How do I make sure the battery heats up for fast charging?

Electric Models Forum Kia EV6
1

I drive a Kia EV 6 in Germany and I’ve noticed there’s no button to heat the battery for quicker charging. Instead, I’ve heard you’re supposed to set a route to the charger, and the car should start heating the battery on its own. Sometimes this works; a small indicator shows on the dashboard.

But it’s not always reliable. For example, yesterday, when it was 2°C, I started with 52% charge and planned a 40-minute drive to a fast charger. When I got there, the battery hadn’t preheated. I ended up charging at 42 kW instead of the usual 200+. It wasn’t an issue with the charger either, as another car nearby was charging fine.

Is there any way to guarantee the car heats the battery properly for fast charging?

2

It should be easy for them to add a button in the software to let you heat the battery manually.

3

Did you use the car’s system to search for a fast charger and navigate to it? If you typed the address in manually, it might not work.

Also, check the EV settings in the car. Sometimes the battery preconditioning gets turned off. For example, in the US, if you change the charge limit using the app, it can disable preconditioning (it’s a bug).

4

@Shan
I’ll check if changing the charge limit affected the preconditioning settings, but I think it’s still on.

For navigation, I chose the fast charger from the options on the screen rather than entering the address. I assume that’s the correct method?

5

@VoltVoyager2
Yes, that’s the right way. There are a few conditions that need to be met for the battery to heat:

  • Battery should be above 20% charge.
  • You must select a fast charger from the car’s navigation system. If the station is marked as slow (e.g., 50 kW), the car may skip preheating.
  • The distance to the charger matters. It needs to be far enough to trigger heating but not so far that it finishes heating before you arrive.

Other things to know:

  • It takes 30–60 minutes to fully heat the battery for fast charging.
  • Heating uses about 5 kW of energy, so efficiency drops.
  • Heating stops if the battery falls below 20%.
  • If you’re using Android Auto or Apple CarPlay for navigation, it can cancel the car’s internal navigation. Keep the in-car navigation running to ensure preconditioning works.
  • Adjusting the charge limit via the app disables preconditioning, so check that too.
6

@Jessie
I recently did a 2,000-mile trip, and even when all the conditions were met, preconditioning failed for me in a few cases.

Interestingly, it only seemed to fail when the charging stop was my final destination. When I added mid-trip stops for charging, preconditioning worked every time.

7

This is a terrible design choice. Back when I taught UX design, I would have failed any student who came up with something like this.

8

Cameron said:
This is a terrible design choice. Back when I taught UX design, I would have failed any student who came up with something like this.

There should be a simple option like ‘prepare for fast charging’ when setting up navigation. It’s such a frustrating experience.

9

I’ve had this issue too. It seems to happen when I search for a charger by name and location (e.g., IONITY Helsingborg) and select it from the search results.

If I instead search for Helsingborg, then find the fast charger manually on the map and navigate to it, it works more reliably.

10

It’s really inconsistent for me as well. I set fast chargers as destinations, but the car still skips preconditioning sometimes.

11

Make sure the charger is an HPC or DC type. If it’s not, the car won’t preheat even if you select it on the map.

12

I always use the Kia Live Charging option. If I navigate through the map, it doesn’t always preheat.

13

Del said:
I always use the Kia Live Charging option. If I navigate through the map, it doesn’t always preheat.

What is the Kia Live Charging option, and how do I find it?

14

VoltVoyager2 said:

Del said:
I always use the Kia Live Charging option. If I navigate through the map, it doesn’t always preheat.

What is the Kia Live Charging option, and how do I find it?

It’s under Kia Connect or something similar. You can search for charging stations there. When I use this, it always preheats.

15

Make sure to select the fast charger directly. If you do, it should always preheat. If it doesn’t, you might need the newer facelift model of the car to get this feature.