2023 Hyundai Verna : Peculiar issue with ADAS and how it was fixed Greetings, fellow BHPians. Following my initial ownership review on my Verna turbo, this thread is about an unusual issue I faced with the ADAS system on the car a few weeks after delivery. The Problem:-
A couple of weeks after taking delivery of the car in April '23, I started daily driving the car. My route involves taking the highway for a large part of my commute, bringing the issue to light. A warning popped on the instrument cluster when the car went over 100 kmph for over 5 minutes: "Vital forward safety functions are limited! Radar blocked." This prevented me from using Adaptive Cruise Control, and the Automatic Emergency Braking was disabled. The Lane Follow Assist still worked, as it depends on the camera rather than the radar. The warning message automatically gets cleared once the speed is reduced to below 90kmph.
This warning message made me anxious as it would make anyone who got a brand new car and is facing issues almost immediately. I first encountered this on a rainy morning and the road was dirty, so I hoped it would be a one-off and wouldn't appear again, but it wasn't! The same warning started popping up every time I went over 100kmph for over 5 mins. Another thing I noticed was when I engaged ACC (I usually set it at 85kmph at Distance 2), the system worked in a rather weird way. It didn't recognize the vehicles switching to your lane, and the radar didn't recognise smaller vehicles such as bikes or auto-rickshaws. I couldn't get an opinion on this as none of my close friends or family has a car equipped with ADAS, and I don't have any past experiences with an ADAS-equipped car either. However, the reviews and videos I watched on YouTube all had perfectly working ADAS systems that recognized smaller vehicles and the vehicles merging in front of the car.
So I knew something was wrong with my particular vehicle but I had no idea what it was. I contacted my dealership (FPL HYUNDAI, AMBATTUR) and escalated this issue with their service department. They assured me that they would look into the issue and solve it when the car came in for its first service, as it was due in 1 week. When I took the car for its first service (1500km) 3 weeks after delivery, the technicians plugged in the OBD II device and looked for error codes, but there was only one related to the battery. It was cleared, and they took the car for a test run, assured me it was solved, and asked me to contact them in case it reappeared. Guess what? The next day, it appeared in an identical situation (100kmph - 5mins). I again contacted my service advisor and was told he would take this issue up with Hyundai themselves as the ADAS tech was fairly new to them, and they haven't faced such an issue before, which is fair enough. A week or so later, I got a reply from my SA saying ADAS wouldn't work for speeds over 110kmph, so it gets disabled automatically, concluding that mine isn't a fault but it is a feature, and it is supposed to work that way. Classic response, as expected from the dealership. Their response didn't convince me and they were least bothered to investigate this issue further. I started looking for answers and researched online and looked at the owner's manual for any information; that is when I learned that the ADAS function should work for speeds up to 200 kmph. Now, I was pretty sure that it was a fault and not a feature. The Culprit!
Bumper. Yes, the Front Bumper. A few days later, I was watching some random YouTube shorts when I stumbled upon a video on factory accessories available for the Verna. I got a zoomed-in view of the front bumper and that car had a square plastic enclosing the Radar behind it, and I realised my car didn't have it. I checked mine immediately, and yes, it was missing in my car, which was the culprit. (Image attached below). I have no clue how it was missed during production and PDI. I was finally relieved that at least I had found the cause of the problem and it could be fixed. The Fix!
I contacted the dealership immediately as it was a manufacturing defect rather than a service fault. The technical advisor of the dealership remained in contact with me since the week the issue was discovered after delivery. I was told they contacted the PDI department of HMIL, and their people are coming to check my vehicle and fix it. As promised, my vehicle was taken to the yard, where the radar unit and the front bumper were replaced at no cost and returned on the same day.
A small protective covering for the radar caused all this and once the bumper was replaced, the issue was fixed. I didn't get any such warning messages at high speeds, and smaller vehicles and merging vehicles were also being detected by the radar flawlessly. I use ACC quite frequently on highways and I must say it is a big boon.
Last edited by navin : 29th September 2023 at 13:24.
Reason: typos, spelling, formatting, grammar
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