Pack warning light (?) flicking on on first start...

[pyoor]

Hi folks,

We have just bought a second hand iMiEV - a very early one - apparently it's more or less Japanese spec and was part of the CABLED trial in the UK Midlands. It's one of the ones with the non-EVSE charger cable and the Level 1 and Level 3 (DC) only on board charger.

Before buying we plugged in a little dongle to its i/o port and checked the battery condition - they appear to be in great shape (or appeared, haven't rechecked them, that might we wise).

A few days after getting it we started getting a warning light which looks to me like a battery pack warning light (but isn't in the manual that came with the car which bears only a moderate resemblence to the dash we actually have).

This is the light:

The light comes on when the car is turned on and flashes for 10-30 seconds (in general) then turns off. It /normally/ seems to happen the first time after it's been on charge, although yesterday it happened after we got back from a trip - it had been on charge (Level 1) at the cinema and very briefly flashed what I'm calling the 'pack warning light' after we got home. I'd pulled up - switched off - and then switched on the car.

We're going to pop the car to our local dealer to have a check over but since they had no concept of the "won't charge off a level 2 charger" problem I'm not holding out great hope.

Can anyone say what that light is and why it might be flashing to give us an idea of what more to look at.

Also - random follow up - there's a company in the UK which for £1k will change the charger for a Mode 1/2/3 charger - anyone had any experience with them. I'm not convinced we want to go forward with that, but it's a possibility we're considering.

 

[JoeS]

pyoor, thank you for your post. Even though most of our discussions on this forum pertain to late-model iMiEVs, it's interesting to see the changes that have taken place since the older iMiEV versions. I went back to our 2012 US-spec manual and finally found a picture which shows the symbols (page 3-71 in the manual). We have a blank spot where your flashing battery symbol is located, and have a whole bunch of symbols different than yours (the only common ones being the READY numeric and 12v battery symbol). Other than a universal Electric Unit Warning Light, we have no traction-battery-specific warnings.

So, it appears Mitsubishi dumbed-down the instrumentation as they gained more experience with the car. Sorry, I can't be of any help but it will be interesting to know what your dealer tells you. I'm sure they can plug in their diagnostic tool and read out the voltages of each individual cell. I wonder if they can also do that dynamically as the car is being driven and capture that data? Our own CAN bus group's investigations were heading that way…

All the best, and do let us know what the dealer tells you.

 

[pyoor]

Thanks for looking - I'll update you all when I get an answer. I'm waiting on feedback from Mitsubishi and my local garage - they're talking to Mitsubishi in Japan...

 

[pyoor]

Oookay. So we got the iMiEV back today, and the verdict from the garage (I'm not sure if this came from Japan or from the garage themselves) was that this warning light has been used to indicate...

....are you ready for it...

...that the battery, in the remote door lock key fob, is flat.

They've replaced it and are hoping this fixes the problem.


Yes, I'm not entirely sure that's not bat*h*t crazy. But that's the final answer. Earlier in the day they thought it was charching-cable related. Now not-so-much.