i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by Ultralights »

im not sure if the ECU was part of the recall, im sure if it was, then we would have a good chance of getting it under goodwill warranty, but if its not covered by the recall, then i dont think we have much of a leg to stand on.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

No harm in asking though?
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

After 3 weeks, I called to see if the part had arrived (previous estimate 2 to 3 weeks), but now they say it takes 5 to 6 weeks.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

Paceway actually called me for the first time. Nice to have an update. Unfortunately the update is more waiting. Part due to be delivered on 27 July, then about a week to get it installed. So about 4 months off the road if all goes well. Replacement car has already clocked up 1,500km.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by whimpurinter »

Hi,
My imiev has just started showing the car with ! icon on the dash. But also, a few months ago, once, it failed to energise the dash and I sort of recognised the behaviour and charged the car, thinking that the 12V might be low. That got it going again.
Well, as I say, it was now showing the car and ! icon and the car manual says that is a HV failure, or error, of some kind. However, sometimes it didn't fault and drove normally but more often, it was faulting. I noticed that it had a high-maintenance 12V battery fitted (one with caps that you add water to,) and I haven't looked at it, and it was fairly empty. I filled it and charged the 12V-only with a charger. Still the frequent HV fail behaviour occured. I was going to book it in to Mitsubishi and they said $160 to diagnose the problem, to which I replied, No problem, so long as you correctly diagnose the problem :) Anyway, I finally bit the bullet and had a new low-maintenance 12V battery fitted. It did fault immediately after this once, but in the day since, it has driven normally and not faulted yet. I should not have told you about this because it's much to early to know, but I feel confident that it was a failing 12V that was the cause.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

So maybe I should have tried a $100 battery before the $4000 charger?
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by whimpurinter »

Mike,
I would say definitely put a new 12V battery in first, not because I know that was the cause, but because it seems to me that is the weakest link in the whole system. The Blade car drove me up the wall with its crap 12V system, because nothing else works when the 12V is not coping. It has seemed to me to be a total freeup, the way the 12V system runs the car and fails when you have eleventy-billion Volts lurking elsewhere in the car.
If my car hadn't failed to light up a few months ago and I recognised the sort of behaviour I'd become familiar with with the Blade car 12V dropping below coping voltage, then I would have missed the move to replace the 12V, and missed looking specifically at the 12V in the car to see if anything was obvious, but also to charge the 12V independently of the traction battery.
It SEEMS to me that it is a totally Shaw (substitute letters as appropriate) system where, say, your traction battery has been fully charged but the 12V is trailing in performance. You don't charge the car because the traction battery doesn't need it, but that's the only time the 12V gets its charge. What sort of *FreeUp system is that? I've thought this for a few years now.
So, your jet plane will crash if it has a miscellaneous motor in the front to run the controls but using the afterburner overloads the miscellaneous motor.
Anyway, all this is just to give you an idea of where I came from. Drove the car again today, totally normal. I had looked at the app on my phone in between times to see that the traction battery report was nothing strange and that it drove normally, with normal dash info when it ran. This gave me confidence that it was not a deep problem, though no certainty.
I think if I had not taken the plunge and replaced the 12V, it would have paid $160 (total ripoff, which toyota have been doing for some time ($80 if they have to check the car for faults electronically). What Ballshaft! We should charge to use our amazingly complex mobile phones to allow them to get the job. I'd also guess that somewhere in the mix, they would have changed the 12V at Mitsubishi prices but gad knows what else I would have been paying for with their accurate diagnosis.
I will add that should my car play up in a way that is not fixable, I will totally rely on them to get it going again. How disturbing that the Australian industry has followed the US and Japanese industry in making it very hard to transition to EV. If they hadn't, I would fully expect the parts would be cheaper, expertise would be becoming common-place by now, and I would have some faith in the industry.

Thank Furk for TESLA. I believe that should Tesla fail for reasons beyond their control, this world will have a much shorter lifespan than it already has.

As an afternote, I got the battery from a local car-electrician-place and the owner gave me a running argument of why EV's are total crap and not useful. This man has run this business for years (I pass it at least once a week). He came out with an amazing amount of tripe and I gently corrected everything he said and he seemed to be listening. I smilingly asked him late in the conversation if he was reciting the Tony Abbot PR releases (you know what I mean/meant.) This post is stupidly long, but only if you request it, I will post every comment I remember him making. It would make you shake your head.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by whimpurinter »

Mmm, our EV's need a good Volt Meter feedback on the 12V system, as required. It seems obvious now. Traction battery readout. 12V battery readout. Independent 12V battery charging port available, while they are designed the way they are :)
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

I did check the 12v battery, since it was reporting a 12V fault. Voltage seemed to be fine and fully charging the 12v externally made no difference. Possibly should have tried a new one just to be sure, especially as it did go flat once when left unused for 3 weeks. I really doubt it is the problem in this case. The car drives fine but won't charge. The i-miev charges the 12v whenever it is running, I think the charging issue you mention is blade specific. Mitsubishi do say the 12v battery needs replacing as well as the charger and dc-dc converter. Will almost undoubtedly be flat now after sitting at Paceway for 4 weeks waiting.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by whimpurinter »

Yes, Mike, if the 12V was the first thing they looked at, it's probably how it seems to you all.
My only final point is that a new fully charged 12V is the first thing to do in this situation.
Anything not new needs to be load-tested at least. Good luck :)
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

Just to be clear - there is a genuine issue with chargers failing, just some people might also get warnings from a dud 12v battery.
Details of some of the failed chargers here.
http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php? ... d2234a1521
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by whimpurinter »

Well, I regret to say I saw the car! icon again this afternoon after two days free of it.
I know I have 14.4V going into the 12V when the car is charging, and similar to the 12V when the car is turned on.
It looks like I'm in the same boat as everyone else.
Just noting that the car can creep forward with the Car! icon lit, at least mine can, though it won't do any sort of incline. I wonder if this is what turtle mode does since I've never seen turtle mode.
My charging seems ok. I wonder what the Car! icon is really complaining about. I'm going to have to let them learn from it.
One last thing. Does anyone know if this general Car! icon warning was just as common before the recalls when they reprogrammed the cars and whatever else? I always drive my car in B mode.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

The car! icon can indicate a whole range of things. I had it come up just because I blew the tail light fuse.
Ours drives normally, but doesn't charge, so definitely a different problem to yours.
There are some people around with clones of the mitsubishi analyser devices. I recommend checking out the my i-miev forum mentioned above.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by whimpurinter »

Hi,
I took my imiev to the local mitsubishi dealer this morning for the car! symbol error and turtle symbol(not sure if all the time).

They called back to 'clarify' a few things.

They said that there were no errors showing (I presume after they connected up the electronic device) and asked me if I had cleared the errors.
I said I had no means to clear the errors. We stayed on this topic a little longer than I would have wanted.

I mentioned that the car had been in for a recall for at least 4 different things and they said that was a year ago (I thought it was a few months). I said that among other things, I believed some sort of programming change had been done which, among other things, had changed the regen level for which I was pleased, but just threw it out there that this could have some effect on what they were reporting and to talk to whoever had done that.

Could some of you make a comment on the meaning of no error/fault codes stored from a system point of view.

I have a blue-tooth gadget plugged into it. This could have this sort of effect on the system, do you think.

The car also has two led driving lights at the front which are lit at all times, plus an aftermarket cruise control which I mostly don't use but it works reasonably. Any thoughts on whether either of these two things could be thought to impact on normal operation of the underlying car system.

The car randomly goes to that fault symbol and then turtles, often in the morning at first turn on, but if the fault doesn't show, the car seems to be absolutely normal when driven. Could anyone give me some feedback to contemplate before the next chat with the dealer :)
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

Replacement charger was supposed to arrive on the 27 July - no word from Paceway, so I gave them a call today. They tell me that the part is discontinued and they need to order the new version with a new part number, which also needs to come from Japan. No coherent explanation as to why they had to wait 6 weeks to do so!. Car now looks like being off the road for 6 months, assuming the newly ordered part actually arrives.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by zzcoopej »

I just read somewhere that VW chargers were found to contain Cadmium in a relay, so VW recently changed supplier. I wonder if Mitsubishi had the same issue?
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

You think they might have recalled it after shipping it? Possible, but you'd think they'd have mentioned it to me to avoid looking incompetent.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by bmscott »

bladecar wrote: Thu, 26 Jul 2018, 15:58 Could some of you make a comment on the meaning of no error/fault codes stored from a system point of view.

I have a blue-tooth gadget plugged into it. This could have this sort of effect on the system, do you think.
My understanding of most ODB-II dongles is that they're only capable of reading, not sending any packets of data to the in-car network. Even if they could, I'm not sure how you'd go about clearing error codes, though presumably it's possible as I've seen gadgets advertised which claim to do that.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by brendon_m »

Most Bluetooth dongles will have the capability of sending a clear codes request. Maybe not all apps but it's fairly standard for them to be able to read and clear codes, although they mostly only do engine systems (abs srs etc normally aren't supported and you need a proper scan tool.)

Some cars will self clear an error code after X number of starts(like 30) if the fault never reoccur, but if the fault light is on the dash then there should be a fault logged (sometimes it'll be listed under a different section like history rather than current codes)
In my experience the only ways for the light to be up and no codes are a fault in the dash (unlikely), a faulty computer/glitch in software and needs a reboot or a scan tool that doesn't have the right software. Oh and there is also operator error.
Our scan tool at my work will read and do most things on most cars (and at $9,000 it should) but it still has occasional niggles where it won't program something right or lists no codes etc but that is mostly on exotic/ weird cars
I've seen scan tools not fully updated giving people weird results
Its also possible that the Bluetooth dongles just auto clears codes but I'd doubt it and if the light is up then there should be a code somewhere.
Even an intermittent fault that is currently not faulting should have a history code
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mark_hetho »

mikedufty wrote: Fri, 04 May 2018, 11:34 Is yours completely out of action? Sounds like buying a new car while waiting might have actually been a sensible idea.
Given your hindsight, that it is going to take more than a few months to sort out, I'll have to consider something like that. Should have kept the paddock basher registered!
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mikedufty »

Mitsubishi have now given us a diesel ASX to drive around in while we wait. Latest ETA for the part is end of august.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mark_hetho »

Having had mine assessed by the dealer, $395 in fees for diagnostics and the next step is replacing the EV-ECU ($1400) (and if that doesn't sort it the charger unit is next at $4K+). They are going to do a "dummy order" to get info on the part location and ETA just so I have an idea how long I'm off the road in the worst case.
I'm taking the car to a friends workshop to look at finding the source of the fault within either of these units (still 24 km range on the guessometer, but I'm trying not to deplete that too much).
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by Ultralights »

we were charged $150 for the diagnosis, but a WARNING , we were told it was the Battery-ECU, (could also be the EV-ECU) . and it wasn't, and we were charged $1200 for the ECU change that did nothing, they would not give us the car back until we paid. so, we have an old, working Battery ECU here gathering dust now, unfortunately it is VIN locked to our chassis number. so is useless to anyone now.
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by mark_hetho »

I've read elsewhere the "charger/DC-DC" is not VIN locked, but that the EV-ECU is. But is the battery ECU another unit again?
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Re: i-MiEV not charging, high voltage warning light and battery

Post by Ultralights »

im not sure, i have not heard of an EV ECU yet, thats not to say they dont have one, but mitsubishi replaced our battery ECU, and told us that the DC converter, Battery ECU and Motor controller were all VIN coded. weather that is actually true or not, i cant be sure, as it did come from a service centre manager, who arnt exactly know to be truthful, or knowledgeable about such things, especially with a car they have not seen before.
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