A typical night at the strip for us involves 4-6 runs per vehicle, depending on how busy it is and what we take. I don't consider that excessive or abuse. Usually quite some time - like 30min to over an hour - before you can make another run in that vehicle - so we often stage different cars in line with help from friends and/or family.
Depends on how often youre going to the strip. If youre going every other weekend and doing 6 runs with launch control on, I would say your drivetrain probably wont last through the warranty period.
Please define "tracking your car." My guess is taking it to the track and running it hard, but I'm not sure. In reading my warranty manual, I find nothing speaking to that as a prohibited use, thus "No" that alone does not provide a reason to not honor a warranty here in the USA. I just asked my service department manager and he confirmed "No." He also wanted to know when I was going so they could come see it in action, lol!
Depends on what Kia considers "racing." Wheel to wheel? Solo track day events? Who knows. Refer to the article I posted above from Autoblog. I've also attached part of the 2018 Warranty Manual I found online.
Void the whole warranty? Probably not. As was said before, they may deny coverage for certain repairs, but doubtful it would affect the whole warranty.
They could easily limit the number of launches possible electronically and have the dash throw up a message. The revelation that using a highly touted feature could void your warranty without warning would be a HUGE dent for Kia's PR.
Zero mentions of "launch" "race" or "racing". There's no way that "the number of times launch control is used within a specific period of time" could be even nuanced from this document. Agree with the above, it's a feature of the car, you're required to abide by laws, but the use of the provided features of your car would be pretty hard to use against you unless you happened to modify it and they could prove that the modification you made was the cause for the failure.
Zero mentions of "launch" "race" or "racing". There's no way that "the number of times launch control is used within a specific period of time" could be even nuanced from this document. Agree with the above, it's a feature of the car, you're required to abide by laws, but the use of the provided features of your car would be pretty hard to use against you unless you happened to modify it and they could prove that the modification you made was the cause for the failure.
I also read over the manual after this thread came up last year, I saw no mention of limited use of this feature other than the fact it did note something along the lines that the car might limit the use due to transmission temps, which is hard baked into the programming.
I've always seen clauses in warranty manuals stating limitations of use, particularly abuse and racing, for what will not be covered in warranty. If you were doing launches "all the time," I could see a subjective "abuse" flag being raised. As for specific limitations, if one exists, it needs to be legally documented. In this case, it is not.
They can't just go and void your warranty for using that specific feature. They can deny specific warranty claims at the time of service, but not void the entire warranty.
