Owners of all-electric vehicles sold by Hyundai, Kia and Genesis have filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit against the car manufacturers, claiming certain models feature defective charging ports that can lead to longer than advertised charging times or even a failure to charge, potentially leaving users stranded.
The suit was filed in late July with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and alleges the automakers advertised vehicle charging times between five to seven hours, depending on vehicle make, with the use of a Level 2 home charger.
However, the lawsuit says, in reality, vehicle charging ports frequently overheat in as little as 30 minutes, causing the charging session to unexpectedly and repeatedly fail.
As per the court filing, the affected vehicles are the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6, Kia EV6 and Genesis GV60.
“Not only do Hyundai, Kia and Genesis continue to sell vehicles that are clearly incapable of performing as advertised, they also issued a software patch which substantially worsens charging rates and widens the gap between what they promised and what they delivered,” said Steve Berman, managing partner at Hagens Berman and the attorney leading the case.
The filed complaint cites one plaintiff’s experience in which fully charging his 2023 IONIQ 5 takes 20 hours, at a 5% charge rate per hour.
An email sent to InsideEVs said in March, Hyundai issued a technical service bulletin to address the issue, but the subsequent software update pushed to affected vehicles does little to alleviate the problem.
According to the complaint, the advertised charging amperage of 48 amps drops to 28 amps if overheating occurs, leading to much longer charging sessions than advertised.
“This so-called fix does nothing to address the real problem, which is that these vehicles were not manufactured to reliably charge at a rate even close to 48 amps. It’s unacceptable for Hyundai to put a Band-Aid on such a serious defect impeding the vehicle’s stated performance,” Berman said.
The lawsuit seeks to recover just compensation for vehicle owners and lessors, bringing claims of violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, violation of the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and violations of the applicable state consumer protection laws.
Abby Andrews