iMiev is kinda sick, doesn't always fully charge, turtle error, 12V Battery repla, EvBatmon doesn't show me each cell...

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Raphael303

Member
Joined
Nov 23, 2017
Messages
9
I've read a lot in the Forum to come to where I am now, but now I'm a bit lost in interpreting whats wrong with our iMiev.

iMiev, first Generation, 30'000k. Usually used to ride 70k, then recharge with original charger. Went down to 1 bar maybe three times since we had it. Got it with 5k km, was promotion car for an energy-company that did only 5k km in 5 years.

It started when I got a turtle error with a full charge.
Stopped the car, went to shop for 20minutes, came back. All back to normal.

Then, next day, got another turtle error, however when battery was pretty low. My wife was driving and I could't remember if I plugged it in the day before, she couldn't remember if it was fully charged when she rode of. She was low after 30km and got the turtle error. I did 20km the day before. So it should in no case have given a turtle error, which we never saw before.

I checked this Forum and others and came to the conclusion it could be the 12V battery. It maybe still the original one, 7 years old even. So I order one.

Until I got the battery I still rode the imiev for about 4 days. I never had another turtle error, but the battery drained far quicker then usual and I had to use Chademo charging about 3 times. One day I charged twice with chademo, but never longer than 10 minutes. Never over 80%.

One day I had it plugged in with an original charger for 7 hours at work, and it was only at 70% when I came back.

Then I replaced the 12V battery. ( 540 126 033 3132 is the number you need to look for, Varta and Bosch both have batteries that work. Get pole adapters if you are not sure if you have big or small poles on your imiev. Those batteries have small ones.)

Next charge at home again only charged to about 80% in 10 hours. Rode to the corner, battery down to 60%. Stopped, put the imiev into the garage, took another way to work.

Later, still 60% charge I experimentally rode it with full heating for about 50km until two bars. Then left it in the garage with heating still running until it stopped heating.
Plugged it in, came back 2 hours later, didn't charge at all.
Plugged it in again, it charged about 5 or 6 hours on the original charger. Then it was full, showed 100km of range. Like new.
Next day I rode it to work and back, 70km and had still 30% charge left. Like new. I was happy.

Plugged it in.
Today, didn't fully charge, one bar was left.
EVbatmon (got the bluetooth dongle yesterday) connected it today shows me Battery Condition 75% and real SOC was at 50%. Rode to work, 35km 40% charge left, real SOC 30%.
Cell voltage 4.1V, lowest 0.02 lower.

What is going on here?

How is my battery condition determined by BatMon? 75% doesn't make any sense, since we very recently did a 95km ride, with charge down to 1 bar just fine. And 100km seems to be our maximum range.

Where in EVBatmoon can I see the cell-view?


Any help is appreciated.
 
Little Update

Talked to Mitsubishi Dealer here in Switzerland. He said, that the old 2010 and 2011 models don't calibrate their BMS and Battery Gauge on their own. (newer ones do that on every charge he said? ) So it is possible that my BMS THINKS the battery condition is 75% and is otherwise confused.

So, I will have to bring it in and they will do a recalibration by charging discharging twice with some testing stuff to find the real capacity of the battery and feed that to the BMS.

He didn't think that a cell is bad, couldn't say it isn't either though.

I'll keep you posted, in case somebody else runs into a similar problem.

Still don't get why I can't see the state of each cell in EvBatMon though. Don't even find the screen where it is supposed to show.
 
i use Canion so don't know for sure, but don't you just swipe the screen left or right to get to the other displays? Doesn't it tell you the max and min cell voltage and numbers on the main screen?
 
Hi
Swipe left and right brings me to motor and speed numbers.

I can see lowest and highest cell voltage and their numbers, but I can't see that overview over all cells, as they show in the screenshots in playstore.

Unfortunately icarsoft odb doesn't work with canion. :-(
 
So here the end of the story for all who run into similar problems

Turtle Error on full charge as well as exclamation mark error on full charge

It was not the 12V battery.
It was not the BMS.
It was not the charger.
Recalibration of Main-Battery did not improve anything.

It was a faulty module or the whole battery.
Mitsubishi is exchanging the full pack on warranty right now. Even though technically we were a little beyond warranty. We are very happy and I must say that Mitsubishi, Emil Frey, Switzerland has provided very very good and competent service on the matter.
 
Raphael303, delighted that Mitsubishi found the problem and is replacing the battery pack for you as a goodwill gesture! Thanks for following up. I think the lesson learned is that an OBDLink LX or MX + Android + CaniOn is a good investment and invaluable tool for quickly determining battery cell status.
 
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