because I consider myself as very cautious driver keeping a long safe distance at all times.
But I've also had situations where, in my opinion, Kia should've had braked so I don't completely trust it. With that being said, I continue my normal driving and not trusting fully to the car. I think that's the best way in any case :)
Actually, this autobreaking system is not there to be trusted upon, you're the driver, if you fail, the system is there to help avoid accidents, not to be trusted upon to think for distracted driver. In this case, I think the driver depended on it while not paying attention.
@@EggertOlafs Yeah. Maybe I chose my words badly about trusting the car. Point was not to trust in all cases :) I just wanted to share my feelings with e-Niro that there definitely is a lot of situations where the car is not braking. Or I haven't gone that far not braking myself, which is probably the reason. At least e-Niro is not phantom braking like some other cars ;) For a cautious driver that is a pleasant thing.
Although this is not about braking but the backside collision warning is absolutely great and spots all the littlest things always. Also cruise is good, so at least most of the sensors in Niro are very accurate and sensitive.
If adoptive cruise control is used this is different, then the car continuously keep a distance. When just driving without that active it will not. Only the safety braking below 10km/h is active. It is not normal to use ACC in a city.
@@MortenB0 As I said: "this is not about braking". I wanted to say a positive review of e-Niro's sensors, other than safety braking. These two things are actually related a bit because there are cases when I'm using ACC in 40km/h in a city and someone is parked to a red light. On those cases I sometimes realize that the car does not necessarily slow down nor brake. Maybe it would but I haven't tested properly.
Btw, ACC works from 30 km/h so yes, it can be used in a city area. Not recommended when there are stops and roundabouts but when there's a straight road in a city then why not use it?
E-Niro owner here. 30.000 KM and counting. No issues what soever with breaking. Do not recognize the issue at all.
Same here (45 000 Kms) no issue at all.
I can see a third scenario. I drive the i3 and the moment you mentioned “bumpy tarmac” I could only think of one thing. Many cars suddenly disable regen the moment a wheel could lose traction. In the i3 it’s like shifting into neutral for a second. Can be quite shocking if you don’t know what it is and you need to apply a lot more brake pedal pressure to compensate. Based on the damage shown, it seems like it was a low-speed crash, so this is a scenario which should be discussed.
I have experienced similar on Kia soul driving over drain cover on wet. Car starts freerolling for a moment, abs kicks inn and suddenly you have no brakeforce.
I consider my self and experienced driver😁 like we all do. But now that I know about this fenomen it will not surprise me.
@@Barano555 It happens to me anytime I go downhill where there is a metal man-hole cover and it is wet. The car loses all traction and it travels at least 5-8 meters before you can have control back... since I know this if it is a wet morning I just slow down to 20-30km/h and get ready for the jump. Mind you I am in southern Spain and the roads are almost never wet here.
I only know it for IONIQ: in this situation the car switches to mechanical brakes immediately. There is no huge difference the way the car is slowing down only regen is off.
Yep. This happens to hybrid cars too. The "issue" of course is that the regen braking force is applied before the differential. So, if a wheel lose traction, it "instantly" block and the other freeroll. The effect can be/is mitigated with ABS and friction brakes, but how well and transparently it works, is a matter of strategy and time of intervention.
@@gustavopressanto5336 so dusty smooth tarmac and rain is like sope the first 10 minutes. In Norway the tarmac is rougher and not much dust.
So in your scenario if you can imagine all the small bumps on the tarmac and a manhole cover going downhill, from the video, and you have not experienced it before?
A good abs system in this scenario will react in under .5 seconds. Ok so right side is slipping, we have no brakeforce, then let's apply it to left side. This is not the case with Kia that I drive. Abs kicks in car starts freerolling and then you're sitting there clueless for 2 seconds.
Great video as always. I actually watched this when it aired, and unless I remember incorrectly, according to the guy that had the accident, he actually floored the brake pedal after noticing the the car wasn't slowing down with "normal braking". This of course is impossible to prove or disprove, but I felt it was worth mentioning, as most commenters seem to blame him for trusting the autobrake system blindly.
If this happened with a fossil car, we would never have heard about it...
Hello everyone. I have E-niro since 2019 april, live in Norway (Bergen). Had run already 40k km. This month I start noticing weird things happening with my KIA car brakes... It is hard to explain everything, but I think that it is possible that Kia's braking system has some issues... Here is my short story.
Some details first : It was morning, around 06:00, air temperature +6, road dry, no rain, no fog, no oil on asfalt, tires changed to M+S, pressure as in manual says.
I drove around 8km from my garage and it happened!
My speed was around 50km/h, (regeneration set to 0) and was approaching roundabout. I began to break, and just before roundabout there was realy small bump on asfalt. My wheel drove over it and after that I lost my braking power. I know that my foot was presing breaking equally. But that little bump did something and my car just stopped breaking! I had to repress pedal to start breaking again...
I thought it was my mistake, but that happened 3 or 4 times on other days, other places, BUT! everytime was some roads roughness, speed 20-60km/h.
I am sure it is something wrong with KIA... I must find out.... So when I found this video, wanted to share my thoughts and experienc.
Drive safe and pay attention to the road, don't trust your life to anti collisions system on your car! :)
Very good reflections. I must say I was also wondering about that incident, and also the angle of the journalists in that TV program. I don´t believe that the car has any faults, but I believe that the driver relied to much on the eletronic system - or he pushed the wrong pedal (accelerator rather than brake). In the TV program they only looked at one side (electronic failure) and never looked at potential driver error - even though tire pressure was really high etc.
Owning a EV Niro now for a few months, I have to say that the only way this could have happened is that his foot was still on the accelerator. I came close to hitting someone from behind and it was clearly not the fault of the car, I had my foot ever so slightly on the accelerator which disabled most of the auto regen and also disabled the autobrake because I was distracted and only realized at the last minute that I would hit the car. Si I hit the brakes and all was fine. Bjorn's assessment was dead on about the accelerator. 100% of the time it's driver distraction and not the car. You need to get your foot off the accelerator to make sure you do not override the auto features. I feel 100% safe in this car if you keep your eyes on the road and not look at your radio or display or phone, which I agree is not always easy to do with all the display info available in the car to distract you. In my opinion. The car is 100% safe. I definitely will not sell my car because of his mistake.
My theory from driving Ioniq is that: you brake normally (which is regen up to a certain point) and if for some reason the car thinks it's loosing grip, the normal brakes will take over. However, there is a small gap there and you get the feeling that the brakes fail for a fraction of a second. It scared me the first time but now i know and drive accordingly.
There is no gap if you stomp on the pedal with full force. Only if you gradually increase pressure (what people normally do in normal driving situations).
I think the time gap is the time that the brake pump needed to charge the brake system. Sometimes you can hear the pump working if you step hard on the brake several times in a quiet and tight space.
I test drove the Peugeot e-208 and experienced something similar. I was driving under 40 kmh and slowly began braking but the car was not decelerating fast enough so I pressed the brake pedal even harder, as hard as could, but the car did not stopp immediately. The car stopped gently after about 5 seconds. Those were some of the longest 5 seconds of my life. Thank god, there was no pedestrian or car in front off me. And thank god that I stopped before the junction, being hit buy a truck or something from the side would not be a pleasant experience.
@@Foxor83 Just like the people from KIA suggested could be the problem. There are several Kia drivers in the comments who similarly loose ability to brake because of some bump. The problem is that it lasts for seconds. People report that they travel a long distance without brake power...
If ESP notes any slip on the wheels while braking with regen, it will stop regening instantly and only use disks until the brake pedal is released and pressed again.
Had that several times on steep or fast curves with some bumps in it.
So, the guy was driving down a fairly steep slope on bumpy tarmac with seriously over inflated tires... That combination will increase your stopping distance. Especially, for example, when the road is wet/moist/oily. On a road like that, with stopping lights, speedbumps and a turn to the right....why would auto-braking have any role in this? Only if people in front of him suddenly slammed on their brakes, can the system assist in stopping the car.
Also....what if the Kia battery was too full to "regen" with the brake pedal? In that case the "victim" had a different pedal feeling than he was used to. So not pressing hard enough until it was too late.
Bjorn didn't mention if people in front of the "Kia driver" performed emergency stops them selves. The claim of the Kia Driver seems to be "I applied the brakes as normal, but the brakes said...no soup for you".
With no evidence of any mechanical or electrical problem in de brake system, only two scenario's remain in my opinion:
- something mysteriously going wrong with the car only once and that error can never be repeated
- driver error; reacting too late or just reduced braking power due to too full battery for brake-pedal regen, road conditions, bumpy tarmac, slope and over inflated tires
My money is on: Driver Error. It was just an accident. It sucks, but there you go.
As already mentioned in the video, even at high SoC (95 %), the car can regen a lot.
@@bjornnyland yes, I heard you say that. Still, theoretically it's possible he had a different pedal feel than he expected. But still think that if everything was working well, he took a too long break behind the steering wheel and used his brakes to late 😉.
I once experienced my e-niro cut regen when completely topped off (I have a downhill from my home). It was a bit uncomfortable, because there was no warning beforehand (at least not one I noticed). I think it strange that KIA doesn’t have an auxiliary system that kicks in when the regen shuts off.
Great investigative journalism!
I think you added a useful independent perspective. There doesn’t seem to be any significant common fault. There were lots of other factors which were not reported. I would not be put off buying a Kia due to this incident. It’s still a very decent EV.
Hello Björn,
it is plausible for me with this 3 guesses:
1. Driver hast not paid attention and trusted fully the Emergency Brake System.
2. The Van was already stopped much earlier. (Niro approached standing car)
3. The Emergency Brake System works similar to that in my ioniq Electric from Summer 2018.
My ioniq seems not to recognize Cars or obstacles already stopped, which i'm starting to approaching. The Emergency Brake System recognize obstacles only If they was already ahead and slowed afther that down before they Stop.
It works OK if it was a fresh cleaned Car. And it became mutch worse, if there where a little bit of any dirt / "Schmutz" on it.
I have also experienced this when driving a Hyundai Kona, I brake and come across some dumps and all braking effect disappears. The car continues for several meters without the brakes working. This always happened in the same place.
The dude crached his own car!
I drive an ev with driver support systems, the fact that my car contains these systems does not exempt me from knowing the limits/features of the various systems (overwrite through accelerator, or upper and lower speed limits).
perhaps this crazy story was a way to get more money in the resale value of the car after the accident damage?
Hi Bjørn,
As a french e-Niro's owner, I can just tell you that my brakes work fine :) (even auto brakes) we have cooler/heater liquid battery system but not the heat pump.
I have an IONIQ PHEV with the same blended brake system. When ABS kicks in the regen backs off, and you have to brake a bit harder to compensate. It's weird until you get used to it. With overinflated tires on that rough road you showed us, my gut feeling is that he was late to brake, braked hard as a result the ABS kicked in. Being new to the car with relatively few kilometers driven, he was unfamiliar with this quick and didn't push the pedal any harder. More care and attention to brake early and normally would have prevented this.
A fine review of the issue Bjorn. May I offer a bit more to colour your thoughts. I had a Hyundai Ioniq 28kWh, the FCA, radar operated Front Collision Avoidance, would regularly function if you were getting too close to vehicles on front in heavy breaking traffic, or situations where the distance to stop was small, and you were progressively breaking quickly. Ie the system was prepared to take over, thinking you were not breaking sufficiently heavily as it generally wanted a car length , not half a car length between you and the car in front, (depending on traffic and speed). We now have both a gen. 2 64kWh Kona and a Kia 64 kWh e-Niro. The Kona exhibits a similar FCA response to the previous Ioniq. The Kia e-Niro does NOT. In fact I had to check the specific specification in the UK to see if this feature is there. Typically shown in town driving when traffic has to stop quickly for lights and roundabouts, where there is a percussive reduction in reaction time for breaking.
The Ioniq was very quick to release the breaking control (ABS) on poor road surfaces at low speeds going down steep hills. One particular side road I use regularly. The Kia doesn’t, the Kona does.
Software intervention seems to be different, perhaps a feature of smoothing out the driving experience?
I have yet to experience the Kia taking control as a safety measure, something the Hyundai’s do more frequently, albeit in controlled low speed situations.
Just owner experience thoughts to add colour to your own good summary.
Thanks for sharing this video! Believe it or not my brand new 2022 Kia Soul EV just got into a car accident recently with brake failure. No reaction whatsoever after I applied my foot on the brake pedal; the so called regenarative breaking did not engage either which is supposedly designed to help slowing down your vehicle when foot off the accelarator ( I was traveling at a speed of roughly 30 km/h); also the auto breaking failed to function as well. it happened so instant as there was no room left me to react, my car ended up rear ending the vehicle in front of me. I filed a complaint report to Kia Canada, they agreed to do a diagonostic inspection and now I am just waiting for the test result ......very frustrating experience especially during the holiday. I can't not imagine if this accident were taken place on a high way......
The guy wasn't paying attention, just a tiny scratch, he blamed the car and he got all the press attention and they made that high production documentary??... Then a child has cancer... and no one cares...
An excellent appraisal of the crash claim in fantastic detail. I once had a new Ford Mondeo and on my commute home, there was a small spoon-shaped (a smooth rise then drop below then rise back to road level) bump in the tarmac about two foot long. You would barely notice it if you drove straight over it but it was located just before a junction in the braking zone. Every day when I hit that bump whilst braking it would knock the brakes off. I'd have to lift off and reapply them. It was a problem with the ABS. No other bumps did that so these things can happen.
I’ve got a new e-Niro too. As I realized sometimes the radar do not recognise the car in front to me (or just too late) and sometimes on a strong turn or lane pulling the car is A) is too careful and mostly stops despite another car is in another lane or B) thinks the lane is free and starts to accelerate. Both are wrong so I prefer turn it off at turn or if I caught up with another car which stands at a red light. May that not suitable for the city traffic.
I think you have solved the case, I feel the root cause is the bumpy roads and the driver was taking his foot off the peddle but with the bumps in the road his foot hit the peddle just a little that cause the auto braking system to turn off and not protect.. it all happened so fast he did not have time to react by actually pressing the brakes ..
I think people trust to much on all the automatic features not only with EV's but also with Fossil cars. The driver is always responcible for the actions.
Blaim the car when texting while driving. Classy. Not a fan of this automationhype going on. Some automation is great but in dense city enviroment its not. Thats my opinion.
I have the Kona which is mechanically much the same, if not identical. As one or two others have mentioned, if the ABS activates due to a choppy road the regen seems to suddenly drop away and it feels like the braking is suddenly less effective, to some people that might give the impression of a failure. That of course ignores the theory that the FCA should have intervened if the driver was off the accelerator and a collision was imminent.
ABS isn't making brake any stronger...
he didn't describe locked wheels, so it's really weak/no brake at all
That's why it's so important to keep distance and not rely completely on safety systems that fail.
In my 2017 Ioniq EV, if I brake hard or am regening and go over a noticeable bump in the road, regen will no longer be used and it will immediately switch to friction brakes. Only for the bumpy road situation does the transition feel a little weird, which might give the impression that the brakes are no longer working (or are at a lesser degree). However, I have never experienced such failure or lack of braking power. Slamming on the brakes for me (which I had to do several times over the years) never felt off or gave me a lack of confidence in them... ABS activated fine and it's still running well even after 73k miles.
Last fall I had a similar incident with my egolf one rainy and kind of frosty evening (Not below zero). I drove with only regen out of the parking garage and to the first roundabout. When I pressed the pedal there where no friction at all and I blasted straight trough. Luckily there where no crossing traffic. Some break exercises at a nearby parking lot fixed the problem. If there is a sudden drop in temperature I often experience that the egolf disc brakes does not produce the preferred amount of friction before they are cleaned by using the brakes. I have experienced this with fossil cars disc-only brakes as well.
Good investigation Bjørn. I suggest you another one about the Kona fires and the BMS recall in Korea and USA and why hasn't started yet in Europe
I have an e niro for over a year now. Sometimes the auto braking sometimes fails
No one should rely on emergency system . 100% driver error.
The mechanical breaks are 100% mechanical, and have redundant brake lines and will still work without that car's computers...
mechanical... but assisted: if the brake pump is out, you get a different feel
@sebxx If the pressure pump goes, you will have a gradual loss of boost.
A sudden rise in pressure would be a such catastrophic failure that the car mechanic should be able to see it. They did not find anything wrong with the brakes.
Bjorn FSD beta ic coming to Canada and Norway. Can't wait for you to test it
In my experience with my e-niro, the collision warning attention signal is depending on the difference in speed between the car in front and your own speed. (If there is a large speed difference, it will signal a lot of meters up front, if the speed difference is low, it will signal only +-10 meters up front) If the car in front also had some speed similar to hour own, it will only signal of you are relatively close to it. If the car in front of you suddenly brakes hard (for the light going to orange maybe) then the reaction time between the signal of collision warning and the actual collision is quite short. Like you said, in combination with being distracted and keep pressing accelerator and you have a collision happening.
I drive a fossil. There is a place where sometimes I have to brake because of the red traffic light. Its also a rather bumpy downhill stretch of road. Normal braking already feels like the car is sliding and not reacting very well to the braking. I don't how it would feel and how the car would brake if I had an auto-braking feature. The brakes are absolutely fine
That's really interesting, my Kia e-niro has also had braking issues. Mine has on three occasions applied the Auto Hold function whilst I've been driving. One of these I was driving between 50-60mph and almost had someone run into the back of me as the car unexpectedly decided to stop.
On the first two times, Kia could not find any issues. The third occasion they have found an issue and are replacing the brake calipers, however these parts aren't available. They have had the Niro since the start of February and the part is not due until early May. Instead I've been driving a Corsa or an Astra provided by a hire company. A small number of e-Niro clearly have issues with the braking system, which isn't showing up as a fault. As you state, the Kia doesn't record all the driver's actions instead just errors... But the system will presumably only record errors it's been programmed to anticipate.
I have a kona and as other korean cars, when pressing the brake pedal, it first starts slowing down with regen, but if you run in to a pumb or pothole it stops regen and swiches very quickly to friction brakes. I have shitty home road and have experienced dozen of times doing that. Sometimes when its wet or the brake discs are dirty or rusty, the friction brakes can feel slippery for few fractions of a second before brakes kick in. Maby it did the same in that accident?
It would be interesting to know who are the brake and the automatic braking system suppliers. Suppliers are like car brands, there are premium ones and cheap ones, it would be interesting to know who supplies Kia.
I have such car, I've remarked that automatic keeping distance system may be disactivated when there's a groove on the road and it does not work well in curves. Even wit this safety device, but I cannot rely on it every time, always to be aware to take back control of the car. Rgds
It's not about autonomous emergency braking. He claimed he stepped on the pedal, but nothing happened. Could be due to the shift from regen to friction brake. In e.g. the Ioniq, you have to step more on the pedal in the friction part. Also, the majority of people does not apply enough force in emergency situations. Definitely nothing wrong with the brakes.
One thing is clear the driver following behind the other car has the greater responsibility of the two vehicles when it comes to maintaining an appropriate safe distance. It is also both drivers responsibility to ensure that there fokus is on driving the car and not other things that do not have to do with driving safely.
I have a relative new Kia e-Soul (2020) that I have about 5000km of experience with. The automatic safety brake has kicked in twice: once a car drove in front of me in a roundabout, and a second time a deer walked into the road from the forrest. The first instance surely saved me an expansive repair, and the second I might have too.
A third time my car braked automatically when I had adaptive cruise control active and a van was partially parked into the road in a bus stop. Not sure if that was a sudden break due to distance target from adaptive control or because of a "dangerous encounter", and it felt kind of unnecessary because there still was room to drive by without crossing into the other lane.
Still, very happy with the car!
A point that wasn't made, and perhaps not relevant for the e-Niro is that when I bought my car there was no manual in Norwegian so I gave it to the seller and said I wanted one in my language. After a couple of weeks it was available in Norwegian online, but it did not ship with the car. Anyway, I read the Danish one online, and then read some parts of it in Norwegian when it became available to catch any differences.
ABC: always browse catalouge (aka car manual :P )
Ive had an bad experience involving the Nissan Leaf 40 kWh. Nissan did a recall for these vehicles since the autobrake could be activated if you would be passing a stationary queue, for example at a traffic light. My car was scheduled for the recall (a software upgrade to be done at the Nissan Service centre) and the same week as the scheduled appointment I experienced this fault, I was passing a stationary queue to my left at a traffic light, and for no reason, the autobrakes were applied. Luckily, no car was behind me.. and I also had to go home for a change of pants. It only proves that no system, either by Kia, Nissan or any other manufacturer is completely failsafe. I still think that they're a good addition to safety, but it does certainly not take away the responsibility of the driver.
Had a Niro since July. Had two brake related incidents. First one occurred when in a stop / Start Queue. Stopping behind a car when up popped an error message telling me there was a fault on the emergency braking system. While I was braking quite hard (at about 10 mph ) there was no risk of a collision. Took it into Kia who had it about 1 month. They replaced the front radar sensor.
Second one perhaps a bit more relevant. Was approaching the give way on a roundabout and using the regen paddle to come to a stop, suddenly realised that my deceleration was not enough to prevent an overshoot of the giveway line so pressed the brake pedal and still was not getting enough deceleration, pressed harder and the car stopped suddenly, still a minor overshoot. All this in about 2 second, so difficult to separate detail. My impression was that regen had not really kicked in as expected, thought it was my misjudgement.
Hi Björn, I basically agree with your conclusion.
However, as a driver of a Kona Premium, which is based on the same base platform as the Kia, please let me add the following: in particular, the safety-relevant assistance systems sometimes fail depending on the driving situation or road conditions. This can be the case if the system believes it is determining that the driver is not paying enough attention. Other reasons for this behavior can be traced back to the fact that there are dents in the road surface. Or the route, as in the present case, describes a slight curve.
In addition, a very fatal situation arises very often in the following case: you reactivate the cruise control assistant (Kona Style) or the so-called "traffic jam assistant" (with the Kona Premium) at a speed of around 50 km / h at a sufficient distance from the vehicles ahead. This assistant was previously set to a speed of 70 km / h the last time it was used. Fatally, the vehicle accelerates once, and it can happen that it does not recognize the vehicles in front quickly enough and simply does not brake.
As a driver of a Kona you learn very quick (and that won't be any different with the Kia) that you have to be on your guard at all times when using the safety-related assistance systems and that as the driver you have to be ready to brake at all times.
The driver involved in the accident probably did not consider this in the present case.
Hi Bjorn,
I had a complete brake failure on my 2019 Kia eNiro FE. Luckily this happened when I started the car on my driveway. There were lots of warnings on the dashboard that the system had failed and the electric system limited drive to 12mph but even stopping from that speed took a LOT of force on the pedal. Interestingly when KIA cleared the fault code it didn't immediately re-occur but took a few cycles and attempts to recreate. Kia have replaced the part (took 7 weeks to get but that's a different story) and the car has been faultless since. Feel free to contact me if you'd like the details.
Thanks for the info. But that case did leave errors in the log files.
Channeling my inner Sherlock I can only conclude human error as the mostly likely cause of the bump. Did he use the friction brakes? This is not clear. Did he lift his foot from the throttle?...Also not clear. In my experience of 20 months and 31,000 km the e-Niro has never given any cause for concern in its going or its stopping. All to see on my channel Kia e-Niro Diaries.
I saw many comments blamming the driver, but I want to ask. Is not supposed that AEB should work to prevent crashes when the driver did no push the pedal? In this case he claims that he pressed the pedal. So in this case, should the AEB had to kicked in and helped him? Is possible that if the driver was braking, the AEB would not kicked in at all?
This is an old video but I have an theory now what really might have happened. I have an my21 e-Niro and I've driven it in summer and winter. I live in north Finland so we have obviously snow here on winter. FWD EV usually brakes with front wheel regen (when going to full stop the car will eventually use normal brakes below about 5km/h). I usually drive with regen setting one (very mild) and use brake pedal when deaccelerating. If there is a slip on either front wheel the regen system will be disabled for that braking event. You can feel this and see it in the dash (regen strength is indicated). The regen will come back only if you lift your foot and brake again. When this slip happens and regen is disabled, the car uses only its normal brakes. I have noticed that more braking force must sometimes be used to reach same deacceleration as it was with regen before wheel slip. If you don't press any harder you can end up going further then you meant and even crash when you are late in braking from the beginning. This can't happen if you brake really hard as it activates the emergency braking assist. It is only possible by an accident on slippery surface - like ice on winter. This has not happened to me during summer but I don't find it impossible to occur when there is some dirt on road. Happened once this winter though.
I owned a Holden Volt (Chevrolet and Ampera) in Australia before I bought a Model 3. EV's have fairly high tyre pressures and three times I had a situation where the Volt didn't brake when required. If braking and one tyre was on a metal man hole cover the car would due to the low traction surface pass straight over it. This therefore could make the difference between stopping and rear ending someone. The road conditions were always dry. So after my first experience I had to take care at intersections if braking over a man hole cover.
I had a Tesla Model S 90D where the brakes didn't work at all one morning. The wife was driving out of our garage (big garage for an apartment complex). When she got to the automatic gate she pushed the brake pedal to stop to let the gate open (we don't use the one pedal driving thing, the car always rolls slowly if the brakes aren't depressed, just like a fossil automatic would). The brakes did nothing and she rolled into the garage door. The door had to be completely replaced (40 000 NOK), the car only had some scratches on the front bumper. She was going slow as she was inside the garage, so it wasn't a dramatic crash, just a slow motion "wtf is happening pls stop or I will hit the door - BUMP".
She called me and I went out to the garage and tested the brakes and at first they did nothing at all, and after trying them going back and forth a few times they slowly they started working again. I even filmed it to document for Tesla so they could look into it better. It was terrifying, what if a child had run infront of the car on her way out? She would have flattened the kid.
The service over at Tesla was absolutely terrible and a whole story in itself. We sold the car because of the crappy service and not wanting to deal with them again. We liked our car and would've gladly kept it if it was given a clean bill of health by the engineers - but the thought of dealing with the service center again and how they treated us did not make us want to have anything to do with Tesla again.
I read over at a Tesla forum that it could be the vacuum pump or w/e that had been plugged up by condensation that had frozen during the cold winter night. Don't think this exact scenario is applicable to the e-Niro as this happened in August and I don't think they use vacuum pumps for the brakes, but the point is stuff like this can happen and leave no trace in the logs. The Tesla engineers found nothing wrong in the logs (though they did find that we pressed the brake pedal and obviously the car didn't stop) when they eventually looked at the brakes after we insisted they take a look.
clearly when brake fluid isn't pressurized as expected, it's a completely different feel. (had this on a motorcycle while approaching roundabouts with a passenger, quite a moment)
Well, no one can say what really has happened. Even if it seems that the driver was at fault, it can't be proven. So I'm giving him 0.1% chance that he is saying the true.
The more interesting question is: Would tv2 made this material if there was such an issue with a fossil car???
Just to clarify, the brakes didn’t fail, the driver wasn’t paying attention and crashed, the safety system that is meant as a back up didn’t work in this situation.
Did this guy actually press the brake pedal at all?
Very interesting video, @Bjørn Nyland - thank you for such a detailed insight. My gut feeling tells me it's probably driver error... but there is one thing I would be really grateful if you could check out for us fellow e-Niro owners, if you are still able to get to that area without too much trouble?
Try running down that hill and the approach to it from further back a few times in SMART REGEN (aka AUTO REGEN) mode (i.e. blue regen mode, right-paddle hold to enable). See whether you ever encounter any FCA System shutdown warning (followed by a smart regen system shutdown, falling back to standard manual regen mode). This is something a number of us have encountered in the UK recently, and although it is not a dangerous situation (if a driver is awake, aware and knows how to drive), it can be a bit off-putting.
It would be really nice to rule this completely out of the situation in the video.
Details follow for the geeks like me who want to know more... apologies for length, but complex situations take detailed explanations.
For those unaware, the Smart Regen mode uses the Forward Collision Avoidance (FCA) system to detect distance between you and the car ahead, and will maintain separation automatically if you are in 'accelerator-off', coasting mode. It will NOT bring you to a standstill (it's in the owners manual; it works down to 6km/h only). And it will turn off if you manually hit the brakes or the accelerator, as you would expect. It only operates when coasting, automatically selecting extra regen as necessary.
There have been a growing number of reports in the UK about something affecting the forward-collision avoidance system and causing it to switch off (with warning on the dash, advising FCA system malfunction). The suspicion is some kind of radio-interference, but we're still trying to gather data on it. Once the FCA system goes off, as soon as you next lift the accelerator and come 'off the gas' (so to speak), if you're in Smart Regen mode at the time, it will realise that FCA has gone down, and will barf a warning about 'Smart Regen malfunction' - and revert back to one of the manual (white) regen levels instead.
It is known that it happens in a number of very specific locations, often quite repeatable over many days and visits to the same place (but sometimes, annoyingly, not showing up). I've even managed to have my own Kia dealer test it and experience it - yet Kia UK deny they know anything about it when asked directly, and say they've not had any reports (which may be true in terms of 'direct reports', but many of my UK contacts who've experienced this most definitely HAVE reported it to their Kia dealers, so it must be known about at some level of the wider Kia UK or global organisation, presumably...)
As I said, those of us who have experienced it are very cautious not to make this sound worse than it is... it is after all just the Smart Regen system going offline as a result of the FCA system going offline, presumably because of a burst of RF interference. Such things happen, and mostly, they won't cause problems (though I do wonder what might happen if it wasn't the Smart Regen system relying on FCA, and was instead the Smart Cruise System that suddenly went offline... would this be a greater cause for concern, given the likely higher speeds involved?). But it would be nice to get to the bottom of the reasons for it, and if possible, prevent it happening/get it fixed. It is the one and only occasional annoyance on what is otherwise an absolutely fantastic, brilliant, near-perfect EV (in my opinion).
Hopefully you can see why, knowing this glitch can sometimes exist, it would be good to have this condition ruled out of the August collision in this video Bjørn is reporting on so well. If that street area shows no hint of interference on the FCA system, there or nearby, then I would be happy to say that this video is not related to the ongoing FCA issue, and then I'll just put it down to driver error (which I think is most likely, however hard that seems on the driver in the video).
Similarly, if you've ever experienced the FCA System malfunction and shutdown occur on your e-Niro, I'd be interested to know. To clarify, I have an MY20/4 (UK) edition, and I have yet to confirm whether people with the MY19 First Edition UK version have experienced it, nor do I know whether it's affected owners outside of the UK.
And there's no point people saying "my FCA system has never malfunctioned/switched off, everything's fine" unless they routinely drive around in Smart-Regen/Auto-Regen mode (because in manual-regen mode the FCA system is not being called-upon constantly, and thus any RF interference it passes through would go unnoticed, and it wouldn't shut down). Being in Smart Regen mode appears to be a prerequisite of being able to detect the FCA malfunction - but once found, it's usually very easy to make it happen again in the same local area.
BTW - once triggered, the fix is simply to park up, power off, wait a couple, then power back on again, and usually everything will be normal again. You will not be able to re-engage Smart Regen (or Smart Cruise) until after the FCA system is back online (understandable really). And watch out for that potential delay; if you have your foot on the accelerator in Smart Regen mode when the FCA shuts down, it will not signal the Smart Regen shutdown until you NEXT start to coast (at which time it will realise, warn and disengage). This can sometimes be quite a distance away from the initial FCA shutdown location (I tested it once and got more than a half-mile away before I next needed to coast, for example!) Clearly the Smart-Regen is only truly 'looking for' the FCA when you coast, which is in line with the purpose and explanation in the manual, to be fair.
Thanks for reading. If you're interested in discussing this outside of UA-cam, you'll find me (and a thousand-and-a-half other UK e-Niro owners) on the "Kia e-Niro UK Interest Group" Facebook group - facebook.com/groups/691336907895725/ - otherwise feel free to comment here, (if that's ok with Bjørn?)
I have a theory and I believe the key is in the road conditions.
Let’s consider a likely scenario the driver lost concentration for a second. Comes through the bend and is surprised by suddenly having to break. IF he pushes the break pedal quickly but hesitates (possibly realizing the he doesn’t need to break that hard) the EBA (emergency brake assist) will activate implementing high break pressure in the system. This pressure will remain as long as the driver keeps the foot on the break pedal. (Driving on winter road you can often come across this.)
IF at the same time one of the wheels is loosing road contact the ABS system will control the break power on the wheels will be dimensioned to this wheel. (This is a part of ABS and is commonly referred to as “select low”. This function is critical for the car to remain possible to steer whilst braking. No wheel can break harder than the wheel with the least friction.)
Unless the driver lifts the foot off the break and re-applies the break and one is the wheels keeps “bumping” I’d assume the driver will get the feeling there is basically no breaking force.
Bjørn, I know you tried braking through this corner but the key would be to keep the wheels on the uneven surface AND swiftly apply the brakes and hesitate.
This is one scenario that I find plausible. Another would of course be that the brakes worked fine and the full truth hasn’t been provided. What do I know. 🤷♂️
There needs to be a mandate that manufacturers must include monitoring and recording mechanisms for all systems under electronic control.
Two times I experienced electronic system failures and in each case the dealer claimed there was no eviidence.
One time I was driving on a busy highway during rush hour and my Honda began to excellerate on it's own. I had to stomp on the brake pedal to counteract this. Problem mysteriously went away with no eviidence.
Second issue occurred several times with my Prius. The car engine would shut down at random times. The dealer could not find any evidence. In this case they even had a Toyota expert attempt to diagnose the issue. In the end they replaced the entire Synerdrive unit (under warranty) and the problem went away
EU tried to promote it ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowledge/esave/esafety_measures_known_safety_effects/black_boxes_in_vehicle_data_recorders_en
The UK Kona group have over 5 people with a 2020 Kona who have had brake failures or brake fail warning. I know parts are shared so maybe an issue.
The damage shown at 1:39 indicates a speed likely less than 10kph, hence the AEB was probably not active.
I don't trust Anti Collision Braking. Many times the car doesn't even see, even a (stand still) car in front. Though, if the car spots a car in front and starts to emergency brake and I then stamp on the brake-pedal, it feels like the car releases it's braking session and only afterwards, accepts my braking input. Which makes the braking distance longer.
I haven't tested and measured it, but it feels like that is what is happening.
These "new" features takes time for drivers to learn and adapt to. The major issue is (in my opinion) what the driver think the car will do, is not always the same as what the car actually does.
Hi Björn! Interesting subject. One thing I have noticed on my Ioniq is that sometimes it feels it will not brake behind cars stopping at light. To be more precise, when following a car that changes lane to the right in front of me, and I am left with a stopped car at the light at more than 100 m, sometimes, it feels it will not stop/brake with "autopilot" engaged. Not even emergency braking does not kicks in, although I never wait for the warning as it looks it will not stop. I brake "manually". And I guess it is same system on Kia. I agree its not a fail proof system and as a driver you should always try to be there and stop if anything happens, but there are people who trust too much these systems. I am not blaming Kia or Hyundai in any ways, and in fact it is a pity that a TV station solved a technical problem with a CAN-CAN show, but sometimes, these systems fail. What I can blame Hyundai or Kia is that their customer relations is quite crappy. Writing to them to ask them for help on issues with service or sales of different dealers, no one answers. Someone should take responsibility. Sorry for the runt :D . Keep up the good work!
Thank you bjorn, great investigation and reporting.
Probably not paying attention, but if the brakes completely failed shouldn't it light a warning? And if it happends enough they will recall it for repairs, i myself have gotten a seatbelt recall on my 2008 volvo so stuff doesn't get caught early
Automatic emergency braking system or not, it is ALWAYS the drivers responsibility to avoid a crash.
The simplest explanation is normally the correct (Occam's razor), and in this case the simplest solution is that the driver did not pay attention when driving.
I own an e-Niro and have put on it 21000km Never had an issue with the brakes. The automatic braking has come up a few times because I was trying to stop just with the regen padle and got to close to the car in front. I was going really slow. I think he made a mistake and does not want to own up to it.
Hmmm, my Subaru brakes less than 1mph... do it in my garage all the time. It also stops when you accelerates. Why would KiA do that?
My question too!
Has anyone reported that section of tarmac to the local authority to be repaired. It would be a nightmare if icy or on a motorbike.
Not relevant, there's been few cold days up until now. And when it gets slippery, all motorbike owners either put on studded tires or store away their bikes for the season.
The specific section of road, even though in downhill with a curb, is ~50m from the previous traffic light, in a "densely populated area".
@@kompost1 wether relevant or not, it should have been fixed by now.
I'm late to this thread so can someone confirm: Did the brakes fail to engage when driver depressed the brake pedal OR did the front collision braking system fail to engage WITHOUT the driver depressing the brake pedal?
I did have issues with the brakes on the Niro PHEV.
During the last part of breaking moderately it has a tendency to go into something resembling an ABS jittering mode from 10-15 km/h. I assumed it was indecisive on regen and friction brake application (I tried to hit max regen in the PHEV). It happens quite often. With more heavy braking it doesn't happen.
On the other hand the automatic emergency brake works. I was in a motorway accident where it warned and braked simultanouosly with me - in time to stop - unfortunately the car behind didn't. 100.000 DKK damage - one day old car 😭
I can't retest it as i just replaced it with an id.3. But it was not due to the brakes.
In my professional life I've dealt with several instances of 'brake failure' and all were eventually deemed to have been caused by pedal confusion.
No heat pump in eNiro in France is a real shame. Winter can be really cold in some regions. Customers are a little mad against Kia France because they chose to cut a lot of features, that you can't even buy in options: heat pump, pre heating battery, blind spot detection, rear cross trafic alert, ventilated seats, seats memory, 220V outlet, etc. A mean choice from Kia France considering you have those in Belgium for the same price.
I have a Kia Optima 2018 PHEV. In the instrument cluster you can set the sensitivity of the emergency braking system. The settings range from hyper sensitive to normal to a bit too slow for my taste.
When the emergency brakes kicks in the car beeps like a MF-er and pre-tensions the brakes, and if you don't press the brake pedal it will break after a fraction of a second.
I haven't seen the TV2 piece but I suspect that the car either didn't detect the car in front or that he pressed the accelerator like you said Bjørn, and that the emergency braking system was set to the lowest sensitivity.
an emergency system that you can adjust?
you're sure it's not an ADAS?
This happens some times when I activate cruise control with dist.radar on my VW Golf GTE PHEV 2016, some how the system fail to see the car infront and just accelerates unless you abort w brake pedal. Really dangerous if you are not really paying attention.
Hearing the news on brake issues with Kona, don’t you start to think about it again? I mean I do not know how similar the 2 cars actually but I heard many times that drivetrains are common. Could be completely different on software side also. What are your thoughts?
This is not an EV-only thing. All cars these days come with similar automatic breaking systems. Be it combustion or BEV.
It could be a super mystery, or it could be the most likely reason, and the most likely reason here is that the driver didn't pay attention, but he doesn't want to own up to his mistake, and is blaming the car instead.
I wonder what the regen settings were. If you set it to Auto with 0 regen the car will provide regen braking on the pedal and also automatically add some in based on the front radar and the angle of the car, so if you're going down hill. It's conceivable the regen didn't behave as he expected but he wasn't on the brakes. I have once, many years ago on a diesel Ford, experienced what felt like brake failure at low speed. The issue was a bad non-return valve on the servo vacuum circuit. The result wasn't brake failure but a lack of servo assistance for a short time after starting the car on a cold day... but it was scary. I've only covered 900 miles in the Niro but I have no complaints about the brakes. I've driven in some pretty bad conditions, through lots of standing water, no problems.
What distance had he set the car to follow at? If it was minimum, that may have a bearing on it, along with the road surface?
distance? nothing said he was using adaptive cruise control I think
If he hit that bump at a higher speed then the wheels may of left the ground,evenly if it was for a split second the abs would not kick in as well as the auto breaking.?
Speed bump came after the accident happened.
Somehow driver error is no longer a factor. Likely companies will stop featuring auto braking. Is there a possibility of dirty sensors from road debris? In this case blame the rain or driver for not keeping clean?
The most dangerous part of a car is the nut behind the wheel
Maybe it has to do with the one pedal driving thing? It could be his habit to press the accelerator often to get move cuz his regen is so strong - slow down. Or maybe that speedbump accidently pushed him to press the accelerator to deactivate automatic braking. This clearly shows the big flaw of one pedal driving because the drivers just expect the regen or automatic braking to do the braking job - they are just gluing their foot on the accelerator all the time - never move back and forth. I see why VW, Audi, and others stop using one pedal driving on their cars to prevent this habit causing the accident.
You can instantly see what kind of driver a person is by how they handle the steering wheel. Not speaking about Darko specifically, but people who don't take the task of holding the steering wheel seriously, generally tend to have the same lack of respect for other aspects of driving.
I have kind of same problem with my I3. With summer tires, regenerative braking works perfectly (I'm never braking, even if I'm living in the Swiss mountains), but with winter tires, it's shiiiiiiiit. Sometimes, it works and sometimes, especially in curves, it suddenly stop working and I have to brake "manually". BMW claims that this is normal, due to the winter tires, ABS, computing, ... (bigger wheels and newer tires as the sommer ones). I think it's dangerous, a car not always reacting the same way.
i3 works like that because it's RWD. If you regen and you turn too hard, it disables to prevent rear wheels from spinning.
Well, to be honest, I've read some posts about ioniq brakes not working as well and the dealerships not seeing any errors, so if kia uses the same system, they might want to look into that.
You mention brakes are "old tech" but due to the regen first engaging I am not sure it's a very traditional system. it might be an electronic pedal, and the computer actuating the actual brake system. If there's a glitch in there that could become an issue.
It might also be why Kia mentioned the "grey import" thing, as it might not have had essential updates that could have fixed an issue and have prevented this.
When I reviewed the KIA Niro EV, I wasn't impressed with the braking system. The friction and regenerative braking weren't well integrated, it did a lot of phantom braking, etc. However, this is a different issue, and I personally wouldn't trust a system like that. If it brakes for you, great. Otherwise, I'll be braking myself.