NHTSA Complaint #11716391 — 2022 HYUNDAI IONIQ 5

The Integrated Charging Control Unit (ICCU) has intermittent failures. During the last failure, my wife was on a busy freeway (Interstate 5 near Hwy 120 northbound) in heavy but fast moving traffic. She was driving in the #2 lane (of 4 lanes) when she experienced sudden loss of propulsion. The vehicle slowed to 5 MPH in traffic that was moving 70 to 80 MPH. She had to traverse through the #3 and #4 lanes to the narrow emergency shoulder. Cars were honking and flipping her off. In the emergency lane, the vehicle completely died after 30 to 60 seconds. She was at risk of being rear ended during the dangerous 5 MPH lane changes and in the time parked in the emergency lane. She could not start the car for 15 minutes, after which the system came back to life. She was then able to start it and continue home. The first time the ICCU failed was in a parking lot. This is a known defect with Hyundai which they have attempted to rectify with Recall Campaign 272. However, they refuse to replace the ICCU. After the first event, they replaced the battery after 22 months/32429 miles. Now they want to replace the battery again after another 20 months/34k miles. What they don't get, is that the batteries have not prematurely failed. Instead the ICCU has intermittently and temporarily drawn the batteries down causing the vehicle to lose propulsion and die. They refuse to replace the ICCU because an error code they were looking for was not in the memory. They have performed three software updates on three separate dealer visits, but the issue has not been resolved. During the last visit they kept my vehicle for six weeks while I appealed through Hyundai Consumer Affairs and the Service manager appealed through his Dealer rep. But the factory engineers held firm and would not approve the ICCU warranty replacement, and instead wanted me to pay for 12V battery replacement. We don't know if there were any warning lights since my wife was busy navigating the danger.