Trouble with battery, or something else?
Hello All, Looking for some insight if anyone has had a similar experience.
So about a week ago my 2017 Kia Niro with around 143k miles on it died on me while driving. I had done about an hour and a half drive going 75-80mph the entire way. On my way back I got a bunch of warning lights that came on (HEV, Battery, Oil) Car told me to pull over to avoid damage to hybrid system so I did. Sat for 10 minutes with car running and nothing changed. Decided to shut the car off and turn it back on and upon turning it back on the car would not start, lights and radio came on but message said "start vehicle to avoid battery discharge".
I had it towed home, upon doing some research I found that the issue is most likely the High Voltage Fuse. And driving over 70mph for extended periods of time can burn the fuse out. Was told Kia Niros come with a 125a Fuse but they really should be upgraded to 150a. So I ordered a new one and watched a few videos and read up on how to change it out.
Fast forward to today, got to my car and it was completely dead. No lights, wouldn't display anything when I tried to start it. Wouldn't let me open the trunk. So I started on changing out the fuse. I followed the procedure to change out the fuse, disconnected the high voltage battery, waited 15 minutes, and replaced the fuse. When I did this nothing immediately changed. I looked up some more on the issue and saw that I was to hit the 12v battery reset button. Upon hitting that all the dash came back on but the car still wouldn't start.
Next step I looked at was trying to jump start the vehicle. So I again followed the procedure and attempted to jumpstart the car. Still even connected to another car, it wouldn't start. Same warning of "start vehicle to avoid battery discharge message came on".
Decided to run to Autozone and get a scanner to see if there is something that I am missing. It took me a couple hours as I had other things that I had to do, but upon returning to the vehicle it was completely dead again. When we left the 12v battery was reading 12.6v now its at 0. And when I hit the 12v reset button again the 12v reads 8v before it dies. The hybrid battery appears to be drained as well. That has never gone below half since i've owned the vehicle.
Couldn't get the car to stay on long enough to pull any codes. Plan is to go back again tomorrow and jumpstart it again to pull codes and see if something there can point me in the right direction. When I bought the vehicle there was no owners manual so I don't have anything to reference besides the internet on what to do.
Has anyone had any issues like this or am I just shit out of luck and need to get it towed to a dealer. Worst part is the closest dealer to me is about an hour away, and I've already paid $500 to have it towed home. I do understand that, this is most likely going to be the outcome, but I'm looking for anything I might have missed or messed up in trying to fix the issue myself before taking it in. My 12v battery is under the back seat with the high voltage battery, so I know If I have to replace that it's not going to be cheap. Also online I'm seeing most of the time it's not the 12v battery that is the problem. But maaybe I'm the unlucky one.
Thanks for reading this far!
Edit: Fixed! So it really comes down to me not being a mechanic and doing things myself. So it was in fact the High Voltage Fuse that needed to be replaced and I did a great job of that. Issue was I didn’t own a scanner so I never tested any codes. Bought a scanner checked the codes they said high voltage fuse, since it had already been changed I erased all the codes and pressed the 12v reset. Car came to life instantly!