RBS light Alarm

dniemeyer99 · Aug 26, 2014

Here we go again. Another trip to the dealer which is 350 km away.

Last week my AC failed. Just before it did I heard the AC compressor bang whenever the AC turned on.

Today, as I was leaving a shopping centre, the RBS light the "!" light and the turtle light turned on just when I pressed on the brake. Stopped the car, recycled the key three times. Each time the alarm when on when I touched the brake. The system also defaulted to turtle mode which allowed me to travel 1 km to be able to rent a car.

The car is now on it way the dealer, third time this year. Not happy.

This issue maybe related to the AC as the system may require cooling on the motor controller. Today was the first warm day in the north and therefore "maybe" triggered the alarm.

Let you know what happens.

Dave

iwatson · Aug 26, 2014

Is it a 2014 or a 2012? .... Just Curious

PV1 · Aug 26, 2014

Turtle and RBS? Did you lose regen and acceleration power? Sounds like there is a bad/weak connection somewhere. Unfortunately, we haven't yet heard back on what the issue was with Sandange's first car (went through 3 chargers in a short period of time and bad AC, I believe).

The AC has nothing to do with cooling the motor or electronics, only the battery during quick charging.

dniemeyer99 · Sep 10, 2014

Called the dealer after 2 weeks. It seems they have not found the problem for either the RBS alarm or the AC.

More correctly, they have test driven the car and found no fault with the RBS alarm. This alarm was trigger when ever I touched the brakes. But now that it is at the dealer it is not happening. My guess and I say this as an uneducated guess is that when they were looking into the problems, the technician reset the ECU and cleared the fault. Does anyone on the forum know how we might be able to reset the ECU without disconnecting the 12 V battery. Just like to know in-case the RBS alarm happens again.

As for the AC, Mitsubishi corporate has not approved replacement of the compressor under warrantee until they are sure it is the problem. Funny how a car company can not find the problem with an AC system within two weeks. Really wish they would get off their butts and understand that warrantee's are a product/service and are subject to the consumer protection ACT of the country.

And to answer the questions below, the car year is 2012 and yes I did lose re-gen braking when the RBS light turned on.

Dave

dniemeyer99 · Sep 25, 2014

Four Week Update

Problem still not resolved. No ETA on A/C compressor. Mitsubishi is NOT impressing me with their service. I have been without my car so far for 14 weeks this year alone.

I guess Mitsubishi will not be getting my companies business. To bad to, it might have been a 7 figure contract.

Dave

sandange · Sep 25, 2014

I feel your pain.
It sounds familiar to my first (2012) Miev experience I had, they just couldn't find the problem.
After 2 months and 3 trips back to the dealer, I had enough and worked out an agreement for a new 2014 Miev.

dniemeyer99 · Oct 9, 2014

Week Six update:

Still no car. The dealer ordered a new compressor but it seems that there are two versions and Japan sent the wrong one. Not sure how long I will have to wait now.

This is really really getting sad. The car I purchased has been at the dealer twice this year for a total of 16 weeks so far. That's four months driving an ICE. And most of this wait has been because of supply problems. Not only do they not advertise this car, they don't seems to even support servicing the car.

It is hard to be positive about the car or the company when you are waiting for quality service for this long. In some level I joined this forum to add my views on the importance of BEV and their advantages. But I can't do that when I am not driving a BEV.

Dave

PV1 · Oct 9, 2014

dniemeyer99 said:
Not only do they not advertise this car, they don't seems to even support servicing the car.

But yet we've had two recalls on something that's really not an issue. Don't get me wrong, the brake pump is a critical component, but how many have actually failed?

dniemeyer99 · Oct 9, 2014

Sorry PV1

This is also one of the issue with my car. Mine did fail but because it had a recall the dealership had the parts in their stock. Therefore, the car was fixed in 45 minutes. The only issue I had was to get it to the nearest iMeiv dealership which is 350 km away. But because it failed I was able to use roadside assistant.

Dave

danpatgal · Oct 9, 2014

Thanks for posting your experiences. Thankfully, knock on wood, we have had no trouble with ours and most iMiev owners seem to be pretty happy with the car too (perhaps the unhappy ones don't bother to post here ??). Of course there is bound to be some glitches with all these new EVs, more so than with ICEVs that have generally had the glitches worked out. I sometimes visit the i3 or Leaf forums, and there are plenty of problems and horror stories to read through, so I don't think the iMiev is unique in this regard.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for sharing. It helps us owners, and potential buyers, know what to expect and prepare, or negotiate, for and hopefully learn from those problems. I think that Mitsubishi will abandon the iMiev once the PHEV Outlander comes to market (2016 sometime?) while the iMiev is not seriously marketed or sold; perhaps it was/is just a way for Mitsubishi to improve the electric drive train so that the PHEV Outlander will be a more solid product.

dniemeyer99 · Oct 10, 2014

For what it is worth, this is my observation with this stage in EV adoption.

There are so few sold in north American (as compared to other vehicles) and with the added benefit of needing less maintenance, there is no economic need for the manufacturer (Mitsubishi) to stock parts on this continent. It is great that the car needs less maintenance but when you do need it you will need to wait a long time to get parts from Japan.

It is one of the reasons why it is sooooo important for owners of the Imiev that the manufacturer and the dealership advertise their product and sell more iMiev's. When more is sold, there would be more need to stock parts. What they are doing is just increasing additional costs that could be reduced if they really try to sell the vehicle.

I am sure that the compliance cars have a similar issue. Hopefully, as more and more people buy EV's this will change. I guess this is the price of being an early adopter.

Dave

dniemeyer99 · Oct 21, 2014

To All

Just got time to post an update. Now driving the car that I purchased and not the rental. Got it back last week and all seems to be working correctly. The guys at work were teasing me about how long it was in the shop. Then I asked them about the last time that they had their vehicle in the shop. "Did the dealership sent it back to you with a full tank of gas ?. I got a full charge when I got my car back". They just do not want to admit paying for gas is a BIG disadvantage in drive their vehicle.

Mitsubishi also made good in compensating me for my LONG inconvenience. It took a while and I needed to ask strongly but they did make good.

Dave

PV1 · Oct 21, 2014

Glad you got your car back. Do they know what was wrong?

sandange · Oct 22, 2014

Good news , Glad you're back on the road again.

dniemeyer99 said:
There are so few sold in north American (as compared to other vehicles) and with the added benefit of needing less maintenance, there is no economic need for the manufacturer (Mitsubishi) to stock parts on this continent. It is great that the car needs less maintenance but when you do need it you will need to wait a long time to get parts from Japan.

Might add
Not only parts availability - very important are the qualified experienced service people

That's were I once suggested a North American, mobile service swat team for situations as we both have experienced - rare but serious situation.

ManlyMiev · Apr 30, 2016

Yes. I just got mine back from the dealer after 3 weeks. Apparently quick charging then stepping on the accelerator too hard soon after can cause the RBS to fail and turtle mode to engage.

jsantala · May 1, 2016

ManlyMiev said:
Yes. I just got mine back from the dealer after 3 weeks. Apparently quick charging then stepping on the accelerator too hard soon after can cause the RBS to fail and turtle mode to engage.

I'm going to call BS on that. I suppose if you're in a hot climate the batteries could heat up while quick charging and then keep heating up while driving, but otherwise it just doesn't make sense.

JoeS · May 1, 2016

I moved this RBS light discussion from CHAdeMO to this thread.

ManlyMiev, glad you're still enthusiastic about your new i-MiEV despite it being at the dealer for three weeks. Thank you for posting.

The RBS (Regenerative Braking System) light followed by turtle is perhaps the kiss of death from a troubleshooting standpoint, as it appears to stymie service techs.

ManlyMiev, what else did the service department tell you about the cause-effect relationship and what they had done?

Edit: Been thinking about this some more... ManlyMiev, since yours is a new 2016 i-MiEV, could you perhaps elaborate what had happened prior to your seeing the RBS warning, and what subsequently took place? Enquiring minds would like to know...

ManlyMiev · May 2, 2016

Sequence of events-

1) Level 3 charge for 10 minutes
2) After disconnecting pulled into traffic and put pedal to the floor to keep up with it, maybe 2 minutes after fast charge.

It wasn't hot outside, maybe 80 degrees.

The dealership said they weren't sure why it happened, but described a sequence of events similar to mine may have caused it. They said the fast charge followed shortly by a fast draw of power caused the battery to overheat, and it shut down the RBS to prevent any power going in and went into Turtle mode to prevent to much power being used at once.

I'm not sure how to post a picture, but I have a few if ya'll have ideas other than that.

JoeS · May 2, 2016

Hi ManlyMiev, thank you for responding. Unfortunately, this generates more questions than answers -

1. How long and hard had you driven your i-MiEV before you started charging in the 80degF ambient (27degC)?

2. Mitsubishi held onto your car for three whole weeks. Did they tell you what troubleshooting they did in all that time and what was their eventual solution? Suspicion is that after all was said and done, all they did was perform a reset with their MUT3.

This thread describes the two instances of i-MiEVs shutting down for no *apparent* reason and displaying the RBS and turtle. There may be some temperature-related correlation, but we have examples (and the Australian i-MiEV forum has examples) of cars being driven with fairly-high measured (via CaniOn) battery temperatures with no adverse reaction by the car.

In the previous instance, the owner (dniemeyer99) never responded as to what the dealership did (after more than seven weeks) to fix the problem. His failure occurred in August which was probably a pretty warm ambient, even in Ontario Canada, AND he had an aircon failure.

New question on the table: so as to avoid being stranded, does disconnecting the 12v battery reset the RBS+turtle light and return the car to driveability?

Perhaps another example of a need to be able to reset the i-MiEV's error codes - EvBatMon?

PV1 · May 3, 2016

ManlyMiev, you can upload your pictures here and I'll post a link to them.

http://dbinbox.com/pv1

On the same note, I quick charged from 20% to 95% last week, then drove 2 miles and jumped on the highway (uphill on-ramp, accelerating to 60 MPH) and my car was fine. I had a few cells over 90F with the average pack temp around 82 F.

Maybe the i-MiEV enters low-power mode (no regen and turtle) if a cell reaches 40C? Or, if you have the A/C on, then battery cooling activates?

RBS light Alarm

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