Hi there,
Just got my first EV, a used Hyundai Ioniq, last weekend. I plugged it into a 50kW DC charger to see how it works, but it only charged at 26kW. My battery was pretty low, around 20%, so I expected it to charge faster.
Is it more likely an issue with the charger or my car? Any advice would be great.
You were right to expect something closer to 50kW. It’s probably a charger issue, not your car. Unless it’s really cold outside (like under 50F), it shouldn’t be a temperature issue. Try a different charger, maybe a bigger one. These 50kW chargers can be unreliable sometimes.
Was it a 400v station?
Could be the charger. Try one that’s 150-250kW and see how that goes.
Is this the regular Ioniq, not the Ioniq 5 or 6? If your battery was nearly full, the car might have limited the charging speed. I’m not familiar with the Ioniq’s fast charging specs though.
Uri said:
Is this the regular Ioniq, not the Ioniq 5 or 6? If your battery was nearly full, the car might have limited the charging speed. I’m not familiar with the Ioniq’s fast charging specs though.
Yes, just the standard Ioniq, and the charge was quite low. I’ll probably take the advice and find a bigger charger.
@Jory
Are we talking about the one with the 28kW or 38kW battery? If it’s the 38kW, that maxes out around 44kW. If the battery was cold, then 25kW makes sense. A bigger charger won’t really change that.
@Ainsley
It’s the 38kW one. It wasn’t that cold though, maybe 15 degrees Celsius.
Jory said:
@Ainsley
It’s the 38kW one. It wasn’t that cold though, maybe 15 degrees Celsius.
Yeah, your car doesn’t have battery pre-heating. 15°C can still be ‘cold’ for the battery. The ideal charging temperature is around 30-40°C inside the battery.
Was it one of those shared stations?
Chen said:
Was it one of those shared stations?
It had two charging cables, but I was the only one using it.
Sometimes the charge starts slow and speeds up as the battery warms up. Your battery isn’t very big (28kWh or 38.3kWh), so you should be able to go from 20-80% in about 30 minutes on most DC chargers.
It’s almost always the charger that’s the issue when charging is slower than expected. I wouldn’t worry too much. Try another charger and see if it improves. Sometimes, when two stations share power, you get half the speed or less if another car is using it.
I found a good reference for your car here: ev-database.org. It shows you should get around 46kW on a 50kW charger and 69kW on faster DC chargers.
If you’ve got the original Ioniq, the max DC fast charge is around 50kW for the 38kWh battery. If you were at 50% charge when you started, the charger would likely only give about 26kW, and it could slow down more as the battery fills up.
You’ll need at least a 100kW charger to get 50kW consistently, and even then, it won’t hold that speed for long. The Ioniq sedan doesn’t charge as fast as the newer models, like the Ioniq 5.