Both of my Peugeot Ion's won't charge

Hi everyone,

As an EV car fan, I have a couple of Peugeot Ion's in the household. Firstly my 2011 stopped charging on a level 2 charger at home. It would also not work with the EVSE. It would, however, work with rapid charger.
The only sign of fault is exclamation mark when you would try to charge. Thanks to DBMandrake for some pointers to test:
Replaced 12v battery (which has been replaced previously to me owning)
Checked invertor fuse which is fine.
Handed car into Peugeot and they came back with a lame response that the cars fault is intermittent as the Chademo still works. I told them I thought the two charging systems were seperate, which he said was correct but referred to it being intermittent again and please drive till the fault becomes permanent.
I thought I would try my local Mitsubishi garage and they said they won't be able to have a look at the car.
Just today my other 2012 Ion has developed a fault too! Will also not charge but this one has battery and exclamation warning signs on dash at all times. I tried it on the Chademo and it works.
The garage said it would cost £3300 if it was the invertor (sorry if I have the name wrong) I bought these cars for around that price so I don't think it would be economical to fix.
I have seen people on here going very deep on the electronics, I am good at car mechanics but electronics are not a strong point for me. If the fault was the MCU or similar could I remove and send to a PCB repair place?
Is there anyone in the UK who repairs these cars? With two to repair, I wouldn't mind transporting them off to a specialist.
Any help would be much appreciated. With the cold weather and short range, we have to charge the cars daily so don't fancy spending every day at a chademo station.

Strange that the 20 amp fuse in the inverter is not blown. If that were the case, a quick and easy swap of the charrger/ dc-dc assembly would be my prescription. It would probably still be worthwhile to remove the charrger lid and see if those two teal-colored mouse-ear capacitors are indeed intact.

If you don't need to use L2 on a regular basis away from home, you might consider the CHAdeMO-only option. The SETEC charrger is getting good reviews from users, and provides 10 kW on both CCS and CHAdeMO for less than a dealer replacement of your 3.3 kW charrger.

http://www.setec-power.com/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=13&id=5

Thanks for the reply Jray, what do you mean by swapping the dc-dc or charger? From the second car?

An update on the second car which recently developed a similar fault put had the battery and exclamation mark on the dash permanently. It broke down today, recovery mechanic checked and the 12v battery is not receiving a charge. It has just been taken to the main dealer.

I will open the covers on the weekend to see if there is any visible damage. After removing High voltage cut off switch of course!

Both cars have recently had new 12v batteries fitted, especially after reading this forum.

Do you know roughly what those chademo chargers cost?

Thanks again.

Hi Kes, and yes, swapping the entire left-side aluminum box containing the charger and DC-DC converter is a fairly easy job. (I got one from a breaker's yard). The coolant hoses are a straightforward connection, but as I recall, you have to remove the two plastic gland nuts along with the HV wires. Landing those wires back on the correct spot is the main thing that could go wrong, as there's nothing like 360 VDC of reversed polarity!

Do it with the 20A fuse removed from beneath the inverter inspection plate, and the main pack service plug will be redundant.

Kes said:

Do you know roughly what those chademo chargers cost?

Click to expand...

$3400 from evseadapters.com. ($4000 for the dual-standard version, if you want to future-proof.)

A Chademo charger is not of much use when the OBC is not charging the 12v battery on either car as the 12v battery will still go flat when driving.

Thanks for the replies. Our first ION charges the 12v battery and has no warning lights on the dash. Only shows a fault when going to L2 charge. Second ION's 12v battery does not charge and has the warning lights for battery and exclamation.
Had a phone call from Peugeot about the second ION, they can't figure out what is wrong with it and didn't realise it was draining the 12v until I told them. I suspect this one's MCU fuse has gone.
I need to do some more reading on the forum by the looks of it. Ideal scenario as suggested would be to remove charger and send away to be repaired by one of the experts here if they offer that service, not seen a post where it suggests they do yet.
As interesting as the potable Chademo is it is not a solution for me unfortunately.

Hi just wondering how you got on with this? I'm awaiting arrival of a broken i-miev which i'm going to attempt to fix - as far as I can tell it is purely a low cell so I *should* be able to get this one up and running, but i'm always up for helping someone else get their car going.

I've built and repaired circuits and battery packs so i'm comfortable with the electrical side of things.

Thanks.

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the delay in an update. Both the ION's were sent to an EV specialist in Perth, Scotland. One of the ION's had some corrosion and dry solder, he fixed these and it is now working, hurray!
The other however he couldn't repair, I sent it to a PCB repair type place and they have said they can't/wont repair.
Gary or anyone else would they be interested in repairing? I am happy to pay. I know a few people in America and Australia have repaired theirs, I could easily ship the box to them.

Kessar

Hi,

What circuit board is it that needs repairing?

I'd recommend talking to these guys, very knowledgeable on the imiev/ion/c-zero and they have repaired circuit boards in the past.

OVS Hybrid and Electric Car Repairs (they are on Google or Facebook)

Thanks,

Gary.

Thanks Gary,

I have spoke to him and he seems very knowledgable. In regards to which board is faulty? this I am not sure of. As my Kangoo ZE has also developed a fault and he seems quite versed on these I will be sending both to him hopefully. Just need to get a decent price of transporting them 500+ miles away.

Sent you a PM regarding transport ;-)

And what is happen ? everthing ok now ???