EV9 gripe #1 UPDATE - Phone entry fixed

Hodor, or Kia’s access control holding the damn door…

No sooner had I posted my EV9 gripe #4 UPDATE!, that I realized that something else was going on with my EV9.

I dropped off Mom (the non-Engineer) at the airport, when I noticed that I couldn’t find my fob. It’s not a big deal… it’s a big car, and the fob can fall into various canyons in the interior. I didn’t think anything else of it until I got to Micro Center.

If the fob is in the car, you can’t lock it from the outside. Despite this, I was able to lock the car without any problems. Hmm. When I returned home, I saw the fob hanging up on the key hooks by the door.

Apparently, the OTA update that fixed the Bluetooth mess, also sorted out using the phone as a key. I can’t really say if it’s the Samsung Wallet digital key, or the Kia app. Regardless, it just works now - much like the Tesla access control is reliable.

I haven’t had an issue with it yet, so I hopefully won’t find any weird corner cases. I’m glad Kia is knocking out these issues, but it is still problematic that: 1.) they didn’t catch this in preproduction vehicles, 2.) they didn’t catch this in their KDM release, and 3.) it took nearly a year to get it resolved. The third item I can overlook, if it means Kia is taking software testing more seriously.

I know that Kia isn’t using my list as a Kanban bug backlog, but it IS starting to feel that way…. :)