In many ways, my 2019 Hyundai Ioniq PHEV is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. With a 27-mile electric vehicle range, my wife and I can drive around town for months without using any gas. We can also take long trips, like a 10-hour drive to San Francisco, and get 45 miles per gallon without worrying about running out of battery. The car comes with heated leather seats, enough space for a week of luggage and our 100-pound dog, and Apple CarPlay—a feature I didn’t think I needed but now can’t live without. It’s almost the ideal car for us, except for one big problem.
Sometimes, it just doesn’t start.
We first encountered this issue on a camping trip when the car was just a year old. We had to hike to get cell service and call AAA for help. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident. It has happened so many times now that I’ve lost count. I even bought a Noco Boost Plus GB40 jump pack that I keep under the passenger seat, and I’ve become adept at jump-starting the car in under a minute, much like the dad changing a tire in the movie “A Christmas Story.”
The likely culprit, according to many Hyundai owners on Reddit, is a parasitic drain caused by Hyundai’s Bluelink software. The software tends to ping home too frequently, and when you’re out of cell range, it tries so hard that it drains the 12-volt battery overnight.
Reddit users seem to have pinpointed the issue better than Hyundai’s engineers. When I took my still-under-warranty car to the dealer, they couldn’t replicate the problem and just handed the car back to me, brushing off my concerns. I’m still dealing with a “new” car that occasionally refuses to start. Many other Hyundai owners have reported the same issue on forums and comment threads.
A 100,000-mile warranty doesn’t mean much if the company can refuse to fix issues just because they can’t identify the problem.
This might sound familiar because many Hyundai and Kia owners have dealt with similar issues due to easily bypassed security measures. Some models were so easy to steal that it became a trend on TikTok, leading to a 2,500% increase in thefts in some cities. Initially, Hyundai denied there was a problem, only acting after a class-action lawsuit forced them to pay $200 million to affected owners and issue a firmware update in February 2023.
But here’s the kicker: About 2 million other Hyundais have engines that consume oil excessively, and Hyundai has done very little about it. Lawrence Hodge from Jalopnik owns one of these cars and only got his defective engine replaced after two years of fighting with Hyundai corporate. Naturally, this issue has also led to class-action lawsuits.
Without a team of lawyers or the intervention of a state attorney general, I don’t have much hope for resolving my car’s issue. It shouldn’t take a lawsuit for a company to take care of its customers. All cars will eventually have problems, especially with today’s complex in-car systems and electric drivetrains. But Hyundai has shown it’s not the kind of company that takes responsibility for its issues.
Are all car companies like this? Perhaps not. My boss recently had a terrible experience with his Rivian R1S, which died on a highway ramp with his family in the car. They were able to roll to safety, but the vehicle was completely immobilized.
Rivian was immediately responsive. They answered the call quickly, apologized, offered an Uber to get the family home, and took the car in for repairs. They identified the issue as a flaw in the latest firmware and promised to push an update. Other Rivian owners also report excellent customer service. The company has even bought back vehicles when owners were unsatisfied.
While apologies don’t fix potentially dangerous flaws, they show that Rivian is accountable, agile, and quick to act. As a startup, Rivian must maintain high standards because they don’t have the leeway for failure that established companies like Hyundai do.
Hyundai seems to model its customer service after the tech industry, known for its indifferent attitude. Anyone locked out of a Facebook account can attest to how hard it is to contact Meta’s customer service. Similarly, my Vizio soundbar received a firmware update that broke it, and Vizio did nothing about it. As consumers, we’re often more interested in the latest tech than in whether our older gadgets still work.
I’m attending CES 2024 and am excited to see what Hyundai presents. The company makes innovative cars; the Ioniq 5 has been praised as one of the best new cars in recent years. Hyundai’s push for electric vehicles makes Toyota’s efforts look lackluster by comparison. I want to love Hyundai.
But every time I have to jump-start my Ioniq, it’s hard to feel any loyalty toward the company. If I had to buy a new car tomorrow, it definitely wouldn’t be a Hyundai.