2009 i-miev charging incompatibility

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RT3000

New member
Joined
Aug 11, 2015
Messages
3
Hi everyone,

So, we inherited a 2009 i-miev last year (Japanese spec). We're in the UK. The original cable that came with it has recently broken at the charging head end (the earth wire has snapped). We used this cable all the time on the road and the car took charge no problem. We had a home charging unit installed, but as we have now discovered, the car won't take any charge from the newer cables and charging units. We took the car to Mitsubishi who updated the software and ran diagnostics - nothing came up as faulty with the actual car - they tried to charge it up on all their charge points, and nothing... so it seems that it is only compatible with the 2009-10 cable - which seems absolutely effing ridiculous!

Mitsubishi told me that if I wanted to purchase the same original cable it would cost £700!!! :lol:

Any suggestions? Other than have the original cable repaired somehow, I'm struggling to see what options I have other than scrapping the vehicle.
 
That should be an easy fix--undo the wires, shorten them up to fit, strip the insulation and re-attach. Any electrical or electronics repair facility, or automotive electrical repair shop, should be able to do this in short order and minimal expense.
 
I'm guessing I know why it won't charge from charging stations. It looks like that is a J1772 connector, but there isn't any circuitry to advertise available amperage to the car. All that cable appears to do is simply put power to the car. It uses the J1772 connector, but it is not J1772 compliant. The car won't charge from a charging station because the station won't put out power until it communicates with the car. The older i-MiEVs don't have the communication hardware.

I agree. It should be pretty easy to open the connector and splice the wire back together.
 
Thanks for the response guys, much appreciated. I'll get it rewired and post the results
 
RT3000 said:
Hi everyone,
We used this cable all the time on the road and the car took charge no problem. We had a home charging unit installed, but as we have now discovered, the car won't take any charge from the newer cables and charging units.

since you can still charge the vehicle with the cable as is, my guess is that the EVSE (charging station) is not getting the "pilot" hand-shake on pin#4, to turn on the ac power

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772#/media/File:J1772_signaling_circuit.gif

I am interested to learn if the resistor network is there on pin 5 ?
 
One option might be to add the J1772 communication hardware to the vehicle, for example using this nice little device:

http://modularevpower.com/Active_Vehicle_Side_Control_development.htm

But, yeah, I'd also just fix the cable. You can get new J1772 connectors anywhere as well. Here too:

http://www.ev-power.eu/EVCharge-Products/
 
It is mode 1 cable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62196).
Just curious - is this cable would work on later I-mievs?
 
I tried a straight cable with my 2011 C-Zero, just left out the box, but it wouldn't charge. So I'm willing to say no, later models will no charge without the communication.
 
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