Serious Issue with 2022 Tucson

aleluquedc

Hello forum friends. It turns out that in November 2022, I bought a brand new 2022 Tucson. Initially, everything was fine, although I noticed that the engine was overheating and smelling burnt. I thought that, being a new vehicle, it was normal and would improve with break-in. However, a month ago, while on the highway and after half an hour of driving, the car lost power, forcing me to pull over on the shoulder among hundreds of cars traveling at 80 miles per hour. You can imagine the shock, the honking, and the lights of other vehicles dodging us, etc. The car wouldn't accelerate, lacked power, and could barely gain speed. A warning light appeared on the dashboard saying "check hybrid system," and the "check engine" light also came on. Taking it to the dealership was quite an ordeal, and they were very incompetent.
The next day, the car no longer had the issue and worked perfectly, but I didn't want to risk it happening again and endangering the life of my pregnant wife, mine, or that of other road users. I took the car to the dealership where I bought it, explained what happened, and the service manager told me that if the issue wasn't present now, it would be difficult for them to do anything about it.
As someone who knows a bit about cars, I told him that the "check engine" light had come on, so there should be a fault history. I also suggested he take a half-hour drive to see if the problem recurred.
The car was purchased a year and a half ago and has 16,000 miles, so I believe it has both manufacturer and dealership warranties. I asked for a loaner car to continue working since they said they were busy and it would take time to check mine. I told them it didn't matter, they could take all the time they needed, but to fix the car in the meantime. They gave me a loaner car, which they ended up partially charging me for, not every day, but some, as it took 3 weeks for them to call me and say the car had nothing wrong.
I have a dashcam system with 4 cameras in the car, so after picking up my car and feeling unsatisfied about being charged for the loaner car, I checked the camera footage. It turns out the car was received on March 14, 2024, and parked until March 20, 2024. I assume that's when they took it to the workshop to connect a diagnostic computer. A mechanic from the dealership took the car for a drive of no more than 5 minutes around the dealership while talking on the phone and stopping to chat with acquaintances. Then he parked the car in the dealership parking lot and called his boss to report that the car had no problems. It seemed to me that this mechanic knew little or nothing about mechanics. At that moment, I imagined they would take the car to the workshop to connect it to the diagnostic machine and run tests, but that never happened. The car remained parked from March 20, 2024, until April 1, 2024, in the dealership parking lot without being checked, touched, or started.
Meanwhile, my wife and I were worried about the loaner car, fearing we might lose the deposit. I didn't receive any calls in those 11 days to return the loaner and get mine back. Did they expect to find any damage to the loaner car? Did they want to make us believe they were working on our car? They are so incompetent that they didn't know I was monitoring what was happening in my car from home. Anyway, the worst is yet to come. When I went to pick up the car, they gave me a report saying, "The technician couldn't verify the customer's concern, found the fault code history, and deleted it." Lie! Because at no time did I see any mechanic connecting an OBD reader to the car. They only checked it for 10 minutes one day. Then the car was left parked in the parking lot for 11 more days until they called me to say it was ready! What a shame!
When I got home, I already had an OBD2 that I bought to check the car's fault, and, surprise, on the first reading, I got the fault P0AA6 "Hybrid/EV Battery Voltage System Isolation Fault." After researching, I know it can be caused by several things, which is still dangerous, as they did nothing to fix it, and the fault remains. I know this fault could be dangerous and even cause a fire in the car, in the car battery, and in my house. But that's not all. While looking for information about my car to see if it was a "lemon" or if I could sue the dealership to have the car replaced or get a refund since I would never buy a car from them again, I requested a report with the VIN number, and SURPRISE, I found a report indicating that the car has four pending safety recalls.



Now I understand that the air conditioning, which I always thought was not working well because sometimes it blows hot air, I think it's due to the engine overheating and the high-voltage battery.
What can I do? What would you do? Did they sell me a "lemon"? Should I talk to a lawyer to help me with this problem and sue the dealership? Should they have sold me the car with those pending recalls? I can no longer trust the dealership; they are very incompetent and do not have trained personnel to solve these problems. These faults cannot be taken lightly; they endanger the safety of my family and all road users. Has anyone else experienced this? Please, I need advice and tell me what I should do or what you would do. Thank you very much for reading, and sorry for the lengthy text. I know it's a lot, but I need to solve this. I'm thinking of renting a car and stop using this one until the problem is solved, but I don't know how because the dealership is not willing to help.

thecardoc3

It can be somewhat unsettling to have a vehicle problem occur especially in a heavy traffic and high-speed situation. I am glad that nothing serious occurred. As I read through your post several thoughts came to mind. You obviously aren't happy with what they accomplished but seriously how likely are you going to find someone on the internet that isn't actually testing the car while the problem isn't present that is going to do better? I saw that you consider yourself "someone who knows a bit about cars" but what do you really know about how a technician and the shop get paid by the manufacturer to perform warranty work? The technician likely gets paid .3 hours, that's eighteen minutes ONE TIME for a no-problem-found visit. Any time spent beyond that is unpaid time so the idea of the technician driving it for a half an hour or however long is not only unpaid time, it ultimately shows up as part of the statistics that are used to judge the technician's employability. To see him/her being called incompetent is beyond being unfair and actually insulting enough that if the technicians had any say in the matter, I wouldn't blame them if they refused to invest anytime at all towards solving your car's problem.

I'll guarantee you that If I was going to step up and investigate your car's problem the first thing that would happen would be the cameras get disabled. I would also arrange that whatever time I would have to invest would be compensated by someone, there is no way I would get involved with it at my own expense. When you get a little time to step back and think about what you wrote above, think about how you would feel if you were the technician and had to put up with being treated the way that comes across. People wonder why it's hard to find qualified technicians, all they need to do is read your post and decide if they would like to have someone treat them the way your post does.

OK, I said my peace there now let's talk about the vehicle problem. You say you "know a bit about cars". What do you know about electronics and specifically the high voltage leak detection circuit (Battery voltage Isolation Sensor circuit) in a hybrid or electric vehicle? You said "After researching, I know it can be caused by several things, which is still dangerous, as they did nothing to fix it, and the fault remains. I know this fault could be dangerous and even cause a fire in the car, in the car battery, " Actually that's incorrect, there is no proof that it is going to cause a fire or otherwise create a dangerous situation. The trouble code test criteria show the failure condition is the high voltage insulation falling below 300K ohms (that's 300,000 ohms) and the fault cancellation is the resistance increasing back above 900K ohms. These resistance values are so high that you cannot measure them with a regular volt/ohmmeter. The shop/technician has to use a Megohmmeter and test the components at or between 500v to1000v. The high voltage system, both the positive side and the negative side are isolated from the vehicle chassis. This trouble is only saying that some continuity between the HV system and the chassis existed and it fell below 300,000 ohms.

BTW if you are not familiar with a "meggar" Search this for an example "Fluke 1507 Digital Megohmmeter Insulation Resistance Tester"

As the service manager said, once the problem went away all the testing anyone could do was not going to uncover the cause. While the problem is occurring then and then only can testing be done and progress be made towards figuring the problem out. BTW if you haven't figured it out, I am someone that is trained, tooled, and experienced at diagnosing these kinds of problems. In fact, I can cover a lot of ground with just the car and just the Hyundai Factory scan tool as long as the problem is present. If the problem isn't present any effort spent testing is simply wasted time and effort. The dealership technician did exactly what he should have done and probably slightly more than he/she got paid to do. Had the problem been present I would expect that he/she would know how to do what is going to follow here.

So IF and ONLY IF the problem is present, then.

My testing would start by shutting the car down and then slowly restart the car in stages. The first step would be to go to ignition on, that is not the ready mode where you step on the brake pedal and press the start button. Ignition on is two pushes of the start button without applying the brake. This will power up the engine controller, the high voltage battery controller, the body computer, and the invertor controller. It will NOT close the high voltage contactors in the battery. The Isolation circuit takes approximately two minutes to be powered up. Once it is turned on a 5-volt signal can be observed in the scan data for the high voltage controller and if it stays at 5 volts then the loss of insulation is not in the battery because that is the only place where the Isolation Sense circuit would be connected to at this point. The next step would be to go to the ready mode which will close the contactors and put power through the high voltage leads and to the input side of the invertor. If the 5-volt sense still remains high, then the problem is not in the input side of the invertor or cabling between the battery and the invertor. The next step to check is to shift to reverse. Only MG2 gets powered up in reverse and again watch the 5-volt sense for it to get pulled to ground. If it stays high then MG2, it's cabling and the output side of the invertor for MG2 has passed the testing. That only leaves MG1, its cabling, and that part of the invertor left to test. To do that I would shift to drive and wait for the system to start the engine to try and charge the battery to test that. When the portion of the system that has the fault is activated, the technician would see that 5-volt sense start getting pulled to ground. While this routine can prove which section of the system has the problem this has not identified the actual component that has the problem. That has to be done by hand with the Megohmmeter and completed before the problem goes back into hiding.