Charge drops out soon after plugging EVSE

Hi,

On a Citroen c zero I have noticed a few times that the charging does not start properly. Typically to day i arrived, immediately pluggedin, the red plug light blinked and eventually the process aborted.

Had to try twice then it started ok, confirmation being that the "fuel" gauge light goes on...

All equipment are standard, no EVSE upgrade as it is on 220v 8 amp.

Thank you for any feedback.

A blinking red light usually means an open ground, in my experience. The ground prong on the plug has to be properly connected in order to charge.

I do have the original Panasonic EVSE 230V/16A for Europe. Charging always, no trouble.

I got myself a Voltec, Opel Ampera charge cord (EVSE) that can be switched 6A or 10A and did have trouble charging 230V/10A at least once. Charging 230V/6A does not work at all.

From what I have metered I guess the i-MiEV charger does not care 120V or 230V it looks at amperes only and decides somewhere below 14A is not enough to charge more than discharged for heaters and DC-DC converter.

Thank you Neil, Peter,

I will ask my electrician about the grounding. I do have a very busy household re electrics (servers, jaccuzzi, washing machine...) in the summer we even had the fuse blowing witht the pool. either there is a faulty device or cheer quantity of current. I might have to install a seperate 3 phase for the car to isolate it.

Re charger, i complained to seller because they advertised the car with 150km range and 16KW battery and it only has 14.5! On top of that they have delivered only a 8amp charger.

I have asked them to manage and offer a 16 or 13 amp charger to shorten the charging time if I drive longer trips like to Geneva and back. Then in about 5 hours the battery woukd be mostly full.

Re 14.5 KWh they promised that the range woukd be about 150km after a program updste due this year. My guess is that they are playing with the reserve charge and apparently some articles mention that they expect to go as low as 5% with no adverse effect. Those Extra 10% versus iMiev and slight saving of weight would apparently yield an almost identical range to the standard 16 kwh.

I am not entirely satisfied by their explanation, moreover PSA (Citroen Peugeot) only give a 5 year warranty on battery. This later might explain the battery repackaging. Anyway I will try and not often go below 2 bars even if I hear it is good practice to do so a few times a year...

Llecentaur said:

Re charger, i complained to seller because they advertised the car with 150km range and 16KW battery and it only has 14.5!

Click to expand...

Do you think that your c zero has a battery pack with less total capacity than an i-MiEV (i.e., 14.5 kW vs. 16 kW)? It is common for a car manufacturer to advertise the full capacity of a battery pack while its car doesn't use the full capacity. My Honda Insight's battery pack has a 6.5 Ah capacity, but the car uses only 4.5 Ah to increase the longevity of the battery pack. I suspect that your c zero has the same 16 kW battery pack as the i-MiEV which also does not use the full 16 kW. It might be that Citroen has been particularly conservative in how much of the battery pack's capacity a c zero uses, and that its and Mitsubishi's experience will now allow Citroen to reprogram your c zero to use a bit more of its battery pack's capacity.

I hope you are right. However my hopes are not high as I managed to check the sticker on the battery pack and it clearly stated 14.5 while other c zeros built before March 2012 do have a 16 kw sticker.

Another information that confirms this is the voltage indicated in the user manual (not the advertising material which was misleading) at around 296 volts which is i think a multiple of 80 cells instead of 88 cells (quoting by memory).

It does seem that we either have been cheated on regarding the range or maybe they are right and they can deliver the same range with the software tricks dur in January. Maybe the quality of the batteries has improved through better materials and that they really can withstand a larger discharge.

I look forward to upgrading the pack in about 7 years with maybe double the capacity and hopefully only 3000 USD of costs

Llecentaur said:

I hope you are right. However my hopes are not high as I managed to check the sticker on the battery pack and it clearly stated 14.5 while other c zeros built before March 2012 do have a 16 kw sticker.

Another information that confirms this is the voltage indicated in the user manual (not the advertising material which was misleading) at around 296 volts which is i think a multiple of 80 cells instead of 88 cells (quoting by memory).

Click to expand...

Ah, well, the new c zero battery packs must really be smaller then. I recall reading that new non-North American i-MiEV's and their European cousins were getting a smaller 14.5 kW battery pack. I see here that this appears to have happened in May, 2012, for the Peugeot iOn.

I wonder whether Mitsubishi and thus Citroen and Peugeot are trying to reduce the cost of the i-MiEV and its cousins by reducing the battery pack size. It's no secret that the strong yen has made the cost of the i-MiEV and its Japanese-built cousins such that Mitsubishi might be losing money on each sale. Increasing the price would only reduce sales, so Mitsubishi might be in a tough position in which cost-cutting is the short-term solution.

Good point.