My first real i-MiEV problem (but I think it's the EVSE)

[wmcbrine]

So today, I ran into my first real problem with this car -- it wouldn't charge.

I ran it down to 9 miles RR, two bars, intending to do a calibration charge. Plugged it in to my OpenEVSE, and walked away. On a whim, I checked in three hours later, to find it stopped. WTF? I looked closer, and found it had only charged 1 kWh! So I tried unplugging and replugging it. That worked... for about two minutes; then it just stopped. There was no error message on the EVSE. I'd got about 0.1 kWh into it. Tried again, and it wouldn't even start charging. At this point I was wondering if my battery had suddenly gone bad... but maybe it was the EVSE? I tried rebooting that. No change, Finally, after running the radio and fan for a bit, I watched the process from inside the car. After a few minutes of normal charging, it briefly showed the "Electric motor unit warning light" (car with an exclamation point), and then shut down. Uh-oh.

Still, I wanted to rule out the EVSE, so I drove to the public charging station at the library, only a block from my house. And there... the car seemed to charge just fine. I only stayed a little over half an hour, but I got more charge than I'd got in all those hours on the OpenEVSE. So I came home and put it on the level 1 charger it came with, and that seems to be working fine, too. It's just too bad I don't have another EV to test against the OpenEVSE.

I should note that the OpenEVSE is running an alternate firmware called "NoSpark", and further, it's a version I've modified myself. But, I've already successfully charged hundreds of kWh with this version.

I haven't yet looked at caniOn while this is happening; I guess that's next.

 

[wmcbrine]

Update: Nothing looks burnt inside the EVSE.

And that's about the extent of my hardware debugging skills.

 

[JoeS]

As long as you can charge with your Mitsu EVSE and a public charging station, you don't have a car problem (whew!) IIRC, Don has an OpenEVSE.

 

[wmcbrine]

Almost fully charged on L1 now.

 

[Don]

There are dozens of versions of the Open EVSE. Mine is a very early iteration which has none of the later models software upgrades. I built it in a plastic camera case and we've used it exclusively as our only L2 charger for both cars - Never a hiccup or burp of any kind in the 3 or 4 years we've been using it

Good to hear you don't have a problem with the car - EVSE problems while rare are still easier and cheaper to fix!

Don

 

[wmcbrine]

I've bought a JuiceBox to replace (at least for now) my OpenEVSE. One successful charge so far.